Benefits
Hosting a fair provides numerous benefits to both teachers and students.
The Heritage Fairs program:
- Supports existing curricula in all provinces and territories
- Encourages a cross-curricular approach to teaching and learning
- Enables students to share their own ideas and knowledge to an authentic audience
- Enhances literacy
- Enhances research and 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
Curriculum Connection
Participation in Heritage Fairs contributes to the development of the curricular competencies, big ideas and content knowledge required by the B.C. Social Studies curriculum. However, learning and instruction often take place in an integrated manner, in the elementary years in particular, and do not always stay within the boundaries of a particular subject area.
Teachers may look for ways to connect learning in Social Studies with any or all of the following provincially prescribed curricula
- Dance, drama, music visual arts – the role of the arts in sustaining and communicate culture; historical and cultural context of the arts
- English language arts – effective communication and research strategies; the role of literature and storytelling in sustaining and communicating culture
- Health and career education – group processes; leadership; families; purpose of rules; roles, rights, and responsibilities at home, at school, and in the community; needs and wants; decision making; work and jobs in the community
- Mathematics – the mathematical principles of map making, particularly latitude and longitude and time zones
- Science – daily and seasonal changes; resource use issues
Find Out More
Learn more about engaging students and satisfying curriculum requirements by downloading the BC Curriculum PDF
Teacher Resources
For further information and to find out how you can get involved, please contact the provincial coordinator Becky Burns