For 3rd- to 5th-graders, the challenge is to create a commemorative Israel@75 stamp and to write up to 150 words explaining the design and its elements. Students may use any physical or electronic means to create their stamps. We provide examples of Israeli stamps and a link to additional stamps. Educator Rachel Raz did a session on using Israeli stamps as an educational tool at our annual educator workshop in July, and we will post that video in the next couple of months. Educators can bring stamps into the classroom to teach about Israel's history and culture, then turn students loose to create Israel@75 stamps as a class assignment that can be used as a contest entry.
For 6th- to 8th-graders, the challenge is to create a poster in the tradition of Zionist posters that have been used for more than a century to inform the public of national initiatives, to garner support for national policies, to foster pride in Jewish nationalism, and to highlight challenges and achievements. For Israel@75, students should create posters that celebrate Israel, highlight something the state must do better or focus on an area of Diaspora support for Israel, then write up to 250 words explaining what they have made. We provide examples of posters and links to more, as well as a series of questions to help students analyze and understand these posters. As with the younger students and stamps, the study of Zionist posters could be incorporated into a class unit on Israel, with students creating posters both as class assignments and as contest entries.
For high school students, the contest is both more challenging and less restrictive. Students are asked to pick an area of the State of Israel that has changed over 75 years and to curate a museum exhibit demonstrating the process of that change. The exhibit could use any mix of visuals and artifacts to achieve that goal. Students also must write an essay of up to 500 words that could serve as an introduction for a visitor to the exhibit and must properly cite sources. We provide examples of different visuals that could be used in an exhibit, including a compilation video, and we provide links to a range of resources students could use to build their exhibits, in addition to CIE's own site. Again, this project could be part of a class unit on Israel or a particular aspect of the state. The multimedia nature of the contest at this age level encourages a cross-curricular approach for a school project that could involve Judaics, social studies, English, art, film production and industrial arts, among other classes.
