All students in GATE will be required to complete a research report along the lines of the National History Day competition.  They may work alone or in teams of two.  All 7^th grade students are required to do a media presentation as well along the NHD hand out guidelines.

First students will need to select a topic from the hand out or present to the teacher their own topic.  7^th grade students are limited to topics involving ancient civilizations to the Industrial Revolution but no American History.  8^th graders are allowed to research in American History to modern World History.  This enables students to work in their Social Science area of study this year.

Second students will need to gather and keep track of their sources as well as break them into the categories of primary and secondary sources.  These sources will then be placed into a formal, annotated Bibliography at the end of their research report.  There will be a limit to the number of online or internet sources, but no limit to text book or newspaper sources, for example.

Next students will take the information and create a two part report not to exceed 5 pages.

• Part One: 1.5 to 3 pages of background information written by the student (no cut and paste of the internet) and properly cited quotes.  Student need to also show how their topic relates to the NHD theme for the year as well as its significance in history.

• Part Two: 2 page Process paper (as directed by the NHD guidelines) that the student will write answering a series of questions about how they picked their topic; how they did their research; what worked and did not; and in the end why it was a worthwhile project.

• No pictures, graphs or other visuals are allowed in the research report.  Those will be used in the media presentation itself.

Competing in the National History Day with a Media Project

NHD Media Project is due the First week of January for the school judges to decide on which will compete at the March Orange County Competition.  One teacher will provide some after school or at lunch time to work with those interesting in competing – to be announced.

Media projects can be:

·        Exhibit (similar to the science fair)

·        Performance

·         Documentary (video is the number one choice / power points can compete but rarely win)

·         Website (which have very specific rules on what type of programs and formats you may use to compete)