What can I find for classroom instruction?
Start with our Curriculum Type, which is organized to highlight both big-picture overviews on teaching Israel and specific items you may need. You can access Curriculum from any page on the site by hovering over Explore & Learn, clicking on All Types, then clicking on Curriculum.
On this page you’ll find free and paid resources, including age-appropriate lesson plans, full curricula, syllabi, tips on using resources such as our Timelines, guidance on pedagogy, and our on-demand courses, which can be implemented for an Israel education class for any age group from high-schoolers through adults.
CIE materials align with academic standards and can be adapted to specific classroom needs.
How can I prepare for speaking to students or congregants?
There’s nothing like going to primary sources. Use Documents and Sources to find treaties, speeches, correspondence, reports, and biblical and liturgical references to reinforce your knowledge and enhance any presentations, lectures or sermons.
Our alphabetized Biographies put human faces on the issues you might address in a classroom or from the pulpit. Today in Israeli History and Timelines provide interesting anecdotes and key moments in history for examples and analogies that can be used in lectures and discussions.
Speaking of human faces, find photos, artworks and charts with individual posts and through Images, any of which can be used in a slide show or a handout (with proper credit). Try Slide Shows for individual slides or entire presentations you can project in a classroom or sanctuary. And few things tell the story of the Zionist movement and Israel’s precarious physical position like our collection of current and historical Maps.
CIE also offers more than 200 multimedia resources under Video and Audio, so if you don’t have a strong grasp on a particular subject, don’t think you can improve on how some of the world’s leading experts address that matter, or just want a change of pace for your students, you can play excerpts or entire videos in the classroom.
What about learning outside the classroom?
You can start with Video and Audio. Find items, from animated explainers to panel discussions and lectures, that speak to your subject, and assign students to view or listen to them to prepare for class discussions, just as you would assign readings.
As for readings, you can assign or print and hand out primary sources from Documents and Sources and supplement them with scholarly articles, polls and surveys, other analyses, and subject overviews. Perhaps assign Explainer Articles before a class discussion so everyone has a foundation of knowledge, then suggest selections from Issues and Analyses for follow up to reinforce classroom learning. For classes or presentations that discuss current events, tap Contemporary Readings to find articles about the latest news and developments around Israel and the Middle East.
Point learners to Documents and Sources and to Issues and Analyses as references for research papers or essays, as well as to Bibliographies for further sources and Historiography for deeper understanding about the evolving insights of historians.
Or ask them to do something more visual, such as the three age-appropriate contests CIE held for students for Israel@75. Those ideas — posters, stamps, museum exhibits — can begin with and be completed using the various CIE resources.
