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Steve
Holmberg
National History
Day
Westfield Academy and Central School
1. General Overview of the Proposed
Project:
I WOULD LIKE TO START A NATIONAL HISTORY
DAY PROGRAM AT MY SCHOOL. THIS WOULD INVOLVE STUDENTS CREATING
PROJECTS BE TO ENTERED INTO A SCHOOL COMPETITION AND REGIONAL
COMPETITION. PROJECTS WOULD THEN GO FURTHER IN THE NATIONAL HISTORY
DAY COMPETITIONS IF THEY WIN AT THE LOWER LEVELS.
2. Clear Purpose and Objective:
THE OBJECTIVE IS TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN
IN-DEPTH RESEARCH OF ONE TOPIC. STUDENTS WILL LEARN RESEARCH
SKILLS, CLASSIFYING AND CATEGORIZING INFORMATION, THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES, AS WELL AS PRESENTING AND
EXPLAINING THEIR PROJECTS TO HISTORIANS AT THE COMPETITIONS.
3. Stakeholders: grade level, who will
benefit, who will participate in this project.
ALL 8TH GRADERS WILL HAVE THE
OPPORTUNITY TO PARTICIPANT, BUT PARTICIPATION WILL BE VOLUNTARY.
ALL STUDENTS WILL BENEFIT BECAUSE THOSE COMPLETING A PROJECT WILL
PRACTICE THEIR PRESENTATION SKILLS BY PRESENTING TO THEIR CLASS, SO
ALL STUDENTS WILL GAIN AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE VARIOUS TOPICS
COVERED BY THE PARTICIPANTS.
4. U.S. History Content Area
WORK DONE WILL RELATE TO THIS YEAR’S
NATIONAL HISTORY DAY THEME, CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE. TOPICS MUST BE
ABOUT AMERICAN HISTORY AND RELATE TO THIS THEME.
5. Outline Describing Content
EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE TOPICS INCLUDE: THE
INDIAN REMOVAL ACT, OPPOSITION TO US ENTRY IN WORLD WAR I, ROSA
PARKS AND THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT, THE CREATION OF THE UNITED
NATIONS, THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS, THE KELLOGG BRAND PACT, THE LEAGUE
OF NATIONS, THE KU KLUX KLAN, AND MANY, MANY MORE.
6. Software to be used, internet
materials, contacts, etc.
COMPUTERS AND ONLINE DATABASES AND
JOURNALS FOR RESEARCH, DIGITAL MEDIA, iMOVIE, MOVIE MAKER, THE
TDHAH.COM WEBSITE, DIGITAL HISTORY TEXTBOOK- ITEMS USED WILL VARY
DEPENDING ON TYPE OF PROJECTS BEING COMPLETED.
7. Level of Student Involvement
STUDENTS WILL BE INVOLVED DEVELOPING TOPICS
AND IDEAS IN OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER, WORKING ON PROJECTS IN DECEMBER
AND JANUARY, COMPLETING PROJECTS IN FEBRUARY, ATTENDING THE REGIONAL
COMPETITION IN MARCH, AND GOING ON IN THE COMPETITION IF THEY ARE
SUCCESSFUL
8. Evaluation process (include students
when possible)
STUDENT PROJECTS WILL BE EVALUATED BY
TEACHERS IN THE SCHOOL DISPLAY, AND BY THE JUDGES AT THE REGIONAL
COMPETITION
9. Timeline: how you envision the
project being carried out between start up and conclusion
OCTOBER- INTRODUCE PROGRAM/ OVERVIEW
NOVEMBER- STUDENTS DECIDE TO PARTICIPATE/
INITIAL MEETING
DECEMBER- TOPIC AND PROJECT TYPE CHOSEN-
RESEARCH BEGINS
JANUARY- FINISH RESEARCH/ BEGIN PJCT.- 2
SATURDAY WORKDAYS
FEBRUARY- FINISH PROJECT, APPLY FOR
REGIONAL COMPETITION
MARCH- ATTEND REGIONALS/ APPLY FOR STATE
COMPETITION?
APRIL- ATTEND STATES?
MAY- FINISH PROGRAM/ PIZZA!
10. Comments or Questions:
SUPPLY MONEY TO BE USED FOR EXHIBIT
BACKDROPS, COSTUMES, PROPS, ETC. NEED TO BE DETERMINED ONCE WORK IS
UNDERWAY.
Steve Holmberg
Westfield Central School
8th Grade Social Studies
National History Day
After attending a National History
Day program presentation at the Robert H. Jackson center in the fall
of 2007 I decided to begin a National History Day program at
Westfield School with my 8th graders.
The first step of this process was
discussing the program with all of my 8th grade
students. In class I gave an overview of the program, the work it
would involve, and the opportunities it opened up for students. I
passed around a sign-up sheet to sign up for the program and
announced the date of the 1st meeting. I had 26 students
sign-up to participate. I also sent a letter home to all parents
about the opportunity. One of the things that I had heard many
times at open house from parents was that students needed to be
challenged more and I thought this was an excellent opportunity for
that and wanted parents to be aware that it was available.
At the first after-school meeting
23 of the 26 students were in attendance and I discussed more
specifically the theme and possible topics. I also gave student
more detail on the different types of projects and categories that
students could compete in. At this point I gave them a proposal
form to fill out and hand in once they had decided their topic and
category. We agreed the next meeting would be in the library so
they could hear about finding resources from our librarian and begin
research. I told them to bring their proposals to this meeting.
At the meeting in the library I
found that students needed to narrow their topics down
significantly. Some had chosen topics like the Civil Rights
movement or World War II, and needed help narrowing in on one
specific aspect of these areas. Our librarian gave us a lot of help
in showing students where to find primary resources and making them
aware of all the resources that our library had. Students didn’t
really have time to begin their research at this point. They heard
the librarian’s presentation and worked on narrowing their topics.
At this point 16 students attended. A few had other obligations and
could not come; other were changing their mind primarily as a result
of realizing that they project would likely require more work than
they anticipated.
The next step was to have students
make their final decision on their topics, categories for
competition, and the groups they would be working with. I also sent
another letter home at this point to the parents of the students
involved explaining our progress so far and some of the specifics of
the competition.
Next it was time for students to
actually get to work on their research. By this time I had 5
projects proposed, involving 15 kids total. Some were staying
after-school regularly and others were working on their own. I also
decided to set aside 2 Saturdays as work days when students could
work for a longer period of time. I was finding in the 45 minutes
after-school that by the time students got their materials out and
began working it was almost time to clean up. These days would give
them two 4-hour blocks of time to work. I provided snacks and
students worked, I also sent a letter to parents with this
information. By the end of January it was apparent which groups
were going to complete the projects and which groups were not. I
ended up with three projects entered into the regional competition.
The regional competition was a
good experience for the students involved. They were evaluated by
official judges and had to interact with historians and National
History Day representatives. Everyone running the regional
competition was very well organized and professional and it really
made the students feel that they were a part of a special event.
Everyone took the competition seriously and although there were not
as many entries as I anticipated, and most or all of the students
would have a chance to go onto the state competition, students still
put their best foot forward hoping to do their best a secure a place
in the Cooperstown competition.
Using the feedback from the judges
the revision process began. I was pretty clear to the students that
they level of competition would increase significantly when it came
to the state competition. Initially 2 of the three groups decided
they wanted to attend the state competition, so the registration and
revision process began. I was unable to attend the state
competition because of another school trip I had already planned. I
assisted in the registration process and guiding students through
the revision process. One of the two groups lost their flash drive
and had not backed up their documentary so their images and
completed project was lost. Rather than start from scratch, they
decided not to attend the state competition- an important lesson for
them to learn about backing-up their files.
The student who did go onto the
state competition said it was a great event. She came into school
thrilled about the award she received and wearing the NYS History
Day T-shirt she was given. She said the competition was “awesome”
and was already looking forward to next year.
Overall implementation of the
program was a great success. There were the usual glitches along
the way as is the case with anything you try for the first time.
The National History day local and state representatives were
extremely helpful throughout the process.
Reflective:
There were many great things about
the National History Day program. Here are a few of the things I
found out that would help someone thinking of starting a NHD program
in their school.
Timeline: I naively assumed that since
I had the “good,” motivated students interested in history that they
would complete the steps to their projects on schedule and be
working at a descent pace. I was very wrong. When I would check
with the students periodically or at one of the workdays they would
show me research they had printed off and say that they were working
and doing well. Two weeks before the regional competition none of
the groups had their annotated bibliography done, and 2 had not
really started to work on the project itself. The day before the
competition at 4PM I wasn’t even sure two of the three groups were
going to have a complete enough project to compete. I was not a
good feeling for me or for the students involved. I would
definitely set a schedule for when the various components of the
project needed to be done, so that this rush at the last minute was
avoided.
School Logistics: I would consider how
many students are going to compete and the required school forms
that would be necessary. Because of the number of students I had
sign up initially I looked into bus transportation, field trip
requests, medical forms, permission slips, etc. This whole process
was a bit overwhelming and unanticipated. It ended up that with
three groups completing projects parents provided transportation and
all that was necessary was a simple permission slip, but it’s
something to definitely think about.
Annotated Bibliographies: I think this
was the most complicating and frustrating part of the project for
students. Next time I will start the project with a lesson on
annotated bibliographies and have students do some examples even
before they pick their topic. I was hard enough for them to
understand the proper format, and once they got that they still had
some trouble with including the annotations. I found some students
thought they were doing it right and were not. This meant they had
to re-trace their steps and fix the bibliographies. I would have
been much less time consuming to do it right in the first place by
starting with a lesson.
Parents: Parents were an essential
part of the project. I spent a lot of time writing letters home to
keep parents updated. With a project as involved as National
History Day I found keeping parents aware of dates, time, deadline,
work-days etc to be important. Parents also are strongly encourage/
required to attend the state competition.
Groups: I had 1 group of 2 students
working on a documentary project. When the won at the regional
competition 1 member of the group was really excited about going to
states and competing. The other member didn’t want to go. There
wasn’t really any specific reason or conflict; they just didn’t want
to attend. This obviously disappointed the member who was
interested in attending and was sort of a tough situation to deal
with. Next time I will be sure to emphasize that if you do a group
project everyone in the group has to go to states in order for the
project to be entered into the competition. I had not even thought
of this possible scenario until it occurred.
Holmberg 08 Write-up in
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