How to do a Living Wax Museum Project in your Classroom

 A wax museum project is a great option for a biography research project with your students. It’s an incredible opportunity for your students to showcase their language skills with a creative project. Let’s wrap up your Hispanic Heritage Month unit with a living wax museum project!

How to Do a Living Wax Museum Project in your Classroom Video

How to Do a Living Wax Museum Project in your Classroom

Here is a quick overview of how to do a wax museum project in your Spanish classes:

1. Students can either choose famous people or historical figures to research or you can assign them. 
2. Then your students are going to research that person that they’ve chosen or been assigned. 
3. After students have completed their research notes, they’re going to type up their final report and create their speech according to the rubric and guidelines.
4. Gather props or costumes
5. Present and “attend” the museum

Let’s look at those steps in more detail!

​Wax Museum Biography Research Project

​Choosing a Famous Person

The first step in this famous person research project is for students to figure out who they’ll be researching! You can give students a list of people to choose from, assign them, or have them randomly choose from a spinner or drawing a name from a hat. You can do this biography project with different groups of people if you’d like to highlight them, or any influential person your students are interested in.

If you’re having students choose their own historical person to research and give a short speech, you might want to give them some criteria. For example, you don’t want them researching just any public figures! You might say the person must be deceased, and have made positive contributions to society in a measureable way. Middle school students like to push the boundaries so setting some clear lines helps them if you’re going to let them choose! This is just the beginning of having high expectations for this wax museum project.

Researching and Taking Notes

Prior to writing their research paper, you’re going to want them to do some research! Depending on the age of your students and their experience with research projects, you might want to scaffold this step and provide some websites for them to use. If you can, it’s a great idea to bring in your school’s media specialist to support them in research skills. It’s the perfect way to refresh or teach research skills and make sure you’re utilizing any additional resources your school or district may have access to.

You can have students research for more than one day, especially if you’re going to have them present in Spanish. You want them to have enough time to process the information they’ve researched and write it in Spanish. However, depending on the level of your classes, you could have them research in Spanish and write in Spanish and present in Spanish, or you could have them research in English, write in English, present in English, or any combination of the three depending on your students’ levels and their abilities.

Before we start researching, we go over how to take notes and I give the students a research handout with specific categories to add notes to so they can be organized and have that as a scaffolded resource to support them. 

This is a great step to make sure you check in with students on their notes and research on a given due date. Build it into your lesson plans and the timeline of the project to check in with them!

Write the Rough Drafts

After researching, students will write the rough draft of their speech. Again they have a hand out to support them in writing this draft. They should refer to their notes and the rubric to make sure they include all the important information!

​Gather Materials

The next part of preparing this project is having costumes and or props brought to school. And when I say costumes and props, I just mean something simple to represent the person they’re presenting on. You can have them go all out if you want to, I just don’t love the idea of it possibly being an extra expense or something that’s difficult to rely on at home.

I usually stress simple for the Wax Museum day. So if you are being a tennis player, a tennis racket, if you are a painter, a paintbrush, just simple options like that! Students should pick something from the person’s favorite things or contributions based on the person’s life.

Wax Museum Day

When it’s time to present there are a few Wax Museum Project Ideas! You can choose which option you prefer based on the time you have and what space in your school is available. Here are some possibilities: 

• Use your wax museum project as a school-wide Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. Have students set up in the cafeteria or maybe in the gym, or just in a main hallway or atrium area and other classes, students, and guardians can come attend the museum. If you can’t invite the whole school, you might just invite the social studies classes where there’s a clear curriculum overlap.
• Guardians and Parents – You can also do this by just inviting guardians and parents instead of involving the entire school. This would just be sending an email or newsletter invitation to welcome them in during the class period or a planned part of the day.
• Classroom presentations – It’s totally fine to just have them present to each other, too! You’ll do half the class one day and half the class the other day, or half and half in the time that you have. If you have a longer class period or a smaller class, they will present to each other while students are listening to the presentations.

​Wax Museum Presentations

While students are listening to the presentations there’s a guided notes handout sheet for them to listen and record information that they learned from their classmates just as an accountability piece and to help them engage with the presentations respectfully.

Wax Museum Project Toolkit

There you have the step-by-step outline for hosting a wax museum day with your Spanish classes! Let’s take a closer look at the toolkit I have for teachers who want time-saving handouts that are ready to print and go!:

Includes:

• Editable Google Slides
• Print and go PDF file
• Notes for the teacher
• List of people for students to choose from
• Printable “Buttons”
• Introduction sheet
• Rubrics
• English and Spanish versions of:
  • 1 Page Research Organizer (1)
  • 1 Page Research Organizer (2)
  • 3 Page Research Organizer
  • Rough Draft Template
  • Notes (for listening to other presentations)
  • Speech Draft (half sheet)

Everything you need is here, organized and ready to create a very meaningful, fun, biography research project. There’s a lot of flexibility with this resource!

As this activity is offered in English and Spanish, it is perfect for a variety of Spanish class levels, a Social Studies class, or a bilingual classroom. An editable version is also available with Google Drive!

CLICK HERE to take a look at the ready-to-use Wax Museum Biography Project.

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More resources for Hispanic Heritage Month

• Easy to Use Hispanic Heritage Month Activities for Spanish Class
  • Hispanic Heritage Month Research Project
  • Hispanic Heritage Month Reading Activities
  • 1 Day Lesson Plan for Hispanic Heritage Month
  • Daily Trivia Activities for Hispanic Heritage Month
  • Spanish-Speaking Countries Flag Coloring Pages
  • Digital Activities to use during Hispanic Heritage Month
  • 17 Research Projects for Hispanic Heritage Month
• 10 Hispanic Heritage Month School-Wide Activities
• Bulletin Board Ideas and Classroom Decor for Hispanic Heritage Month
  • Free Hispanic Heritage Month Bulletin Board
  • Spanish Classroom Decor for Hispanic Heritage Month
  • Door Decor Ideas for Hispanic Heritage Month
• Spanish Club Ideas to Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month
• 10 Tees for Teachers to Wear during Hispanic Heritage Month
• Hispanic Heritage Month Workbook
• Tips for Teaching Hispanic Heritage Month

More Spanish Project Ideas

If you’re looking for more project ideas, make sure to check out the list below!

• Art Projects in Spanish Class
• 17 Hispanic Heritage Month Projects
• Spanish-Speaking Countries Digital Project
• Day of the Dead Project
• Recipe Ideas for a Food Project
• Holidays and celebrations
• Spanish-Speaking Countries poster project
• Create a tour of the Spanish-speaking countries (digital)
• Explore a Spanish-speaking country
• Afro Latinos Famosos
• Famous Women throughout history
• Spanish Family Tree Project Alternative