Coming to life
Grade 3 students bring scores of famous people to SAS By Genevieve Barrons, Eagle staff
W
hat do Dwight D. Eisenhower, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Marie Curie all have in common? They were all present for the annual wax museum display on the Puxi campus. Each year, grade 3 students embark on a cross-curricular research project to explore the lives of famous people. They use research, writing, and public speaking skills to bring their subjects to life for their peers and parents. According to student Ana Jaquez, who chose to study scientist Marie Curie, the student wax museum is “when you dress up as a person you studied and you 20
write a paragraph and do a poster and then someone presses your button, a sticker, and then you say a speech you wrote.” Allison Liu added that, to be in a wax museum correctly, “you have to pick a pose and you have to stay frozen.” Students represented a range of historical and contemporary figures, from the athletic (Cristiano Ronaldo and Jackie Robinson) to the political (George Washington and Barack Obama) to the artistic (Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe). Some chose figures they were familiar with while others picked people they knew little about. Julia Liu chose to research Abraham
Lincoln because “I thought he was cool. He had a beard and he was really tall. He was even taller than my dad. I also learned that he was the first president to get assassinated.” Scott Lau picked Vincent van Gogh, a figure he knew very little about. Through his studies he learned an important lesson: to “never give up on myself.” In addition to the presentations, classes also worked together to create an actual historical timeline. By plotting the figures lives along a timeline down the hallway, the students were able to compare the time periods when various figures lived VOL 4, NUMBER 8: MAY 2013