Please tell me what you know about National History Day

[shanvan]

I've been to the website, but I'm still not entirely sure how it works. If you've participated with your Dc can you tell me how you got started and what participation entails?

[JanetC]

I started in the fall -- I visited the state website, found out where my regional was, and emailed the regional director to get on the email list for history day teachers. Then, I showed up to as many of the teacher seminars as I could to learn what I was doing. I am lucky to be in a very strong regional (the only history day competition in Washington that's bigger than my regional is the state contest itself). Our regional director is very good about sending updates and instructions.

 

From the history day website, you can download rulebooks. My state history day website also had some materials free for down load. (Washington).

 

I also bought the starter kit and Making History books from nhd.org. The starter kit was mostly junky, but it did include blank judges sheets, so you could see how entries are evaluated. The Making History book is good, but expensive. (I think it was 45 bucks. I chalked it up to supporting a non-profit organization.)

 

Participation really needs to start in the fall to do a thorough job, but perhaps you can visit your regional this spring to get a feel for what it is like. (For my regional, papers and websites already have to be turned in and the judges have gotten started reading them, and the competition for videos, displays and drama is in march.)

[Muttichen]

I love NHD!!!! have been involved for four years now with my own kids and with a group of homeschoolers who I mentor. First you need to find out who coordinates your regional contest and find out if you've missed the deadline for this year and how competitive the local contest is. Check your state NHD website for that information. My area doesn't see a lot of participation locally, so in most categories you can walk in and win and move onto the state competition, which isn't held until April. It would be hard to start now, but it wouldn't be impossible.

 

NHD is intense, but I love seeing kids rise to it. It is absolutely amazing! They do research with primary sources, interview historians (this year, kids in my group have interviewed a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and a Nobel Prize winning physicist!), put together a project, get feedback from the judges at the local contest, and improve their project for the state competition. It is a fun activity to do with a group. You can find sample projects at the NHD site or on state pages like this one: http://www.mdhc.org/...rojects/.�� When I first looked at sample projects, I was completely overwhelmed and thought that it was way beyond what we could do, but I've actually had several kids win at states and even place at nationals. Like I said, it is amazing to see what kids can do when they are motivated!

[PeterPan]

Subbing so I can join the fun. :)

[kangato3]

Dd is participating for the first time this year. Our regional competition is March 9. Like other posters, dd started in fall. The theme is usually posted prior to fall, but most of the support seminars/information in our area kicked in around October. We are fortunate to live in a city with a Presidential library. The staff there strongly support the NHD program and offer sessions in conjunction with our regional coordinator. One thing we've learned is that archivists LOVE to help students with their research. In doing her research, dd has had to interact with college research specialists, federal archive specialists, and Army archivists. It's been a great learning experience. Well worth it, even if she doesn't place at the competition.

[PeterPan]

Were the $$ books they sell on how to do each of the project categories worth the money?

[Muttichen]

I don't know -- since I am working with twenty kids and they have passed the books around for three years now, I've gotten my money's worth. Parents like them because they explain everything very clearly. There's nothing really earth shattering in them though. You could do just as well by looking at sample projects that have made it to nationals. The performance and documentary books each come with a dvd that is useful, so if your child is interested in one of those categories it might be worth it.

[OSUBuckeye]

Also, have your kid play to her strengths. Is she a dramatic presenter (performance!), does she write well, does she have access to technology? In the documentary category, some kids are doing Powerpoints with voiceovers, while others have access to more fancy software. The paperwriting category might scare some kids away, but it's a great opportunity to learn about footnotes and thesis statements and academic writing. My NHD partner and I used to joke that we did Exhibits because we weren't good at anything else. Of course, as an adult I've assisted several local history museums, and whenever I'm at a museum I'm looking at their wall fonts, their use of props/artifacts to create an experience, and the narrative provided by the whole experience. That's the benefits I've gained from doing the Exhibits category.

 

One suggestion: find your nearest college library and help your kid find where the relevant books are. We learned very early on that public libraries just aren't good enough, and spent many a Saturday afternoon drinking smoothies and then pouring through 1950s microfiche or piling up a stack of college library books to read through (we were bizzare 9th graders, certainly!). The college library will also be beneficial in building up a solid bibliography. At Nationals, some of the high school winners had annotated bibliographies that were 20 pages long. At 9 pages, we felt amateurish (and made the top 10). At the regional level of competition, I would estimate having done research with primary sources AND the college library books should make someone a strong contender if not the automatic winner.

 

Also, always focus on the theme!!! I felt like all of our critiques were about matching up our topic to the theme. Looking back, I think its because children that age don't understand the concept of a thesis statement. We thought that if we picked an individual's contributions that embodied the theme, then we'd be fine. Instead, we should have focused specifically on how that contribution achieved the theme. Triumph and tragedy means contemplating how a win for some people can prove a loss for others. Communication in history means picking a relevant topic, then focusing not on the traditional narrative of the topic, but analyzing the idea being communicated, the extent to which the idea was revolutionary, the means by which it was communicated (were they innovative? were they unusual?), the extent to which the communication impacted history/society, and the outcomes of that communication. Rather than picking the Gutenberg Bible and then delving into the richness of history surrounding that topic, dissect it into those categories by showing the innovations in print-type, statistics on how many books were published, quotations about how it changed societal culture, how it allowed people to spread religion across the continent, and how it was a product of its times (the Middle Ages wouldn't have produced a gossip magazine, or humanitarian treatise, or a novel, but they were very religious). A kid wouldn't naturally structure their Gutenberg Bible research into those components, but this thematic method is much more persuasive and higher-level than organizing research from a purely chronological standpoint (which is how we traditionally teach little ones history and thus how students tend to organize their findings).

 

If doing a performance, think about dramatic elements - what could be surprising, eye-opening to the judges? One group that placed highly at nationals focused on Nazi laws regarding Jewish parentage laws. They had three members - two of whom were brown-haired and one of whom was blonde. The "woman" character invited the blonde man over to dinner, where he discusses how he's going to have to go into hiding. She's confused, and he discusses how his grandmother is Jewish, and that you need 1-8th Jewish ancestors or less to be non-Jewish. Her brown-haired "husband" comes home and he believes more strongly in the need for racial superiority. There were two cool parts about it - one was that your expectations were flipped with the brunette hating on the blonde Jew, who really wasn't a Jew at all except under the law. The other thing was that it was designed as a dinner conversation, with one character pointing out the logical flaws of the law, one acting as the moderate person learning about the situation from both sides, and a third arriving to provide the commonly-held viewpoint).

 

Local history is one route that is helpful, because it provides primary sources in an easy to access place. Alternatively, famous events are good because they have large electronic databases of primary sources. It's a trade-off between showing off a unique topic that the judges had never heard of before, or presenting a tried-and-true topic but doing it the best it's ever been done. I remember an exhibit on the 1960 Presidential debates, and it stood out because it had access to visually appealing television footage that simply doesn't exist for a lesser-known event.

 

Try focusing on a very singular event or thing, because otherwise it will be too scattered and you can't "master" the topic. The Cuban Missile Crisis (and maybe even just Kennedy's role in it, or the method in which various means of communications assisted/harmed the work toward resolution) would be a good topic, but President Kennedy's Presidency would certainly be too broad. If doing military history, keep it to a single battle (and DON'T rehash the battle with a chronological, laundry-list narrative... Keep focusing on the question "Why are the results important? Why was the conflict important? Why was the fighting style important?), or alternatively you could focus on the transformation of one tactic/technology over time. If picking an influential person, pick their one most significant contribution and have 80% of your stuff focus on that (the other portion can be biography). Nobody cares about Lewis and Clark's lives, however their journey told chronologically with lots of maps and drawings is pretty cool, but not as persuasive as those maps and drawings organized to demonstrate that this was the first trans-Atlantic roundtrip journey in American history, it was a national funding of scientific research, the two explorers named many of the features on the map today, and it paved the way for Westward expansion in the century that followed. Same maps and drawings, just a stronger argument for why your project should win.

[PeterPan]

Buckeye, now I get what people are saying about paying attention to the annotated bibliography! I had NO CLUE!!!! :scared:

[shanvan]

Thanks for all the responses. I have a better idea of how it works now. We are looking at this for next year. There is no way I'd even consider it for this year, and the deadline has passed anyway. The only thing i haven't found is the info about teacher seminars, but maybe that is b/c our local competitions are coming up very soon. We'd like to go and get a look at one of them, but no times are given, just a date. Looks like I need to email the coordinator to find out more. Thanks! Now to decide b/t doing this or Mock Trial.

[shanvan]

Okay, I feel ridiculous, but the person I have to email for info has a hyphenated last name and she works for a university. I feel like my email has to make a good impression, especially since we are homeschoolers (which I realize is silly b/c she will probably not remember us.). How do I address the email? Do I make it like a letter? I started to and it just sounded too formal, but it doesn't seem right not to address the person directly. HOw would you type the email?

[PeterPan]

See if your state level NHD has a website. Then from there you can sign up to get on their mailing list. Definitely go to the district/regional competition. You should be able to find that info on your state's NHD website.

 

It's also ok to write your state contact person directly. I did and was just pretty informal, no biggee. She seemed nice. Just go for it. :)

[shanvan]

See if your state level NHD has a website. Then from there you can sign up to get on their mailing list. Definitely go to the district/regional competition. You should be able to find that info on your state's NHD website.

 

It's also ok to write your state contact person directly. I did and was just pretty informal, no biggee. She seemed nice. Just go for it. :)

 

Thanks. I don't know what is wrong with me tonight that I am obsessing about an email. :rolleyes:

 

I'll have to go back and look at the site to see how to get on the mailing list. I did find the location and date of the state and regional competitions, just no further details. I'd like to know which building on campus, ykwim? Now I'll try not to start a rant about lack of details in event fliers and emails. Earlier this month we went to watch a friend in Mock Trial competition. The mom neglected to inform me there were two parking lots and one was pretty far fromt he building (guess where we parked?) Then there were (no lie) 6 different doors located on various sides of the building. Guess how many we tried before we found the right one? (Umm, 6) Ds got a lecture about how he needs to make sure his 4H emails always contain precise instructions so this doesn't happen, blah, blah. He thought I was nuts and reminded me that he didn't send the email for Mock Trial. But, it was cold and that was a big building and I felt really stupid trying all the locked doors of a huge county building. I was waiting for police to show up and ask me what I was doing!

 

Okay, so I did the rant anyway......Definitely need to send an email. :lol: Back to the point of the thread...

[PeterPan]

I think maybe they have security issues, and that's why they don't put all that info out so publicly, just my guess. I'm sure it's provided to the people who register. In fact, for our state they had a form you could submit to "pre-register" that would put you on the contact list for all the info you're wanting. So once you get in the loop, you'll be golden. :)

 

And as for stressing about that email, well clearly it's time to bust out the CHOCOLATE... :drool5:

[OSUBuckeye]

I would also encourage you to go with your daughter to the competition as observers. The exhibits are on display, and you can sit in and watch the performances and documentaries in 10 minute increments. Just seeing some of them will allow her to get a better sense of what's expected. It's a pretty cool fieldtrip, like going to a make-shift museum made by middle/high schoolers.

 

Of course, the local competition in my area was usually just us and maybe one other team in our category automatically qualifying for states, while the state competition featured some professional-looking documentaries and a cafeteria full of exhibits.

[JanetC]

. At Nationals, some of the high school winners had annotated bibliographies that were 20 pages long. At 9 pages, we felt amateurish (and made the top 10). At the regional level of competition, I would estimate having done research with primary sources AND the college library books should make someone a strong contender if not the automatic winner.

 

 

Lots of good advice in OSUBuckeye's post, but I would not want to leave the impression that a 20 page bibliography is a requirement. The bibliography is an annotated bibliography, which means that each bibliography entry must have a sentence or two annotation about how the project was improved by using that particular source.

 

You are supposed to have looked at more sources than end up in your final bibliography, and the program emphasizes quality over quantity (everything but the bibliography has a word-count or time limit). If the annotations do not show that the source was important to your project, it won't count anyway. It's better to have a focused, well-annotated bibliography, than a 20 page document that seems padded. Of course, a long bibliography with excellent annotations will be the most impressive of all. But, again, it's more of an "icing on the cake," than a basic requirement. It is definitely possible to be in the top 10 with a 9 page bibliography that is well done.

 

On the other hand, for the college library research: That's definitely a requirement here, not a "nice to have." The middle schools honors humanities classes take a field trip each fall to the University of Washington library, so using college-level resources does not make you stand out in a crowd at my regional. But, again, we have an unusually (it seems) large, competitive regional.

 

--Janet