Wax Museum

In my young and impressionable years of teaching, I was very lucky to be surrounded by the best teachers in the world (I'm allowed to say that because I've seen teachers in Texas, Colorado and Dubai, which is pretty much the whole world).  They come to work each day with passion in their hearts and would literally do anything to help their students succeed.  One of my very favorite traditions at Corey was Candy Dowd's 4th grade wax museum.  I always knew I wanted to do that with my own students someday.  Welp, that day finally came this year (eeeeeeeee!) when we were looking for a fun way to teach our non-fiction standards.  Memories of Candy's awesome wax museum came flooding back and I knew that's exactly what I wanted to do.  I was a little nervous because of how much work it entails and because I had only seen it done with the fourth grade GT class, but our little third graders rocked it out and blew us all away.

Meet my amazing students.

Maggie Gee, first Chinese-American fighter pilot.

Amelia Earhart, first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
Also Maggie Gee's inspiration.

Marian Anderson, ground-breaking African American singer.

Helen Keller.  Did you know she graduated from Harvard?  Amazing.

This girl is amazing too.  She came to school this year and didn't know any English.  She not only did this whole project on her own, but she also memorized her entire speech!  She definitely made Helen proud.

Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon.

 Dr. Seuss, writer, illustrator, inspirer.

 

George Washington, first president of the United States.

Judy Blume, beloved children's author.

Steven Spielberg, movie maker extraordinaire, and another amazing ELL student.

(and the amazing mom who listened to EVERY third grader's speech!)

 Albert Einstein.  Oh my gosh, this girl was amazing.  She had a whole science experiment skit planned out at the beginning of her speech, a funny old man accent and furry eyebrows.  She wins for best costume for sure.

 Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile and ANOTHER amazing ELL student.  I don't understand how kids learn languages so quickly!

 Charles Atlas, the world's most perfectly developed man.

 Marie Curie, scientist and discoverer of radium.

Our third grade wax figures.

3b, best third grade class ever!

Project details:

The students started by choosing a biography in the school library.  This was challenging because we don't have a ton of biographies and the students had to choose a book close-ish to their reading level.  They researched using their books and the Internet, took notes, wrote, revised and typed 5 biographical paragraphs about their person, made a timeline on the computer, wrote a speech from their person's point of view, practiced their speech over and over and over, made a costume and poster and gathered props for the big presentation.  THEN, as if that wasn't enough, they had to stand perfectly still on the day of the wax museum (like a wax figure...), wait for someone to press their "on" button, and recite their speech...over and over and over again.  It was seriously one of the proudest teacher moments I've ever had.  Kindergarten through middle school classes came to support the third graders and all but one student's parents came.  We got so much good feedback and we're already thinking about how to make it better for next year.

Yay for a successful wax museum,  inspiring teacher friends and the cutest class ever!