Spring Creek Elementary School recently hosted a Family Fun Night which served as an opportunity to include the community and families of the students in their studies. At the time of the event, the fourth-graders were studying a unit on comprehension of nonfiction texts, focusing on biographies and autobiographies.
According to teacher Andrea Hidalgo-Valdivia, students were given a list of names and told to pick a few that they had not heard of, then read about them on Google. They each selected one person that they felt had made a positive contribution and they wanted to learn more about. It was then the students’ responsibility to teach others about the person they had chosen.
This project was required to be done on a historical figure they knew little about as it was all about learning about someone they did not know before.
They were shown examples of display boards and different ways to organize information by using the different text features they had studied about.
“The students had two days to research in class, two days to work on their story boards in class and then they took everything home where they finished the projects,” Hidalgo-Valdivia said. “The research and story board were done independently but guided by the teachers.”
All students did this part of the project and some took it one step further. Students who wished to do so took the activity represented their famous subjects in a Living Wax Museum. The students, dressed in appropriate costumes stood still at their story boards and waited for someone to touch the handmade button, which would prompt them to recite a few sentences telling the visitor about their selected subject.
The students watched YouTube videos to get an understanding of what they would be doing. If they wanted to participate in the Living Wax Museum, they were given a contract of expectation to be signed by them and their parent. 
Parent approval was important because The Living Wax Museum would take place during the evening.
Once parent approval was received, the teachers helped students gather materials for their costumes and helped them practice the speeches they would recite. On Family Night they set up their backgrounds and story boards and waited for people to push their button. Students would then recite their information by memory and then go back to being a statue until the next person pushed their button.
“The students and families had a blast learning and sharing knowledge. It was a great activity that was relevant to the curriculum and involved families to take part in the students’ learning,” Hidalgo-Valdivia said. “It was awesome to put it together and experience it.”