National History Day Essentials

Overview

These lessons are designed to touch on the more specific aspects of scholarly research that are required for a National History Day project. While many of the standard instructions for doing research are needed to complete a National History Day project, there are also considerations and tips that students can learn in order to find the best, scholarly sources and to apply them to their finished projects. This lesson will cover finding reliable Internet sources, sources beyond the Internet, distinguishing between primary and secondary sources, choosing a National History Day topic, information analysis and annotated bibliographies.

Recommended Grade Level
Grades 6-12

Time Required
Each lesson will take 1-2 class periods.

Objectives

Students will look for availability of sources as criteria for choosing a research topic.
Students will incorporate key terminology in creating a thesis statement for an NHD project
Students will learn how to determine reliability of information found on the Internet.
Students will learn where to look for and what other resources they have outside of the Internet.
Students will practice differentiating between primary and secondary sources.
Students will learn how to analyze the information they find in their research and to draw conclusions about their topic based on their analysis.
Students will learn the proper format for the annotation in an annotated bibliography.

Materials/Teacher Preparation

Internet accessibility
Handouts for each student. Each lesson has links to articles and/or worksheets. You can print these out for the students or they can follow the links in the lessons.

Curriculum Standards

Social Studies

Strand 1: American History
Concept 1: Research skills for History
PO 2. Interpret historical data displayed in graphs, tables, and charts.
PO 3. Construct timelines of the historical era being studied (e.g., presidents/ world leaders, key events, people).
PO 4. Formulate questions that can be answered by historical study and research.
PO 5: Evaluate primary and secondary sources for:

authors’ main points

purpose and perspective

facts vs. opinions

different points of view on the same historical event (e.g., Geography Concept 6 – geographical perspective can be different from economic perspective)

credibility and validity

PO

6

PO

7

PO

8.

Language Arts

Strand 3: Comprehending Informational Text
Concept 1: Expository Text
PO 2. Distinguish facts from opinions in expository selections such as editorials, newspaper articles, essays, reviews, and critiques, providing supporting evidence from the text.
PO 4. Organize information from both primary and secondary sources by taking notes, outlining ideas, paraphrasing information; and by making charts, conceptual maps, learning logs, and/or timelines. (Connected to Research Strand in Writing)
PO 5. Interpret graphic sources of information (e.g., charts, maps, diagrams, illustrations, tables, timelines, graphs) to support ideas. (Connected to Research Strand in Writing)
PO 8. Support conclusions drawn from ideas and concepts in expository text.

Primary and Secondary Sources Lesson

Suggested Procedures
This might be review for some students, but it is essential to understanding National History Day research. In most school reports or research papers, students are expected to find sources of research, but usually stick to secondary sources only. With a NHD project, primary sources are of supreme importance. Many students think that a primary source is a source that was integral in their research—they list the sources they got the most information from as “primary”. Primary and secondary are determinations that have nothing to do with the amount of information they got from the source; they are determined by the author and date of the source.

Opening Exercise
Start by defining primary and secondary sources and giving examples of each.

Primary Source—documents that are related to the event through participation (the person witnessed events first-hand) or time (the documents was created at the time of the event).

Secondary source—documents that was created later by someone who did not experience first-hand or participate in the event you are researching.

Some examples of primary sources:

Diaries
Letters
Reports
Photographs
Financial records
Memos
Newspaper articles
Creative works
Interviews

The key to a primary source is who created them—the creator must be a participator or first-hand witness to the event—and when they were created—during the time period of the event. These same types of documents are also secondary sources, but the distinction will be based on who created them and when they were created.

Activity 1
It is important to have a fairly even mix of primary and secondary sources when doing research for a National History Day project. This activity will help students practice deciding if a source is primary or secondary.

Primary and Secondary source worksheet
Primary and Secondary source worksheet answers

Activity 2
Once research has begun, students will find that many sources don’t neatly fall in the category of “primary” or “secondary”.

Here’s a quiz that offers an opportunity for you to challenge yourself with your knowledge of primary and secondary sources. You can even alter this and use it with your students, if you wish.

Primary and Secondary source quiz
Primary and Secondary source quiz Answers

Choosing a Topic Lesson

Suggested Procedures
The National History Day theme for the 2009-2010 school year is Innovation in History: Impact and Change. While science comes to mind with a theme such as this, students should be encouraged to think more broadly about innovation in the areas of religion, politics, social programs, and the like.

The problem with students choosing a topic that has popularity potential (space exploration or electricity, for example) is that their projects will be compared closely with projects of similar topic. This could be a detriment if their research and project are not the best of the bunch. On the other hand, choosing a topic that is too obscure will make finding sources a challenge and could hurt the overall research aspect of their project.

Consequently, students should check for the availability of both primary and secondary sources for the topics they choose. This lesson helps them do that.

Opening Exercise

Have students break out into groups of 3 or 4 and brainstorm possible topics for this year’s NHD theme. They should write their ideas down on paper.
After about 5-10 minutes, make a class list of these ideas on the board.
Once the class list is complete, have a discussion:
- Which topics were listed by more than one group? (these might be the overdone ideas)
- Which topics were listed by only one group? (these might be more original ideas that would be perfect for the project)
- Are there any topics that might be hard to find sources for? (might be too obscure for a research project)..

Activity 1
If possible, have students do this activity with Internet access. Otherwise, you might want to do it in groups or as a class. Give students the list of innovations in history. Have them identify each as either:

overdone (lots of students will choose this popular topic)
obscure (won’t be able to find primary sources—or possibly secondary sources)
original (will be able to find primary and secondary sources AND it shows innovation in thinking)

Once they have completed the list, and you have discussed their answers, have them add innovations that might be either, overdone, obscure, or original.

Extension Activity
Have students do a preliminary search for information on two topics that would fall under the Innovations in History theme. Have them look for and report back on primary and secondary sources for each topic.

**Important reminder for students: Remember that you might be able to find primary sources for a particular topic, but be sure that those primary sources will be accessible to you! If a museum or archive in France has wonderful primary material on a source, will you be able to get your hands on it?

Internet Reliability Lesson

Suggested Procedures

As hard as we try to get students away from their computers and out where the sources really are, they insist on finding all of their sources online. It is wonderful that so many sources are available online, especially since accessibility to them can be a problem if they are in another state or country. However, it is imperative that students realize that just because something is on the Internet, doesn’t mean that it is accurate or reliable—especially for the scholarly research required for National History Day projects. This lesson will point out some of the downfalls of Internet sources and help students look at these sources with a more critical eye.

Opening Activity

Start by having students get in groups of 3 or 4.
Have one person make a chart with 3 columns labeled: Gossip, News, Research
In their groups, have them list some of their favorite sources for these 3 kinds of information (they can be both Internet and non-Internet sources).
When they have come up with a list, have them rate each source for reliability of information.
Bring the class together and ask these questions:

What makes these sources reliable or unreliable?
How do you verify information when they think it is unreliable?
Do any of your sources not need verification and why?

Discuss what characteristics a reliable source might have—i.e. a certain, well-maintained look, the address tag of .gov or edu, previous reliability, brand name, citations, etc. (The idea here is to establish that there might be things students automatically view as reliable without questioning the information.)

Activity 1:
You can decide how in-depth you want the students to go with this first activity. You might ask them to take notes on Jacopo di Poggibonsi, or you could require them to write a report on him, or you might just have them browse through the site, looking at each of the links.

Have students go to the Jacopo di Poggibonsi site by typing in the address: http://www.umich.edu/~engtt516/ (Do not tell them that this person does not exist. They will determine this later in the lesson).
Let the students spend some time looking through the site.
If they go to the “Analysis” link at the top of the page and then select “Supplementi”, they will find a list of links to famous artists. Ask some of them to check out the link to the Encyclopedia Brittanica page on Jacopo.
Now, tell the students to go to www.britannica.com and search for Jacopo di Poggibonsi. Give them a few minutes to figure out why there is no entry.
They will realize that Jacopo di Poggibonsi is a fictitious character. Have them go to “Analysis”-“Supplementi”. Look for “Fakes and Forgeries” and click on the link to “Micristi, Marisarcco di Master Forgers.” This page explains the ruse.

Discussion:
What can you do to test a site’s reliability?

Possibilities:
Check to see who authored the site
Verify the information with other sources (remember that many online sources get their information from other online sources, so no one has really checked the information, they all assume it is right…)—Have them read the article on Wikipedia hoax
See if the site cites any sources for their information
Check for disclaimers. Sometimes sites actually tell viewers flat-out that their information hasn’t been checked for accuracy or that they have a slant in their views.

Extension Activity
Have the students Google “white house tours”. They should see a link: whitehouse.georgewbush.org/tours/index.asp. Have them click on the site. First talk about the site and what makes it look reliable (called “Official” site in search hit, .org address, the look and professional look of the site, the kind and amount of information it gives). Now have them actually browse through the site and read some of the information. They should notice some of the ridiculous statements and information given by the site.

Then have them go back to their hits from their Google search and click on the link:

www.whitehouse.gov/about/tours_and_events/ - 46k. Have them compare this site to the first one. What is similar? What is different? How does this make determining the reliability of a website difficult?

Explain that although the first site looks legitimate, it is run by something called chickenhead.com (They can find this by scrolling down to the bottom of the opening page) and is put together by a group that obviously has a biased view of current politics.

Stress that they need to look CLOSELY at what they are finding on the web to be sure that it is legitimate.

Follow-up (Peer Evaluation):

Have the students pick a topic to research and find 5 online sources.
Have another student look at the online sources and evaluate the reliability of the sources.
Give the students some things to look for when determining site reliability (from the Berkeley site mentioned below).

There is a wonderful site that gives tips for evaluating Internet sources:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

Students will find the explanations for each tip valuable. If you don’t have time to go through the site with the students, I would recommend that you pick out a few of the tips and stress them with your students.

Finding Sources beyond the Web Lesson

Suggested Procedures

There are a few untapped sources of information that students can use to find materials outside of the Internet. One of these sources is the bibliographies from books or websites. Book and professional journal authors will include rather extensive bibliographies at the end of their books or articles that show the sources they used. Students can investigate these same sources and save the trouble of searching for them themselves.

Another source of information is interlibrary loan through their local library. While many libraries have their own materials that could be useful to the students, they also have access to the materials from libraries throughout the state and country through the interlibrary loan process. Students just need a library card from their local library in order to borrow materials from far-away libraries.

Activity 1—Wikipedia activity
For the first activity, the students will use one of their most favorite sites for information, Wikipedia.org. They will need Internet access to complete these questions.
Wikipedia Activity.
Wikipedia Activity Key

Activity 2—WorldCat search
A good place for students to locate materials that they need for a project is a database called worldcat.org. It is a catalog of libraries and the materials they hold. Students can use this site in two ways. One way is the way they did with the Wikipedia activity—once they have identified an article or a book that they need, they can look it up on WorldCat and find what libraries hold copies of the materials. From there they either go to the library (if it is close enough) or use their closest library to borrow the item through interlibrary loan. Another way to use WorldCat is to search for materials in various formats—books, archival, audio, articles, etc. As with searching for a specific item, once their search gives them a list of materials, they can see which libraries hold a copy of them. Have them practice using WorldCat.org with this activity:
WorldCat Activity
WorldCat Activity Key

Extension Activity—Interlibrary loan
Interlibrary loan is a service provided, usually at no charge, for anyone who has a library card. Students can go through their local library to request materials from other libraries around the state and country. Not all materials that they find on WorldCat are available through interlibrary loan. For many libraries, students can fill out the interlibrary loan request form online. Here’s a look at the kind of information students will need in order to request materials through interlibrary loan—Glendale Public interlibrary loan request form. If their library does not have an online form, they will need to go, in person, to their library to fill out the form.

After students have made a list of sources from the WorldCat activity, have them request one or two of their sources through interlibrary loan.

This is a wonderful time for them to talk to their librarians about other sources that might be available in their library. Not all available materials are listed in WorldCat, and librarians might be able to give them some additional sources.

Tips for using libraries

Thesis Statement Lesson

Suggested Procedures

Thesis statements for National History Day projects are guided by the national year’s theme. The students just need to realize that they need to use the national theme for their own individualized NHD project. It is important that the students’ thesis statements use some of the theme wording so they are easily recognized by the judges. It is also important that there is an argument in the thesis that will be supported by the information in the project.

The formula for an NHD thesis statement is:

Thesis = Topic + Theme + Impact. So, students are not just stating their topics, they are explaining their topics’ significance and demonstrating how the theme applies to their topics.

SAMPLE THESIS STATEMENTS:

**Even the “DO” statements are a work in progress.

Don’t: The traffic light changed the way our streets work.
Do: The innovation of the traffic light impacted the lives of drivers, pedestrians and police officers by providing a safer and more organized environment for cities and rural areas alike.

Don’t: The Biosphere 2 is a great innovation that has taught the world many things.
Do: Biosphere 2 produced informative results on the human impact on the ecosystem and Earth’s biosphere, which improves the way humans interact with their world.

Don’t: The Works Progress Administration helped people through the Depression.
Do: The Works Progress Administration was an innovative solution that helped counteract the economic impact of the Great Depression. It allowed Americans to maintain a sense of dignity and financial security during a trying time in America.

Activity 1
Part of an effective thesis statement is to make a claim. This allows the students to use their research to clearly acknowledging any controversy attached to their claim and to ultimately prove their claim based on proof found in their research.
Thesis statement worksheet 1
Thesis worksheet 1 Answer Key

Activity 2
Practice breaking down the National History Day theme to create an NHD thesis statement.
Thesis statement worksheet 2

Analysis of Information (“So What?”) Lesson

Suggested Procedures

Although students are wonderful at regurgitating information that they find in their research, there is often a notable lack of analysis of that research. This is called the “So What?” factor. This “So What?” factor plays heavily in creating a NHD project.

What makes this step of research so difficult for students is that analysis requires original thinking. They have to take everything they have found (both good and bad) and make some statements about the significance of their finding.

Opening Activity
Decide on a sample topic for Innovations in History that students know some facts about. Try to pick a topic that students will not have preconceived notions about. This will help their analysis to be less prejudiced. You might want to gather some facts ahead of time so that you can fill in some gaps and make the fact list complete.

Put the topic on the board and have students give facts that they know about the topic. (This part is the easiest and, usually, the only part of their research of a topic.) Encourage them, or help them, list both positive and negative aspects of the topic (balanced research). Once the list of facts is complete, ask the students to analyze the facts on the board and answer the “So What?” question about this topic (they can do this individually, in groups, or as a class).

Space exploration facts:

It has the potential to allow us to sustain life on other planets.
Intelligence satellites monitor activities around the world.
It has improved weather forecasting, which can prevent catastrophes.
Exploration is expensive monetarily and in the form of human lives lost to space exploration.
It has the potential for solving mysteries that could improve conditions on Earth.

Space Exploration Fact:

It has the potential to allow us to sustain life on other planets.

SO WHAT??...

Analysis:

Climate changes on Earth are causing concern, and having sustainability on other planets increases our chances of surviving and even prospering.

Space Exploration Fact:

Intelligence satellites monitor activities around the world.

SO WHAT??

Analysis:

Our government can monitor groups that pose a danger to our country and prevent acts of terrorism,

Go through the remaining space exploration facts and analyze their significance to the topic, Innovation in History: Impact and Change.

Extension Activity
Using the space exploration facts and their analysis of these facts, have the students create a thesis statement about space exploration that they could prove with their “research”.

Analysis Activity 1
Have the students use the facts about the Hohokam’s irrigation system to provide analysis about this innovation. Have them share their analysis so they can see how the same facts can be analyzed differently by different people.
Analysis worksheet

NHD Annotated Bibliography Lesson

Suggested Procedure

Annotated bibliographies are important to the judges because it is what they are left looking at when making their final decisions about ranking projects. Bibliographies can be the determining factor for judges who are on-the-fence about the project. One point of weakness with NHD bibliographies is the annotations. Rather than telling how the source helped their research, many simply state what the source said. These exercises will help students to understand the purpose of the annotations in their NHD bibliographies.

Opening Activity
Students should start by recognizing the two elements of annotations:

description of the source and
how it was used in the project.

Use this worksheet to practice finding these elements in annotations.
Annotated Bibliography opening worksheet

Activity 1
Have student practice writing annotations with a description of the source and how they might use it in a project. They can do this a couple of ways:

They can find sources for their topic in WorldCat.org, read summaries of the content and create their annotation based on these summaries. This, of course, is for practice, so they will not know if or how they would really use the source, but can imagine how it might be used in their project.
If they have already done their research, they can use their actual sources to write the annotations.

Here’s an example of doing this activity the first way, by using WorldCat summaries to create annotations:
WorldCat.org keyword search: New Deal in Arizona
Sources with summaries in WorldCat:

Isabella Greenway an enterprising woman
Oral history interview with JB Heinen, Jr. 1974 June 25
Picturing Arizona: the photographic record of the 1930s
Streamlines to breadlines

Annotation examples:

This book told about Greenway’s influence on politics during the Depression. I used her quote about FDR’s politics. It helped me understand Roosevelt’s motivation for implementing the New Deal.
This interview was with an officer in the Civilian Conservation Corps who worked in Arizona in the 1930s. His description of the CCC camps illustrated how transient the men were, yet, how they established close ties. I used this interview to highlight the benefits of the New Deal—beyond the obvious financial ones.
This book had photographs of Arizonans working on various projects created by the New Deal. I used the caption information to find additional sources for the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. I also used five of the photographs in my exhibit.
This book talked about various projects that were created during the Depression. The section on the Hoover Dam was especially helpful in talking about some of the New Deal projects in Arizona during that time. I used it to build the idea that projects such as these created a buoyed spirit among Americans during this difficult time.

Here’s another WorldCat.org search:
Keyword search: Harvey restaurants
Sources with summaries in WorldCat:

Railroad 4, the golden age (1880-1916)
Fred Harvey Company collection, 1900-1996 1979-1996
Fred Harvey collection 1880-1980
Fannie Teague oral history interview
La Fonda collection 1929-1961

Students can read the summaries on WorldCat and create annotations for a project on the Fred Harvey restaurants.

Extension Activity
Once the students have finished their annotated bibliographies for their NHD projects, have them peer edit the annotations for the two requirements:

Description of the source and
How it was used in the project

Welcome to National History Day Essentials