Wax Museum 2019
4/20/2019
The 2nd grade annual Wax Museum was held as an exhibit as part of our first school Science Party this week. Students look forward to this project each year where they are able to choose a person of importance, study and learn about them, and then portray them as an exhibit in our wax museum. While this is quite a fun undertaking, there are plenty of opportunities to throw in some real authentic learning at the same time! After students have chosen the person they want to learn more about, they begin their research. The first step is to think about what they already know about their person, activating prior knowledge. They then come up with questions they have about the individual and dive right into their research. A combination of printed books, websites and other forms of text are used so students can form a picture of their person, including their history and achievements. Students then take that information and use an app on the computer to make a word cloud about their person. This word cloud contains adjectives and nouns that relate to that person. They really strengthen their critical thinking skills with this part of the project, as they have to be able to defend their choices with evidence. This word cloud poster is what the viewers see as they come to the presentation. What the viewers do not see is the back of the word cloud posters which contain succinct speeches that the second graders write. Students have to employ their summarizing skills in order to get the main gist of the person and their achievements in only a few short sentences. Once a museum visitor presses the "on" button located on the poster, the student "comes to life" and recites their speech, hopefully educating visitors about some of the scientists, mathematicians and inventors of our world. Another quite large component of the project is the backgrounds each student creates. These backgrounds also provide information about the individual as students have to really think where they should "place" themselves for the exhibit. This is where creativity of each student really comes into play. They are given a few parameters such as the backgrounds have to be made entirely of paper, they have to have their names and be a specific size. Collaboration and communication skills happen naturally here as students jump in to help each other create and solve problems together. Finally it is time for the opening of the wax museum. This provides a real world opportunity to hone communication skills as students are interacting with a large variety of visitors and working on their public speaking skills such as speaking loudly, clearly, and maintaining eye contact. Plus they get to celebrate all of their hard work with their friends and family!
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Marcella HitchcockMs. Hitchcock teaches second grade, is a mom of two, an avid reader, lifelong learner, and a seeker of sunshine! Archives
March 2021
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