Our Lady of Lourdes students bring history, science, and writing to life at their annual fair

SALT LAKE CITY — "The students were passionate about presenting their reports on people and events throughout history, and they became those people," said Will Chambers, Our Lady of Lourdes sixth grade teacher.

"We started holding the history and science fair five years ago when we realized after students participated in the science fair for two years, their excitement waned," said Catherine Moore, principal of Our Lady of Lourdes School. "The first history fair was such a success, we decided to add the writing fair. Now the students look forward to the fair each year.

"The students begin planning and developing their ideas in December, start doing their research, writing their stories or poetry, putting their displays together, and working on their costumes," said Moore. "The students are judged, and the winners receive gift certificates to the King’s English Book Store."

Our Lady of Lourdes eighth grade teacher Leah Welton said the eighth grade students participated in the writing fair, the seventh grade participated in the history fair, and the sixth grade in the science fair. The benefit is they each experience all three topics during their middle school years. The projects were done by classes so the students would have more time to work on their projects.

"The fair gives the students an opportunity to do their assignment on their own interest level," said Welton who instructed the writing fair. "The criteria for the writing fair was pretty strict, but at the same time, some of the students wrote 30-page novels where they would not have enough time to do something like that on a regular assignment. This is more of a creative writing project where the students can really explore their writing style and a particular genre. Some students wrote poetry rather than a fiction story. Over a couple of months, the students researched an author, and examined how their writing style fit with the author’s style."

Welton said it was interesting to see how much the students learned from the authors, and to see their creativity come to life through their presentations.

David Berg, Our Lady of Lourdes seventh grade teacher, instructed the science fair. Berg said the science fair was combined with language arts for writing and setting up their reports for their science projects. Overall the students did a really good job.

Berg said science fair projects force the students to think about setting up a controlled experiment, creating a hypothesis and developing a conclusion, which gets them more involved with science. The projects inspire interest that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. The science fair allows students to be creative and pick a project they are interested in or enjoy.

"The history fair was unlike anything I had ever seen before," said Chambers. "I worked with the students on the writing portion of their projects for the science fair. The students not only learned how to write a research paper, they also had to write and create their presentation.

"The students had to create their own autobiography about the person they chose and present it to others, as well as to act as if they were that character," said Chambers. "The students had to stay in character so when parents or judges asked them questions, they had to answer as if they were really that person. It was a different type of thinking for the students. They had to think in a way different from doing a research project and repeating what they learned. They had to understand the character’s point of view. They develop such an understanding by having to be able to think like the great people in our history."

Chambers said the students prepared their final projects as a presentation in the first-person, as a character in costume with props, and put it all together to be judged.

The students were judged by teachers who specialize in the three subjects, parents with similar backgrounds, and experts in the three fields.

Andrew Bergquist and Christian Weidle took first place in the Science Fair, Christian Lessey and Dixie Burton took second place, and Sydney Richards took third place.

Jeff Scott won first place in the History Fair, Ross Terrill and Madelyn Machon took second place, and Andrew Rechsteiner won third place.

In the Writing Fair, Isaac Losee and Macy Ostrom tied for first place, Analise Sisneros won second place, and Christian Cecena won third place.