Resources for Teachers/Parents Assisting with Heritage Fair Projects

Explore historical thinking strategies of doing Heritage Fair with your students, curriculum connections, lesson plans, and rubrics.

Benefits of doing Heritage Fair with your classroom

There are a variety of benefits to Heritage Fair, including:

  • Adaptable learning and project completion approaches to Grade levels 4-10
  • Supports existing curriculum with a focus on core competencies and project-based learning
  • Encourages a cross-curricular approach to teaching and learning; covers social studies, English/French, science, math, art, and more 
  • Encourages students to take initiative in their own learning and share their own ideas and knowledge to an authentic audience
  • Enhances literacy
  • Enhances research and critical thinking through question development and analysis of resources
  • Enhances communication skills such as interviewing, writing, editing, and speaking
  • Encourages valuable intergenerational dialogue as well as home, school, and community interaction
  • Engages citizenship values such as respect for evidence and empathy
  • Provides the opportunity to teach and learn from others
  • Develops strong community roots, and gives youth confidence to become active citizens who shape the future of our country
Student delegate at the 2024 Provincial Heritage Fair stands next to their project titled: Gilbert Freeman Killam AKA Free.
Student delegate at the 2024 Provincial Heritage Fair stands next to their project titled: Elsie MacGill.

The length of time generally depends on the age of students and their experience with research in social studies, as well as how much in-depth time the teacher wishes to dedicate to the unit. Because a Heritage Fair unit effectively covers multiple learning objectives and competencies in the new curriculum, teachers generally choose to make these projects the major social studies focus for a month and sometimes more. 

> Access lesson plans in the list of resources on the BC Heritage Fairs Google Drive

A Heritage Fair project is a historical inquiry, which involves the key concepts of evidence such as interpreting sources, asking questions, and cross-checking several sources. The student’s topic should also be one of historical significance, which is another concept in historical thinking. Apart from this, the project’s connection to historical thinking will depend on the topic. It could involve cause and consequence or change and continuity. It could explore how people thought and felt in the past about life around them or it could try to answer an ethical question about how we should remember the past and obligations we might have to our ancestors or to other groups of people.

More details about historical thinking, curriculum connections, and rubrics can be found in on the BC Heritage Fairs Google Drive.

Yes. A well-planned research project is an important tool for learning content knowledge and critical thinking concepts, skills, and habits. In addition:

  • The Heritage Fair program also develops soft skills, such as curiosity, perseverance, and dealing with failure and frustration
  • Students become the experts who present to a receptive audience, which can increase their motivation to learn
  • Students learn by diving into history: they develop questions; find, sort, and interpret sources; read widely and deeply to analyze, to think creatively, to write in many different formats, to problem-solve, and to communicate results

If you do not have a Regional Coordinator (Contact List here), please contact srfairs@bcheritagefairs.ca to be included in the Independent Fair. This Fair accepts participants from anywhere in the province without a Regional Fair and allows a select number of students to attend the Provincial Fair in July.

Home-schooled students are welcome to apply to any Regional Fair; however, because they will not be part of a School Fair, the selection process will differ from Fair to Fair.

> Please contact your local Regional Fair Coordinator to find out about participation options for home-schooled students

> Please contact the Independent Regional Fair Coordinator if you do not have a Regional Fair available