Classroom Activities

The Best of the Fair

This unit is centered on the narrative The Best of the Fair. It is 1893 and Grandpa, nine-year old Lily, and her little brother Joseph are enjoying a visit to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago where they encounter a variety of new innovations. The unit’s five lessons integrate social studies, language arts, and fine arts as students use geography, reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills to explore the important “firsts” of the fair.

Lesson 1: Vocabulary Game
By engaging students with an imaginative bulletin-board display and vocabulary game, students will learn about Chicago’s status as a center for innovation at the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

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Lesson 2: Reader’s Theater
Through a reader’s theater performance of The Best of the Fair, students will make personal connections with history and better grasp the excitement generated by the innovative products, technologies, and exhibits showcased at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

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Lesson 3: Mapping the Fair
Students will locate attractions mentioned in The Best of the Fair on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition map. This activity is a fun way to enhance understanding of the fair and its historical significance as well as to underscore the difference between fact and fiction.

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Lesson 4: New Product Advertisement
By creating their own advertisement for a new product (circa 1893), students will strengthen their understanding of Chicago as a center for innovation and the World’s Fair as a showcase for new technologies.

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Lesson 5: Letter from the Fair
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was an awesome historical event that made permanent impressions on American architecture, design, art, entertainment, transportation, farming, and industry while creating lifelong memories for visitors. Students will make personal connections with this history and develop empathy for the people of the past by writing a letter from the fair circa 1893.

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