The Jazz Age returned to Wadena as the Wadena-Deer Creek High School cafeteria filled with booths, games and costumes of the 1920s. Between 300 and 400 WDC students, plus teachers, viewed The Great Gatsby Fair created by Elizabeth Hawkins 10th-grade English classes.
Students were invited to the fair to learn about the book, The Great Gatsby and the era. They played games to learn vocabulary, symbolism and quotes from the book. Some high schoolers even tried swing dancing and the Charleston.
Hawkins 10th-grade English classes were encouraged to be creative in designing their fair projects, which were assigned instead of a final test on the book. They could choose to present their knowledge of the book in a variety of ways as long as it showed knowledge of the book and met other requirements.
Michael Butlers booth included a LEGO building block version of Gatsbys house and a car. Using the props, he explained the plot of the book to fair visitors.
Courtney Snyder and Heather Birch wore flapper outfits and quizzed passersby.
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Snyder said she enjoyed the project.
It got us more into the book, Birch said.
Jeff Leslie made a poster that represented symbolism and included vocabulary, poems and an invitation to one of Gatsbys parties. Visitors to his booth learned vocabulary. They were given a vocabulary word and needed to find the description on his poster. After finding the description, the visitors drew a picture or acted out the word.
Leslie thought the project was fun.
Teacher Hawkins hopes the project provides students with a new look at the book.
Theres so many elements to a novel besides just the facts, she said.
For the project, the students needed to meet requirements for at least three of the following areas: plot, character, mapping, symbolism, theme and mens and womens roles. They also needed to meet requirements from at least one of the areas that included setting, point of view, style, jazz age, money, parties and vocabulary.
They were graded on creativity, meeting requirements, grammar and quality.
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