Heritage Academy 5th grade and middle school students are required to complete class projects several times per academic year. Heritage Academy’s annual projects and contests directly support the Academy’s focus on critical thinking, or the ability to identify issues, build relationships between disparate topics, and solve problems.

Current Class Project List

Grades 5 – 8 engage the following efforts each year. The year over year repetition builds practical experience and allows room for growth and improvement as the student advances grades at Heritage:

The DAR American History Essay Contest and Research Paper
All Heritage middle school grades participate in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) American History Essay Contest each year. This project is completed in the first semester and requires a student supported research paper.

The American History Essay Contest is open to students in public, private, and parochial schools. Registered home-study programs also participate. The contest allows Heritage students to compete against peers outside of the Academy.

A new essay topic is announced by the DAR each year. Competing essays are judged for historical accuracy, adherence to the topic, organization of materials, interest, originality, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and neatness. The essay also promotes patriotism, an important aspect of the school’s history curriculum.

With the DAR contest, a student essay is capable of winning chapter level, state level, divisional level, and national level awards and recognition.

4-H
Pittsylvania County 4-H is a youth organization that focuses on the development of life skills through various avenues of hand-on education.  Through partnership with Heritage Academy, Pittsylvania County 4-H uses a one semester weekly i-school agriculture-based curriculum to teach basic skills like cooperation, teamwork, communication, critical thinking, and problem solving.  Additionally, this program instills in youth the value of local agriculture, the importance of agricultural heritage in our community, and encourages youth to explore careers within the agricultural field.  4-H also sponsors a yearly Ag-Day at Heritage in which students hear from experts in the fields of forestry, soil conservation, dairy cows, bee keeping, etc.