On March 17th four members of the Chestermere Historical Foundation were privileged to be part of the research done by the CMS teachers and students. CHS volunteers Bill Peddlesden, Kay Clarke and Ray Blanchard and myself spent four hours going over the social, economic, political and demographic changes over the last 100 year which have influenced Chestermere as the community it is today.
However, long before March, Social Studies teachers Aja Coe and Jenna Burns were working diligently in the background to make this all happen. Aja and Jenna signed up to be a part of the “Inquiry Champions” an opportunity provided by Rocky View School Division which entailed 3 days of planning at head office. They went twice in October and once in November to plan and consult with other teachers. The planning took countless hours over a number of months. The goal of the project is for students to make connections between the past and present as this way of thinking creates meaning. The project consist of a written component, data analysis (survey), oral presentation (that will happen on May 5th ) and visuals in the form of their poster presentations on May 5th. The students also had to write articles which were featured three times in the Anchor this past month – plus a survey in partnership with The Anchor. Ms Coe and Ms Burns are covering many curricular outcomes by doing such an in-depth and all-encompassing project but the delivery of it is in the form of a large project which has been named ‘Chestermere Know-it-All’ I trust many readers took time to do this survey! And if you did, you will have two chances to see the results of both the survey and the ‘Know It All’ project. On Tuesday May 5th from 10am to 11am the students will be presenting their poster projects for adjudication based on the criteria above at Chestermere Middle School. Then on Tuesday May 11th at 1 pm back at Chestermere Middle School, the students whose projects have been chosen through adjudication, will present this information to the City of Chestermere Town Council. There is some room at this presentation for public to attend- do if you can! These are our future voters and politicians! How encouraging and exciting to hear what they think the future of the City of Chestermere holds. And kudos to Ms. Coe and Ms Burns for taking the extra time to provide this enrichmentólucky students!
The Chestermere Historical Foundation is hoping to reprise the for topic presentations done on March 17th at our regular meeting time 6:30pm Tuesday June 9th in the Chestermere Public Library. Keep in touch through our webpage www.chestermerehistory.org and join us for an adult version and maybe a great discussion afterwards of how we adults think these factors influenced the Chestermere we know today.
