Who here is a teacher?

OzzyAndy

Have noticed there are quite a few teachers here, I'd be curious to know the following:

1. What year levels / subjects do you teach?

2. How do you use coins in your teaching? I'm always looking for new ideas.

I'll start:

1. I teach year 8-10 General Science, year 11 Chemistry and year 9 and 11 Maths (year 8 is about 12-13 year olds). My specialty is Chemistry / Physics and I also run our science department (but don't get paid for it). I'm in Mount Gambier, South Australia and the secondary part of our school (years 8-12) has about 150 students.

2. In Maths I use bulk junk coins in probability, when doing coin tosses and playing other games. Most of them end up with a texta 'H' on one side. Always gets kids asking questions about where the coins come from.

In Chemistry and year 10 science we copper plate various coins when doing electrochemistry. Usually we'll then switch the cell around and remove the plating.

In Chemistry we get modern US cent coins and file off the edges, then leave them in dilute acid for a few days, it reacts with the zinc inside and leave a copper shell.

In year 8 science and Chemistry when studying the elements, I like to get as many element samples as I can from the lab. I also bring in an ounce of gold and a kilogram of silver and pass it around the class, it really makes their day, especially when I tell them how much they're worth.

Andrew

ajaan

I currently work as a Substitute Teacher in a Middle School (11-13 yr olds). I mainly work in the Science and Math subjects as I'm certified in General Science and Earth Science and I used to teach Math full time.

I've never used coins for any instruction with the minor exception of a simple probability problem with flipping a coin. I recently used an Ike Dollar for this. The kids had never seen one before. I was going to use a Churchill Crown but it would have been too taxing for them to figure out the 'heads' and 'tails' on the coin.

I did have a student yesterday ask to see the Thai banknote I keep in my wallet. I had shown it to her before and she wanted to see it again. She said her mom had a bunch of foreign notes.



<< <i> I also bring in an ounce of gold and a kilogram of silver and pass it around the class, it really makes their day, especially when I tell them how much they're worth. >>


If I did this in my school, not that I could afford and oz of gold or kilo of silver, the items would mysteriously disappear before it made its way around the room.

pmac

You might get many more responses in the US Coin Forum. I'm not a teacher, but this might peak other interests.

JamesMurray

<< <i>I currently work as a Substitute Teacher in a Middle School (11-13 yr olds). I mainly work in the Science and Math subjects as I'm certified in General Science and Earth Science and I used to teach Math full time.

I've never used coins for any instruction with the minor exception of a simple probability problem with flipping a coin. I recently used an Ike Dollar for this. The kids had never seen one before. I was going to use a Churchill Crown but it would have been too taxing for them to figure out the 'heads' and 'tails' on the coin.

I did have a student yesterday ask to see the Thai banknote I keep in my wallet. I had shown it to her before and she wanted to see it again. She said her mom had a bunch of foreign notes.



<< <i> I also bring in an ounce of gold and a kilogram of silver and pass it around the class, it really makes their day, especially when I tell them how much they're worth. >>


If I did this in my school, not that I could afford and oz of gold or kilo of silver, the items would mysteriously disappear before it made its way around the room. >>



It reminds me of the time a crime prevention officer visited our class , it was all about the dangers of the drugs and he had a whiteboard constructed with various items fixed to it.We were given the lecture and invited to inspect the items on the board , by the time we sat down again the oz of hash was gone...gotta laugh even now.

spoon

Not a teacher, but I am back to being a college student. Even so, I manage to bring coins into a lot of classwork. I had to take World Lit to fill a humanities requirement last year and managed to find mentions of money in most of the assigned readings so I posted pics and write ups of the stuff mentioned on our online discussion group. Brought some junk George II halfpennies to my history class dealing with the US colonial era (a minor stretch, but still captivated folks). Gave a shout out to the End of Pain conders with pics in my term paper when discussing him, the prof had never heard of them. Used others in discussions on econ.

A few years back I used to work at an Army training site and brought in a bunch of stuff for area studies, Islam, and terrorism. Coins from the old caliphates (a dinar from Harun al Rashid, of 1001 Nights fame, etc), a Sassanid coin from the year of the Hajj, etc, etc. And for terrorism and related issues, on Iran especially, stamps are great too. Iranian stamps were highly propagandistic in the 80s as you might imagine. They had stamps for Sayyid Qutb (the ideological forefather of modern Islamic extremism), Sadat's assassin, lots of stuff on the Iran/Iraq war, Soviets/Afghanistan, anniversaries for the US embassy takeover ("Den of espionage"), failed hostage rescue, downed Iranian airliner, Palestinian intifada, etc.

I've found coins, notes and stamps can catch the attention of even the biggest slackers. But their best effect is to remove the abstraction around so much academic work. It's one thing to read and discuss topics in political/social history, but realizing that this stuff was something people lived through, that it reached so many aspects of life, even as mundane as postage stamps.. that takes away some of the distance between the subject and the student who's so used to doing simply a blow-by-blow accounting of the past.

harasha

I trained as a teacher, but never got past being a substitute. As a student teacher, however, I would ask the class to imagine themselves as archeologists from the future. If they found coins such as the ones in their pocket change, how would they interpret the society that used that coin.
For example, a Lincoln Memorial cent. People of that past era wore beards and lived in buildings surrounded by colonnades.