Gros Cap Students Wage 'Penny Wars' To Raise Funds for Cancer Research

At right: In mid-October, students at Gros Cap School participated in a fundraiser called Penny Wars, to help the Upper Peninsula division of the American Cancer Society. Pictured here, (front to back) are James Cryderman, an unidentified student, Heather Ryan, and Alicia Garen. Each class placed a jar in the school office, and students spent a week filling the jars with pennies, dollars, and silver coins. In the spirit of competition, students dropped silver coins into the jars of competing classes to reducing their totals, while increasing the amount the school provided overall. (Photograph by Levi Thompson)

Gros Cap School students generated $598 for the Upper Peninsula division of the American Cancer Society, between Monday, October 8, and Thursday, October 18.

They did it through a spirited competition called Penny Wars, in which all nine classes competed against each other to produce the highest number of points by collecting pennies in jars.

Jamie Clark's second grade class won and was treated to a pizza party.

"There were lines [of students] coming out of the office" each morning to contribute pennies, said teacher Mary Cullen. The students were carefully monitoring the jars they had placed in the school's office, one for each class, which they filled with pennies, silver coins, and dollar bills.

A mathematical twist added challenge to the competition. Students received one point for each penny in each jar, and 100 per dollar bill, but a silver coin placed in a jar, a dime, for example, would cost that team 10 points.

As students monitored the jars throughout the week, they offset potential winners by adding silver coins to the jar.

The fifth grade appeared to be winning, but they were hammered by a "silver attack" on the last day of the competition, Mrs. Cullen said.

Not surprisingly, the fifth grade's jar held the most money, but the winner was the second grade, owing in part to a mathematical adjustment to make things fair. Since some classes have more students than others, Mrs. Cullen totaled the points for each class and divided it by the number of students in that class, awarding the prize to the class with the highest amount produced per student.