Resources for Teachers & Students

Research Guides

Guide to Student Research and Historical Argumentation - National History DayWritten by educators in collaboration with the Library of Congress, this book is designed to help teachers teach historical thinking skills and guide students through the research process to develop a historical argument and present their work in an NHD project.

Finding, Analyzing, and Constructing History: A Research Guide for Students - National History DayWritten by 15 master educators, this book uses the vast resources of the Library of Congress to help students navigate the research process. You'll learn how to select a topic, engage in historical thinking skills, research a variety of source formats and synthesize your research into a historical argument.

Contest Rule Book

NHDRuleBook2020Digital.pdf

Classroom Models & Timelines

Models of Participation and Timelines (updated August 2024)

Game Plan for History Day.pdf

Research Strategies

Inquiry Charts Increase Student Agency as ResearchersWhen you ask students to research a topic, what happens? Chances are some students will struggle. The authors use Inquiry Charts to help all students succeed.

Some Fun Tasks That Help Students Build Research MusclesResearch is a muscle that Megan Kelly’s 6th grade social studies students are still building, and just like muscles, their skills get stronger with repetition.

Using Proper Terminology

Ask a National Endowment for the Humanities Expert: Using Proper Terminology in Historical Research and Writing

Teaching & Learning about American Indians

Check out the answers to some of the questions that educators frequently ask about Native Americans. Can't find what you're looking for? Send a question to: nmai-nk360@si.edu.

Historical Thinking Skills

Using Bell Ringers to Teach the Historical MethodShort activities built on examining photographs, artifacts, and other resources from the past can help students think like historians.

How to Engage Students in Historical Thinking Using Everyday ObjectsAsking students to examine their own possessions from the perspective of a historian in the future helps them sharpens their analytical skills.

Secondary Source Use

Teaching Students How to Identify Credible SourcesTeachers can guide students toward a clear understanding of the factors that make a particular source of information reliable or not.

pg 9 Sec Sources.pdf

Teaching Historiography in Middle and High SchoolThis teacher asked his students what they didn’t like about textbooks and used their responses as a way to have them engage in close reading of primary sources.

Primary Source USe

Primary_Source_Analysis_Tool_LOC.pdf

6 Free Online Resources for Primary Source DocumentsThe Common Core Learning Standards describe the importance of teaching students how to comprehend informational text. Primary source documents are artifacts created by individuals during a particular period in history. This could be a letter, speech, photograph or journal entry. If you're looking to integrate social studies into your literacy block, try out one of these resources for primary source documents.

Library of Congress Teacher Guides toTeach Primary Source Analysis

Six Ways to Teach with Primary SourcesDuring American Archives Month this October, Facing History wants to highlight the importance of primary sources to our pedagogical approach by offering resources designed to incorporate analysis of primary sources into educator lesson plans.

It’s Not About the Right Answer: Using Primary Sources to Help Students Ask the Right QuestionsIt’s Not About the Right Answer: Using Primary Sources to Help Students Ask the Right Questions

Oral Histories

OralHistoryUserGuide.pdf

Hands on History Footlocker:

Oral History

The Montana Historical Society offers a "traveling trunks" on Oral History. (See description to the left.)

Availability and Cost: Footlockers are available to Montana educators for two weeks at a time. No rental fee is charged for the use of footlockers. However, schools are responsible for the cost of shipping the footlocker to the next venue via United Parcel Service (UPS) or the United States Postal Service (USPS). In an effort to provide equitable access, reservations are limited to four per year per teacher.

How to Order: First, check this chart to see available dates. Then email coordinator Katie White your preferred dates, the title of the footlocker you’d like to order, the school name, the school shipping address, the phone number, and the number of students/teachers who will be using the footlocker.

Oral History as an Educational ExperienceBased on this model oral history experience, the toolkit includes instructional concepts, ideas, and strategies for use by educators to design a curriculum that reflects their instructional goals and the needs of their students while appreciating Vietnam veterans in their community.

NEH Lesson Plan: Doing Oral History with Vietnam War Veterans

Student-Oral-History-Toolkit-2022.pdf

REvising Projects

Create a Revision Plan

NHd Revision Plan

Thank you to NHD MT Teacher Fellow Jessica VanKerhkhove (an NHD MT Teacher Fellow from Potomac) for creating this slide deck to walk students through analyzing judges' feedback to create an NHD Revision Plan.