Overview:
National History Day in the English classroom leverages student choice and project-based learning to build lasting research, writing, and critical thinking skills.
How do we empower students to retain skills and content? This is an ongoing struggle that ranges across grade levels. As educators, we have all had the conversation with students, “You learned this last year….” Over the last several years, I have incorporated an in-depth project-based learning approach, National History Day, into my writing curriculum, which gives students an engaging and memorable way to incorporate skills learned in class.
National History Day
For those of you who have never heard of National History Day (NHD), it is a competition hosted at the University of Maryland at College Park every year. While this marks the national competition, the real work takes many months prior to it.
Students learn about the contest’s annual theme, this year’s is Revolution, Reaction, and Reform. As they explore this theme and what defines these terms, they are challenged to think of a time or event in history that would fit within the theme. They make a project that allows them to tell the story of their topic, how it meets the theme, as well as why it is significant to history.
Engaging with Choice
One of the greatest aspects of this platform is the area of choice. Students are urged to explore historical topics that interest them and then have many different outlets in which to show their learning. The project categories include: documentary, exhibit, paper, website, and even performance. There really is a choice for anyone. Students have full control of their topics and project creation. The more interested they are, the better the project is. The teacher guides them along the way to completion.
Accessibility for All
While this can seem like a daunting project, it can be a project that all students can succeed at. I have had students of all backgrounds and levels research and create a project on something they are interested in. Once your student has selected a topic they are interested in, you can assist them in finding resources that meet their level. I often will use Brisk (Educator AI add-on tool that can level webpages or articles for student use). You can help them find short documentaries or books from the library on their topic. You can create guided note-taking sheets to help them sort information. No matter a student’s background or reading level, you will be teaching them how to find information, research, and note-taking skills so they can access these skills for future projects or classes.
The English in History
This project teaches a plethora of skills such as: research, critical thinking, argumentative and informative writing, presentation, and speaking and listening skills. I teach NHD as a unit of informative and argumentative writing and research within my ELA classroom. I lead them with mini-lessons each day, and then allow them to use those skills and resources for their own historical research.
For example, I may teach a lesson on primary and secondary sources. I would show them the Library of Congress database and show them examples of primary sources that were created at the time that I am studying. Then I would show them a secondary source example, such as a textbook excerpt, and we would discuss how they are different and alike. While they contain similar information, one was written much later and has a wider scope on the historical topic and what came after.
Students learn how to collect information, notes, and sources that they are required to cite in an annotated bibliography. They are even asked to reflect, once their project is completed, on the process of research and project creation. What went well? What was a roadblock?
Finally comes the presentation. Contestants practice presenting and then showcase their project for a small collection of judges. Some schools have a school competition (depending on contestant numbers), and then work up to a state competition. If student projects are deemed fit, they are invited to the national competition. All of these checkpoints allow students to make changes to projects based on feedback for continued growth. As a writing teacher, I LOVE THIS! Students are using feedback to improve.
Curriculum Demands
National History Day is a great platform to get students involved in research and critical thinking. You can make the project what you need to help meet your own unique curriculum. For example, if you focus primarily on ancient history, you can have students select an ancient civilization or invention created during that span of time to focus their project on. If the project choices seem to be overwhelming… have students choose from only a few project categories, perhaps a paper or an exhibit. As an English teacher, I allow them to have free choice to find a topic that engages them, but you can put constraints on it to meet your own curricular needs. The research, comprehension, writing, critical thinking, and presentation aspects cover many standards students need to learn and be assessed on.
This could be a project that you only devote a few days a week to, or even run as an after-school program. For example, my colleague couldn’t change her pacing in her social studies class, so she chose to run NHD as an after-school club. She was able to reach students who wanted to go above and beyond the classroom to create an academic project to compete with.
Skills that Stick
I have many returning students who come back year after year to do National History Day. Every year, their projects improve, and I learn about a new topic in history. They bring these research, comprehension, writing, and speaking skills with them into the next grade. I have seen former NHD alumni become valedictorians of their graduating classes and become successful and professional adults. Whether they do NHD for one year or many, they are bound to leave with new and lasting skills.
One year, I taught National History Day with sixth graders, and they were able to bring the skills of citing, sourcing, and creating a bibliography with them to middle school. Other teachers commented that students were so confident in sourcing that they taught their seventh-grade classmates.
This academic platform will guide students to find information and reliable sources. It will help them to think critically about what information they ingest and think about various perspectives in history. They will pull this together to analyze and share their findings, and allow them to become experts on their topic as they teach others about it. All of these skills are vital for our younger generations. In an age where we can use computers to create and even think for us, we need to teach our students how to think critically for themselves and be empowered by knowledge. National History Day offers the perfect platform for this and will be a process they will be able to apply as lifelong learners.
How to get involved
If you are interested in learning more about National History Day, feel free to check out nhd.org. There is information on the national competition and resources to get you started. You can also reach out to your state NHD coordinator to get involved.
About the Author
Kristin Brown is a middle school teacher in the state of New Hampshire. She has been in public education for thirteen years, ranging from kindergarten to middle school. Her certifications are in elementary education as well as reading and writing. She loves to incorporate social studies and science into her writing curriculum to promote learning across various subjects.
