Little Texans make a book, then a trip to Vicksburg|[5/01/06]
Published 12:00 am Monday, May 1, 2006
When Fort Worth Country Day School teacher Tara Forrest and her seventh-grade American History students decided to make Vicksburg the featured destination of the grade’s annual trip, they spared not a whit’s worth of effort.
The class produced a 54-page book containing an itinerary for their four-day trip to historic sites in Vicksburg and to Poverty Point National Park near Epps, La., in West Carroll Parish, plus Vicksburg-themed crossword and word-find puzzles.
The impressive book was put together by classmates Clare Sakovich, Nancy Bonds and Macy Pigman, all 13, with input from Forrest.
In it, they compiled assignments such as a crossword puzzle and critical-thinking exercise based on landmarks in the Vicksburg National Military Park such as the Shirley House and the Illinois Monument.
“It’s just amazing. They took such ownership of the material,” Forrest said.
Other creative works by the class was a passage on the 1858 trial of slave John Waller by Earl Cooper, 13, and a fill-in-the-blank exercise that formed a rhyming message on Vicksburg, compiled by Greg Caraway, 13.
“I just sort of used my journalistic skills to do it because I know about the characters,” Cooper said.
The book was part of an assignment associated with the trip, the third such trip made by a seventh grade class from the 1,100-student, K-12 private school in Fort Worth, Texas, established in 1963.
“Last year we went to San Antonio, but the kids just picked a place on a map to study and chose Vicksburg,” Forrest said.
The group of 80 students and 10 teachers and parents arrived on two charter buses on their trip, paid for by the parents who attended.
The group toured the Martha Vick House on Grove Street, hiked at VNMP, rode the Mississippi River Tour boat Sweet Olive and toured the museum and enjoyed the lawn of the Old Court House.
Between stops on the buses, Forrest said, students used a microphone to act as tour guide,s explaining the material about sites just visited.
Some of Forrest’s students were impressed by their tour of the city, the grade that they have riding on their project assignments notwithstanding.
“I like how the houses and everything are all old,” Elizabeth Gaffin, 13, said of the tour.
While here, students also put on a dramatic re-enactment of portions of the 1989 Civil War film “Glory” in the conference room at Battlefield Inn.
The class also toured the Duff Green Mansion and the McRaven Tour Home.