The Wax Museum: A BCI Grade 7 Class Project

I was recently invited to attend a unique museum exhibit.  It was held at a local school and organized by a group of Grade 7 students.  This talented crew of students featured important activists with various exhibits around the school library.   Not only did they research the activists and develop the displays, they also posed as the "wax statues" of the people they'd researched.   I was so impressed with this project and was excited when the class gave me permission to write about their work!  I've shared the details of this project from my perspective in hopes that some other students and teachers might be inspired to try a project like this.

Each student in Mrs. Bowley's class selected an activist to focus on for the project.  I saw displays on Rosa Parks, Desmond Tutu, Cesar Chavez, Craig Keilburger, Malcolm X, Viola Desmond, Agnes Macphail and more.  Students researched the significant life events and important contributions of their activist.  Students created an audio recording explaining important information about their activist.  They used first person narrative to share the facts they'd uncovered through their research in a unique and engaging way.   Students used the Audio editor & music editor AudioStudio Chrome extension to record on their Chromebooks.   Many students sourced royalty-free background music to enhance their audio.

Each student created a poster for their display, which included some key details about the activist, along with a QR code linking to their recording.   This format allowed museum visitors to view each display while listening to the audio on their phone or personal device. As guests moved through the exhibit, students posed as their activist, wearing costumes selected from the local Value Shoppe. 

I really enjoyed the time I spent visiting each display.  As I scanned each QR code, I learned more about the activists featured at the museum.   Many of the people were ones I'd heard of before, but I got to learn new things as I listened to the students' work.  It was an interesting museum for both the adults and students who had the opportunity to visit it.

As the Literacy with ICT Teacher Leader for our school division, I noticed that students had used many important skills in developing their project.  A few important LwICT skills that I saw evidence of were:

Gather & Make Sense:  students conducted research to gather information on their activist, they organized that information and made sense of it in order to create their posters and recordings

Produce to Show Understanding:  students created their posters, audio recordings and their display to demonstrate their understanding of the person they researched

Communicate:  students communicated their ideas to an audience of museum visitors with this project.  They developed an engaging museum exhibit that used various components to share knowledge with others.

I know that students also used their ELA skills in their research, writing and recording and demonstrated an understanding of their Social Studies outcomes through this project.   It was awesome to see student learning showcased in this unique project!