The Frisch Africa Encounter: December 18, 2012

Summary of the Unit

The Frisch Africa Encounter, which was held this year on December 18, 2012, is the culmination of a month-long interdisciplinary unit on Africa during which sophomores:

* read either _The Poisonwood Bible_ or _Little Bee_
* research a topic about Africa in history
* learn about the integration of Ethiopian Jewry
* discuss the issue of Sudanese refugees in Israel today during Hebrew class
* create a green art project
* conduct a green-a-thon fundraiser for Innovation: Africa, an organization that uses sustainable Israeli technologies to improve life in Africa. The organization has UN status and has helped close to half a million people in Africa.

The video above, made by the Frisch sophomores and edited by Lisa, summarizes beautifully what the grade gained from the interdisciplinary unit. Read more about the night's presentations below:

The African rainforest and jungle as it was being created by the students

Of course, we had to include mamba snakes in our jungle,
since the mamba figures so prominently in _The Poisonwood Bible_

History teacher Ms. Kaplan and Hebrew teacher Morah Dafna played crucial roles in the curriculum of the month.
They pose in front of the repurposed art projects, which Mrs. Mantell, below with two students,
had the sophomores complete

Student-made art for the savannah portion of our African "safari"

For the evening, the sophomores created an African savannah and rainforest/jungle for which they drew animals, painted a jeep, decorated the school stage and dictated an audio tour in English and Hebrew using the ShowMe app. They also made PowerPoints or videos of their history research project and displayed their repurposed art.

Flickr Photos

Check out the photos, with descriptive explanations, from the evening:

The Frisch Africa Encounter on Flickr

Audio Tours using the ShowMe App

Here are links to the ShowMes of the safari/jungle audio tour. We have two English versions, one recorded by a female student and one by a male, and we have a condensed Hebrew version written by Morah Dafna and recorded by a female student:

Safari/Jungle Audio: Male

Safari/Jungle Audio: Female

Safari/Jungle Audio: Hebrew 

Africa PowerPoint

When the evening began, parents sat down in the auditorium where the following PowerPoint was looping as a playlist prepared by a sophomore played songs inspired by African music:

Africa Night Powerpoint

View more presentations or Upload your own.

The Onion Video

During the student presentation that began the night, parents heard first from a group of sophomores who explained how learning about Africa connected to their curriculum and life. Sophomores began by pointing out that the first genre they studied this year in English was satire. Then we showed sophomore parents the following video, which never fails to get laughs:

Student Presentation Script

Here is the script from the student presentation:

The Frisch Africa Encounter 2012 Student Presentation

Student Work

Student PowerPoint

Africa Night student powerpoint on DUMA

View more presentations or Upload your own.

Student Video on Why Innovation Africa?

This video nicely shows why we considered Innovation: Africa an appropriate organization for which to raise money. Nice job on the video, Ayelet and Rachel!

Student Video

And here is a video two sophomores made that compares an American city with an African village:

Sophomore Green-a-thon

Our Green-a-thon has raised about $2500 so far. Our goal was to raise $5000 in order to light up a school in Africa. That goal has been reached using this year's and last year's Green-a-thon results! The classes of 2014 and 2015 have together raised $5000.

The Green-a-thon Committee worked extremely hard this year. The committee decided they would sell coffee and reusable cups in order to raise their funds. Students also asked the restaurants on Cedar Lane and West Englewood Avenue in Teaneck, NJ to contribute gift cards for a raffle. Many, many restaurants contributed to the very successful raffle.

Here are some pictures of our sophomores conducting their Green-a-thon:

The Green-a-thon coffee bar. When the latte machine arrived, sales picked up tremendously!

Assistant to the Principals Mrs. Moses displays the great-looking cup sophomores created and sold!

Sophomores sell an iced coffee to a senior

Great offerings in the sophomore raffle!