The Leaves of Gold Learning Center: Teacher Introduction

This site section is based on a teacher packet created to help prepare students for a visit to the Leaves of Gold exhibition. It includes online versions of eight slides, background information, discussion questions, suggested readings, and a glossary. The information in this section is written on a high school level. All words in bold letters are defined in the Glossary. Feel free to adjust the information to fit the needs and interests of your students.

Some of the images in the slide show are quite large. To speed loading time during class, you may want to go through the site in advance so that the images will already be stored with your computer's temporary internet files (cache). Alternatively, you may prefer to download the more traditional slides available in Adobe Acrobat format. See the teacher instructions for links and additional information.

The manuscript production section and manuscript templates are designed to support a hands-on manuscript production session or unit. The "When Books Were Rare and Beautiful" page shows how these resources were adapted by a book artist and storyteller for a series of 90-minute presentations to first- through fifth-graders in Philadelphia libraries.

A Note About Religious Subject Matter
Most medieval manuscripts were religious, made for churches directly, or for people to use in prayer. The texts and illustrations in these slides, therefore, contain mostly Christian imagery. You can use this phenomenon to emphasize the important role of the church in medieval Europe.