History comes to life in the grades 4 & 5 living wax museum

SWORMVILLE — What do Elon Musk, Frida Kahlo, George Washington, Taylor Swift, FDR & Jane Goodall have in common? They were all at St. Mary School recently!

Students in grades four and five in Miss Chelsea Kerwin and Mrs. Brenda Gengo’s classes have been diligently working over the past few months on researching a historic/famous individual, and creating a presentation about them complete with a costume. Their final project for the year culminated in a “Living Wax Museum” that was open for their families and fellow students to walk through. The students turned one of our classrooms into quite the exciting exhibit, and over 250 friends, family members and fellow students came to see the very lifelike “wax” figures tell their stories.

Each student began their project by choosing an individual to research. They then set to work reading the biography or autobiography of their chosen individual, and came up with an outline of the chronological events of that person’s life. The students also took a look at their achievements and what exactly made them famous. They were asked to think about each individual’s impact on society during the time period in which they lived, and how their achievements still affect us today.

The students practiced a multitude of skills with this cross-curricular final project: reading, researching, writing, presentation skills, timeline creation, art and design skills, citing work, summarizing information, project management, engineering design and time management.

One unique aspect of this project was the incorporation of a button or switch that each student designed and created in the SMS Makerspace Lab under the direction of Mrs. Julie Leong. These buttons either lit up or spun and were thematically based on the student’s chosen historical figure. Visitors to the Living Wax Museum had to activate each student/wax figure’s switch to animate the button, and cue the student to begin their presentation.

Infusing STREAM Education (science, technology, religion, engineering, art, math) into the student’s lessons, as was done with the creation of the buttons/switches in the Living Wax Museum, allows academic concepts to be coupled with increased real life application in all disciplines. Students become involved in hands-on projects where problem solving, collaboration, and the results of their efforts make lessons more relevant than a textbook alone. STREAM intentionally connects disciplines to drive instruction. In the real world, content knowledge is interwoven, layered and sophisticated, not experienced in isolation. STREAM Education promotes the coordination of topics around central themes, and encourages the exploration of concepts in relation to one another. 

For more information on STREAM in WNY Catholic Schools, click here.

Click here for for more photos of the Living Wax Museum.

Click here for a video of the experience, including the buttons & switches the students designed.