Acknowledgments

This unit was prepared by education students attending Midway College and enrolled in classes taught by Dr. Ken Brooks during the 1998-1999 academic year. Students visited Liberty Hall in the fall, brainstormed about the unit, and then prepared activities and other materials. Dr. Brooks initiated the idea, managed the process, and edited the final product. Units for both elementary aged students and middle school aged students were prepared.

While similar, the activities do differ and many would be appropriate for use with either age group with minor modification. While the contributions of all student participants were critical to the success of the unit, three students deserve special note. Jaime Mason played the major role in actually producing the document. Her effort was critical to the success of the project. Denise Marshall edited a draft of the unit and significantly improved its quality and consistency. Kathleen Johnson helped with production of the final copy. A total of about 40 students assisted along the way. Authors of activities are listed on each activity. Other participants included Whitney Allison, Irene Colmenares, Linda Lear, Marsha Miller, Margie Moore, Tina Steele and Jamie Stewart.

Mr. Eric Brooks, the curator and Acting Director at Liberty Hall, was the primary contact for the project.

Purpose of the Unit

The Liberty Hall site has been visited by elementary and middle school classes for decades. Teachers, students, and other adults making the visit have found it to be a very worthwhile educational experience. At the same time, the field trip was often an isolated experience and not part of a larger learning experience. Our hope in developing this unit was to create an easy and effective way for classroom teachers to continue making field trips to the site but be able to also teach an entire unit around the trip.

Philosophical Foundation of the Unit

The unit has several basic philosophical points of reference.

1. Multidisciplinary - The activities in this unit cut across a variety of traditional content disciplines. While it is clearly most oriented to social studies, other disciplines including mathematics, science, language arts, and arts and humanities are included.
2. Action Oriented - The activities tend to involve teaching strategies that are quite active. We hope the hands-on, participatory kinds of learning included will cause students to be engaged in the learning process.
3. Kentucky Goals and Academic Expectations and Core Concepts - Students writing activities have noted specific Kentucky Goals and Academic Expectations touched in each activity. They also took into account the content identified in the Kentucky Core Concepts as a guide to the entire unit.
4. CATS - While the new Kentucky assessment process is just now being implemented, students took into consideration the nature and form of the planned assessment as activities were developed. Many of the activities include elements that should be helpful in preparing students for state assessment including open response and portfolio items.
5. Individual Differences - Activities typically include "extensions." These are additional activities that could be used to extend the learning into related content areas. Many of these extensions could also be viewed as opportunities to vary learning activities to take into account individual student differences. Extensions may be especially useful in meeting the needs of gifted students.

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