National History Day: General Nationals Notes

If you're headed to the National History Day Contest in Maryland, congratulations! Here are some roughly organized general notes and suggestions from my tip to NHD Nationals a couple of years ago. I'll also be posting notes for different events. Hope they're helpful!

Entries

Process papers are often awkward by nature. This can be minimized with correct grammar and spelling and varied sentence structure. For group events, the process paper should be written in first person plural, and team members should be referred to by name.

Referring to historical figures by first name only is rarely appropriate. Characters in a performance are an exception.

Judging

Within each event, entries are split into seven rooms. From each room, two entries move on to finals. In finals, the entry must stand on its own – no judge questions. This means that paper, website, and exhibit competitors don’t know until after the awards ceremony if they made finals because they don’t have to be present for finals judging.

60% of the judging is based on the history – accuracy, context, analysis, use of available primary sources, and wide research. Another 20% has to do with the theme – relation to the theme, showing the significance of the topic of the entry, drawing conclusions. The last 20% is based on balanced research, clarity, and presentation of the entry.

Wide research – variety of sources, both primary and secondary

Balanced research – multiple perspectives, identifies biases

Competitors should always know more about their topic than they present, and they must be able to answer specific questions about their topic and sources.

Typical questions about sources: Which was the most interesting, most influential, or most important? Judges may also ask more specific questions, for example, “I see you interviewed Professor X. How did that influence your entry?”

Typical general questions: When did you start working on your entry? What have you changed since districts/state? What surprised you most in your research? What did you learn? What single thing should we take away from your entry? Questions also often require bringing the topic to the present – what influence has it had?

Students should be able to defend unusual choices they made in their entry. For example, I saw a performance that was almost entirely pantomime, and they were asked to explain the decision to do pantomime instead of a more traditional performance.

Students should shake hands with the judges. In paper, the most convenient time is at the beginning of the interview. For all the other events, it’s best done while passing out process papers.

Students should not tell the judges that they’re from a certain state. The judges aren’t supposed to know.

Bring four process papers to the competition. There are three judges for prelims and three judges for finals. At each step every judge will take a process paper, but after the judging they keep only one.

Students should dress well on any day they’re competing competing – so for paper, website, and exhibit, have one nice outfit, and for performance and documentary, have two in case you make finals.

Delegation Related:

Pin trading is a big deal, particularly if you stay in the dorms, I think. State pins are for sale at the state NHD competition, and then at nationals the competitors trade and try to get a pin from every affiliate.

Most states wear the state NHD t-shirt to the awards ceremony, so bring it!

Going to the performances and documentary showings of other people in one’s delegation is highly encouraged.

National History Day: Tips for the Paper

For NHD 2012, I participated in the paper category and placed 13th nationally. The theme that year was "Revolution, Reaction, Reform" and my paper was about Euclid's impact on mathematics. Below the fold are a things that either were helpful as I wrote or that I learned along the way. While I'm writing these with the paper in mind, some could apply to other events (or to process papers).

National History Day 2014: Arts Topics

No topics related to the arts are mentioned in the NHD Theme Book or list of suggested topics this year. Here are a few suggestions, split up by type of art. I might update this throughout this semester, and given the topic this year, this will be shorter than the science lists.

Dance
Soviet ballet defection (I think it's a stretch to relate this to responsibilities, but if you come up with something, it could be fantastic!)
Censorship/propaganda in Soviet-era Russian ballet (a really good starting resource would be Apollo's Angels)
I haven't read it, but there's a book called Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice that looks really interesting and could be a good jumping off point for a project!
Dancing bans (legal or religious, and again, responsibilities might be a stretch)

Film
The Hollywood blacklist -- could go a lot of directions from here. Could talk about naming others to HUAC or not, pamphlets like Red Channels, or the Writers' Guild working to give proper credit to those who were blacklisted.
Propaganda films and how that relates to rights and responsibilities, either of people or of governments.
Man With a Movie Camera and revolution in the Soviet Union -- this is a really cool film impacted by the idea that a social and political revolution should also induce a revolution in the arts, and it really shows the industrialization occurring in the late 1920s.

Literature/Writing/Philosophy
Thomas Paine's Common Sense and/or Rights of Man
John Locke
Thomas Hobbes
Ayn Rand and objectivism
Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations
Banned books and freedom of speech -- either in general or focusing on specific books
What is To Be Done? (by Chernyshevsky, by Lenin, or both!) and Bolshevism
Literature and civil rights -- could focus on James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, or Lorraine Hansberry
Uncle Tom's Cabin
To Kill a Mockingbird
(This could be such a long list, and here I've focused on just a couple of ideas and given some suggestions. If you come up with a rights issue, search for related literature!)

Visual Art
Political cartoons and freedom of expression. Could choose particular cartoonist, incident/cartoon, etc.
Propaganda posters and the relationship to the rights and responsibilities of people/governments. Choose a country and time period and possibly even a theme within it. (I'm in a Soviet Union class right now, and there are some great examples of propaganda posters here: http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/chairman/sovintro.php)


(So sorry there is no music or theater here! I think a lot of the ideas from the others could be carried over to those, but I just don't know the details.)

Foreign Language Summer Programs, Part 1: Concordia Language Villages

There are lots of programs for students of a variety of ages to learn foreign language over the summer. I'm going to highlight the larger and better known ones in this series of posts. Many of the others are more local, so check your area if this is interesting! In addition, for college students and even high school students there are lots of summer study abroad programs through which language learning is possible, but here I'm going to focus on the programs whose main goal is language.

Concordia Language Villages
Ages 7 to 18
www.concordialanguagevillages.org
CLV offers camps for German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Finnish. There are no applications, just online registration. Each language has a village, a campsite in the woods (usually in Minnesota) on a lake. The names of the camps generally translate to "Lake in the Woods." Campers stay in cabins with other campers of the same gender and (approximately) age. Each cabin has at least two counselors.

Camp is meant to be a mostly immersive environment. Except at nightly cabin meetings and other times when the information is very important, the counselors speak the target language. Campers are encouraged to speak the target language at all times but are generally not required to do so. Students are placed in small classes based on their level. The schedule depends on the camp and the session, but each weekday there are classes, activities, free time, and a large evening activity based on the theme for the day. (At Lac du Bois, the French camp, some daily themes were the Maghreb, the Tour de France, and the environment.) There is also lots of language learning through singing and staff member skits. Classes and activities are all run by counselors.

Most of the languages have at least one 1-week session. The ages for this vary, but tend to be younger. I don't recommend this session because one week isn't enough time to really become immersed in a language.

All languages have at least one 2-week session. The ages vary by session, but usually there are 2-week sessions for everyone from age 8 to age 18. Classes for 2-weekers are fairly informal. The group of students in a class stay together but may switch teachers after a week, and each week might be themed. (I had classes focused on weather/nature and Senegal.) At Lac du Bois these classes were more focused on speaking than writing, but this varies by counselor and language. Languages using a different script are more likely to have a writing focus in 2-week classes.

All languages also have a 4-week high school credit session. This is for any student entering freshman year through senior year, and the four weeks are meant to cover approximately one year of high school instruction in the target language. Placement is based both on speaking and writing. These classes are much more academic, and a grade is given at the end. There is also a mandatory portfolio, which is a collection of objects and written reflections on them (in the target language) based on given prompts.

French, German, and Spanish also have 4-week college credit sessions. The format is similar to the high school credit session, but the class is more difficult. This is for rising high school juniors to college freshmen, and an application with a target language essay and teacher recommendation is required.

Note: There is a second French camp called Les Voyageurs. Voyageur campers do not stay at the French campsite. They camp in the woods, learn about the history of the real voyageurs, go to Voyageur National Park, and canoe to the US-Canada border.

National History Day 2014: Physics, Engineering, and Technology Topics

The 2014 National History Day theme is "Rights and Responsibilities in History!"

This is the second in a series of posts with ideas for NHD project topics. The first post, about biology and chemistry topics, is here (it's been updated recently!). This post will focus on topics in physics, engineering, and technology. "Rights and Responsibilities" is a theme that lends itself particularly well to issues of technology and privacy, as well as to ethics more generally. Some of these may be a bit too recent to make good NHD topics, and all of these topics should be interpreted with respect to the theme. Some of them may be strong in one of rights and responsibilities and strong in the other, but projects should try to incorporate both.

The list of topics is below the fold! Note that this may be updated from time to time.
Note: If you're looking for 2014-2015 ideas (Leadership and Legacy), go here!

Education Through Arts: Dance and Theater in Oklahoma City 2013-2014

Local arts events can supplement curriculum or even provide a framework for it. Many ballets and plays are based on books which can be used in literature curriculum (and history to a lesser extent). For students interested in a particular type of art, these performances also provide an opportunity to learn about the history and influential figures of the art form.

This post focuses on the major dance and theater performances in Oklahoma City over the next year. Note that some of these seasons are over the summer (Lyric and Shakespeare in the Park) and some are throughout the school year.

National History Day 2014: Chemistry and Biology Topics

The National History Day theme for 2014 is "Rights & Responsibilities in History!"

In my NHD experience, I found science topics (among others) to be underrepresented. This is a first in a series of posts offering some suggestions for topics. This post focuses on chemistry and biology.

The "Rights & Responsibilities" theme lends itself to topics dealing with ethics in science. Some of these topics will be areas that bring up ethical questions, and others will be specific events in which people acted ethically or unethically. All of these topics should be interpreted with respect to the theme.

The list of topics is below the fold.
Note: If you're looking for 2014-2015 ideas (Leadership and Legacy), go here!