Free lesson plans
Each plan is a full class period: objectives, a minute-by-minute procedure, a student handout, and a rubric. Download the PDF, teach it tomorrow, sign nothing. The packets carry catalog numbers and links instead of images, so there is nothing for your district to license and nothing to clear with a rights holder.
Want the graded version, where every student gets a different coin and scores land in your gradebook? That is the pilot.
Available lesson plans
AP Latin / Latin III–IV
Reading Power: Decoding Roman Imperial Coin Legends
Students expand the abbreviations in an authentic imperial legend, translate the titulature, and write a museum label for their own coin.
One 45-minute class period + homework
World History / AP World History · grades 8–12
Coins as Evidence: A DBQ Without a Document
Students apply the standard DBQ moves — sourcing, contextualization, corroboration — to an object instead of a text, and discover that a coin answers "who made this and why" better than most written sources.
One 50-minute class period
Statistics / data literacy / math elective · grades 9–12
Weighing an Empire: Metrology and Debasement
Students use recorded specimen weights to compute descriptive statistics for a coin type, plot the trend across a century, and argue about what the spread means when nobody designed the sample.
Two 45-minute periods (or one block)
Get new plans by email
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Looking for the bigger picture?
Each plan belongs to a track in the curriculum — a sequence that runs from decoding one legend to writing a research agent against the public API.