Third-grade students in Olivia Strode’s classroom at Labadie Elementary showcased a wax museum in the school’s gymnasium on Tuesday afternoon, April 16.
The students have been studying historical events and periods of time, and embraced it. They shared what they learned with Labadie staff and other students in their museum.
The third-grade students made displays that were stationed throughout the gym.
“I combined two of our benchmark writing units into one big project for them to create a wax museum once completed. Our historical fiction unit has them creating a fictional character taking place at a specific time and place in the past,” Strode said. “Their writings had real historical settings, described an event that did happen or could have happened in that time period, using realistic dialogue and following a plot in that time period.”
Much like wax museum figures, the third-grade students stood by their respective displays and waited for a visitor. When someone visited their station, the student gave a brief presentation on who they researched and what they contributed to society.
Some of the historical events on display included the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Women’s Suffrage, Medieval Ages, Lewis and Clark Expedition, Westward Expansion, the Titanic, and the September 11 attacks.
“Before this unit started, I gave them a little background information on various time periods dating all the way back to Ancient Mesopotamia, the Middle Ages, Ancient Greece, any of the U.S wars, Colonial times, Westward Expansion, you name it,” Strode said. “They were able to choose from these time periods to create their own character in and write a fictional story. I surprised them after writing their paper letting them know they were going to let their character come to life. This raised a lot of excitement in my classroom for writing.
“In our research unit, they got to research their time period that their character was from. While researching they got to create a timeline, learn about historical figures, advancements, inventions, documents, laws, and amendments. Once they had this information, they turned all of this note taking and real information into paragraphs for a research writing. After the research and paper portion was done, they then created a visual for visitors to read on trifold poster boards. Both of these units, including their character coming to life, were turned into our wax museum for the whole school and any visitors to tour our museum.”
Photos of the Labadie Elementary third-grade wax museum are below.
