ANA Coins in the Classroom Seminar Report

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ANA Coins in the Classroom Seminar Report

 

Overview & Syllabus

 

ANA Education Seminar

 

Gail Baker, Director of Education directs this and other ANA Educational Programs

Lane Brunner, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin is one of the two instructors.

Lane has always been a coin collector with a keen interest in the history that surrounds the use of coinage. He is professor of pharmaceutics in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin. Lane teaches pharmacy undergraduate and graduate students in the basic principles of how drugs move in and out of the body. In addition, he also operates a nationally funded biomedical research laboratory, where the emphasis is on how hormones alter the way in which drugs are broken down in the body. Another area of the laboratory’s research is in how space flight affects how drugs work. On the numismatic side, he also has the privilege of teaching two coin collecting courses at UT-Austin. The two courses are targeted at both beginner and intermediate collectors who want to learn more about the role of coinage in history. (Biography captured from ANA classroom handout).

 

Cathy Scaife, MA, Latin Teacher from Lexington Catholic High School, Lexington, KY is the other instructor.

Cathy received her BA in Classical Studies from the College of William and Mary in 1981 and her MA in Latin from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983. She then taught Latin in the Austin public school system, and, with an award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, attended the American Academy in Rome before moving with her family to Lexington, KY in 1991. There she taught the Latin II class for the Distance Learning division of Kentucky Educational Television. In 1996, she began teaching Latin at Lexington Catholic High School. She became involved with Roman coins in 2001 when she first participated in a coin attribution program sponsored by Ancient Coins for Education (ACE). Last year ACE awarded Cathy the Harlan J. Berk Prize for Teacher Excellence for her efforts at integrating the study of coins into the classroom. She is married and has three smart and handsome sons. (Biography captured from ANA classroom handout),

 

Chris Rower from Indialantic Elementary School in Palm Bay, FL is the class support rep.

 

 

Course Objectives:

During the course participants will:

1. Have fun and make new friends

2. Share information about current ways that participants are using coins as learning tools in an educational setting.

3. Develop new ways to enhance your lessons in History, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts using coins as educational tools.

4. Discuss ideas for developing outreach programs using coins as learning tools.

5. Go home with lots of stuff.

 

Learning Objectives:

During the course participants will learn:

1. how to use the numismatic resources of the ANA

2. of the programs available through the ANA to support classroom education.

3. about Internet numismatic educational resources.

4. new ways to use coins as learning tools in the classroom.

5. ways to be a numismatic educational evangelist.

 

Middle School Teachers are the primary audience

 

Non-Numismatists and Numismatists both attend

 

Participants selected from across the country via application

 

 

Contents

 

Sunday

Reception

 

Monday

What is Money?

Traditional Forms of Money

Presented by Lane Brunner. This is a presentation from his Numismatics courses at University of Texas, Austin

 

Overview of Numismatics

“Money: History in Your Hands”

ANA Movie narrated by James Earl Jones

 

Evolution of the US Silver Dollar

Presented by Lane Brunner. This is a presentation from his Numismatics courses at University of Texas, Austin

 

Tuesday

 

Ancient Coins in Education

Coins in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium

Presented by Lane J. Brunner. This presentation is part of his course in Numismatics at the University of Texas, Austin.

 

ANA Ancient Coin Project Presentation

Presented by Cathy Scaife. She uses this presentation with her students

 

ANA Coins Form & Function – Art in Your Pocket Presentation

Presented by Cathy Scaife. She uses this presentation with her students

 

Currency in Iraq

Presented by Cathy Scaife. She uses this presentation with her students

Links the ancient practice of Damnatio Memoriae with events in Iraq, such as the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s statues and currency.

Precipitates discussions on Looting of Baghdad Museum, Images on Coins/Currency, Nationalism

 

Buying Power

Presented by Cathy Scaife. She uses this presentation with her students.

 

Ancients Attribution Preparation (cleaning) and Attribution

Ancient Coins for Education Coins

Students cleaned and attributed three ancients. The coins and materials used are those provided for classroom use by ACE.

Both static and online databases were used in the attribution process

 

Wednesday

 

Lesson Plan & Activities Review

Making a Bulla

Activities from Coin Catalogs

Twenty Dollar Shopping Challenge

Roman Coin Labeling Worksheets

Coins Amidst Crises: Money in Times of War and Political Upheaval

Coin words Crossword Puzzle Creation

Designing Dollars Lesson Plan

Features of a 4th Century A.D. Roman Coin Worksheet

Dramatic Coins Lesson Plan

Lucky Coin

Making Money Madness

The Myths About Money

Quarter Shrinking

Thoughts for Your Penny

Time is Money

Money Before Money was Money

Brainteasers for the Masses

 

Student Presented Lessons

Ancient Coins Lesson Plans – Jerry Scoppa

 

Plans for NY State Curriculum for Social Studies, Language Arts, Math, Art, Science, and Technology. Plans and adaptations to the Ancient Coins in Education Plans provided by Jerry Scoppa. Plans are copyrighted to prevent publication for sale. They may be used or adapted for classroom work. Contact info: Jerry Scoppa jscoppa@palmac.k12.ny.us .

Plans/Worksheets include:

Coin observation

Geography of Coins

Historical Fiction Writing

History of the Ruler

Overview document with curriculum citations

Project Choice and Grading (9 projects)

Roman Coin Attribution

Roman Coin Design

Roman Coin Math

Roman History TImeline

Roman vs. Modern Coin Comparison

Social Studies Student Project Selection/Status (6 projects)

Writing a News Article

 

ANA Medal Research Project – Art OConnell

Using an ANA medal with a member's name engraved as the kickoff point to do research identifying the person and telling about their life. Both online and print sources of information are required.

 

Student Handouts

 

Publications

Bank Note Reporter

BEP

Celator

Coin Prices

Coin Values

Coin World

Coinage

Coins

Littleton How to Collect Coins

Littleton How to Collect US Paper Money

Numismatic News

Numismatist

Red Book

US Mint

World Coin News

 

Coins

ANA grouping of World Coins

ANA Tokens & Medal

ANA US coin samples (43 Lincoln, Buffalo Nickel, War Nickel)

Ancient Coins for Education – 3 ancients

Littleton – US Coins (Indian Head Cent, Liberty Nickel, Buffalo Nickel)

 

Supplies

Magnifier

ANA Movie “Money: History in Your Hand”

 

Memberships

ANA Trial Membership – 6 months

 

Review

 

The Seminar was outstanding. All of the ANA personnel involved were extremely knowledgeable and well prepared. Gail Baker, Director of Education, led the instructional team and was excellent at quickly forming our diverse group of teachers into a friendly, sharing, interactive group of learners. Lane Brunner brought he extensive love and knowledge of Numismatics to the class, along with his polished classroom presentation skills. Cathy Scaife demonstrated a love and skill for using ancient coins in the classroom that certainly warrants ACE’s Harlan J. Berk Prize for Teacher Excellence awarded to her last year.

 

As you can see from the syllabus, the ANA and a number of Numismatic Companies have provided us with not only lesson plans that revolve around the use of coins, but also the materials and resources to implement and improve upon these plans. We should have no trouble adapting the plans to our classrooms and creating new and more extensive plans as our own expertise increases. The ANA is creating a list-serve “network” to allow teachers who have attended Coins in the Classroom to continue to share ideas, lesson plans, and other resources. To aid us in having access to resources, the ANA has given each student a six-month membership. This will allow full use of the ANA Library and research facilities.

 

The Seminar provided a broad-brush education on Money and Numismatics enabling those participants who were not Numismatists to quickly understand the basics of coins, collecting, Numismatic terminology, and the minting processes. An informative presentation about the origins of money and the history of coins provided useful information to even the experienced collectors in the group. A vast array of coins and currencies was made available for us to inspect during the lessons. This helped each of us to better understand the discussions about design, metals, and the minting processes. Emphasis was placed on using the coins to reflect the history of their times. Discussions about things like resource management during the Second World War, accompanied by steel cents and silver nickels are sure to get the attention of any student.

 

We simulated an Ancient Coin classroom lesson by having each student clean and attribute 3 ancient Roman coins. It was an interesting experience. One of my coins is still being soaked. The other two were “processed” enough to be attributable. One of my coins, a Diocleation from 295-299 was not present in the CD or online photo databases. So I have a less than common coin. WOW! I’ll send it to the online database folks so they can photograph it.

 

There was a lot of discussion about the use of coins in lesson plans for particular subjects and grade levels. A number of the students had already used coins as part of their lesson plans. Some were very extensive integrated plans using a single coin or grouping to address material in Social Studies, Language Arts, Math, and Science. Other plans were simpler such as the use of coins in a science project to familiarize students with the use of scales and balances.

 

Overall the Seminar was a wonderful learning experience and one that I shall never forget. I believe that many of the teachers have formed life-long alliances and will continue to share information with the growing list of graduates. My thanks to the ANA, the other sponsors, and to all the wonderful teachers with whom I had the privilege of sharing this past holiday week.