Historic Figures Come Alive On a Special Night

For Go-To-School Night at Sunrise Drive, the four Fourth-grade classes prepared a very special demonstration.  “The biggest hit ever for parents and kids alike!” exclaimed Mrs. Bridget Norman. The students in Mrs. Apuzzo’s, Mrs. Donnelly’s, Mrs. Norman’s, and Mrs. Romano’s classes were costumed as historic or contemporary personalities and posed like wax statues as figures in a Living Wax Museum.

This remarkable demonstration was the result of a month-long preparation that combined the class unit on biographies with a technology project using Google Slides. “Each student was assigned a century and a person within that century to research,” Mrs. Norman explained. They could choose to research historical figures, pioneers, athletes, inventors, musicians, etc.

“Someone who made a difference in the world,” Mrs. Sharon Donnelly clarified. “We divided the class into the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and gave each child a person to research from that century. Each child developed three slides about their person of interest and collaborated to make the title slide and the last slide, entitled Interesting Facts About ….”

It was an enriching educational process. Not only did the Fourth-graders learn how to use the Google extensions and research tools, but they especially learned how to use the chat tool which was essential for collaboration.

“This project was a wonderful learning experience for our students,” Mrs. Barbara Apuzzo agreed. “They were engaged in research, technology, history, and oral presentation.  The most impressive was their interpretations of the historic figures they represented in our wax museum.”

When they had finished their projects, the students “tested” their Google slides presentations on Coordinator of Instructional Technology Mrs. Barbara Hall and Teacher Integration Specialist for Model Schools Frank Franseze who approved their efforts. At last the students were ready to make their big reveal for their parents.

“They were in froze pose,” Mrs. Norman recalled with amusement, “and when someone pushed the button on their desk, they came alive and spoke about their major accomplishments.”

By the end of the evening it was hard to say who was having the most fun, the parents who were highly entertained by the students’ biographies or the students who enjoyed being authorities about important personages. “Everyone enjoyed the night, and I couldn’t have been prouder of the students’ hard work and enthusiasm,” remarked Mrs. Apuzzo, while Mrs. Gina Romano summed up the activity: “The children worked so hard transforming the classroom and themselves for this special event! Everyone was proud of their success!”