Have You had a Colonial Fair at Your School?

I'm a Technology Resource Teacher for two elementary schools and "minor," for lack of a better word, in Social Studies and video making (each tech resource teacher in our district focuses on certain disciplines). Moreover, I was a Peer Facilitator for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation this past summer. I have teachers and administrators who are interested in school wide colonial fairs. How did you motivate your staff members and administrators? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve? How did you cut costs? Did you have favorite web sites that you used? I'd also like to have students take video and make a documentary. Did any have interesting technology lessons integrated with your fairs?

Tags: American, Colonial, Fairs, History, Social, Studies

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on January 5, 2008 at 6:26pm

I'm a professional brainstormer, here are some ideas:

In lieu of a colonial fair do some NEW and authentic research.

Have kids research the history of your school district and do a website--great oral histories of "old" teachers, former students, old pictures (you can take amazing digital pictures of old photos) old sports teams and honorary societies, etc. Do a website. Dole out different topics to different grades.

Have kids record the history of your town and do a virtual tour. Again interviews, tons of photos, reports, etc. (small example http://connections.smsd.org/tour )

Have the kids do a website for a local historical site(s).

Have kids reproduce a local museum (we did a local county museum--copied all the placards in the museum, talked to the docents, took pictures of all the artifacts It was the official website for the museum for several years until they hired a "professional"!!)

Interview your WWII veterans ( we did this too, best work I will ever do as a teacher http://connections.smsd.org/veterans )

Use your local cemeteries as primary sources for studying the history of your community http://connections.smsd.org/csi

Here is an entire ning on The Seventies---I think this might be a way to do a huge project with a bunch of classes

The museums project, the veterans project, the local histories project or the school district's history project would make for great receptions with all kinds of people in attendance and all kinds of multimedia presentations. Good Luck, N

Let me know if you need more ideas!!