Planning for the History Fair
It’s time to start thinking about topics for the annual AHE History Fair. This event is always held in term 2, and will hopefully be in person this year! It’s a great opportunity for kids to each pick a historical person, event or landmark (or whatever!) that interests them and spend time delving deeper into that topic.
In our family, we always start by coming up with some topic ideas for each child. Then we figure out whether the library has many resources available on that subject. It would be pretty hard doing a project on something with minimal resources!
Throughout the process, kids learn research skills and put their IEW (writing course) skills to good use making keyword outlines. Often quite a bit of encouragement is needed along the way, especially when it comes to writing up the different sections. If they have in mind what they want their final project to look like, this can help with figuring out what sort of information to include or leave out. E.g. last year Grace wanted to build a simple model of a rich Greek person’s house, so she thought about how that would influence her choice of information.
When all the hard work of information gathering, sorting and rewriting is done, they need to make a final decision on how they will display their information. Most years we have done the traditional project board, but even this format requires decisions to be made over where to place pictures, info, props etc. Designing props and costumes are definitely the favourite parts for my kids! It’s worth leaving at least a week at the end of the project to put time into those aspects, since they really help in adding interest to the whole project. And depending on how elaborate they want to get, they can be rather time-consuming.
Finally, we practise asking the kids questions about their project, since this is a part of their assessment. It can be quite nerve-wracking talking about their project to strangers, especially knowing that it contributes to their mark! But it’s also a really good opportunity to practise their oral skills and demonstrate what they’ve learnt.
The history fair has been something our kids look forward to and put a lot of time and effort into each year. It’s really worthwhile considering if you haven’t done it before!
