What is NHD?
Each year, more than half a million students, encouraged by thousands of teachers nationwide, participate in the National History Day (NHD) contest. NHD is a year-long educational program in which students become historians. The program directly supports the newly adopted Common Core State Standards in Language Arts with its focus on research and argumentative writing. Students choose historical topics related to an annual theme and conduct extensive primary and secondary research by using libraries, archives, museums, and oral history interviews. They analyze and interpret their findings, draw conclusions about that significance of their topics in history and create final projects to present their work. These projects can be entered into competitions at the county, state and national levels where they are evaluated by professional historians and educators.
Schools across Orange County participate in the NHD program by using it as a means to provide highly engaging history instruction and to showcase student achievement. NHD directly supports the History-Social Science Framework (content, inquiry, literacy, citizenship) , Common Core standards (project based learning, interconnected learning, etc.), the 21st Century Skills Framework (critical thinking, problem solving, etc.) and College and Career Readiness.
NHD projects can be used at the school site for rich project-based learning experiences and/or entered into a series of competitions, from the local to the national level, where they are evaluated by professional historians and educators.
Why should you invest in an NHD program? NHD Research Data suggests dramatic increases in student scores and improves student performance across all subjects when NHD becomes part of the curriculum.
For more information about NHD-OC, please e-mail us at nhdinfo@ocde.us
What is NHD-OC?
NHD-OC sponsors and hosts the county level History Day competition and Awards Ceremony each March. During the year, we provide support to teachers, coaches and students by hosting a Teacher Training. We work with archivists to bring an Archivist Day for students to learn about primary and secondary sources as well as receive expert guidance as they select their topics and begin their research. Additionally, we coordinate a "Best Sources" workshop for students at UCI, hosted by Research Librarian.
National History Day
Learn more about National History Day - Orange County website.
Learn more about National History Day - California website.
Questions?
Please e-mail us at nhdinfo@ocde.us for more information.
