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For Students & Parents

Rules

In order to ensure students across the country participate in a fair contest that judges students equally, National History Day set the rules and guidelines for all participating entries. All judges are familiar with the rules.

Read the rules...

Before you begin work on an entry for competition, you, your teacher, and your parents should carefully read the National History Day Contest Rule Book. Contact your district or state coordinator to learn if any rules have been revised since the publication of this rule book, and for more information on topics, sources, and deadlines.

Getting Started

What do I do first? Read the rules...
Before you begin work on an entry for competition, you, your teacher, and your parents should carefully read the National History Day Contest Rule Book. Contact your district or state coordinator to learn if any rules have been revised since the publication of this rule book, and for more information on topics, sources, and deadlines.

After I understand the rules, now what? Read about the theme...
Each year your research must connect to the NHD theme. The theme changes every year so if you do NHD every year, you will not repeat a theme. The themes are chosen to be broad enough to encourage investigation of topics ranging from local history to world history, and from ancient time to the recent past. To understand the historical importance of your topic you need to ask questions about time, place and context; cause and effect; change over time; and impact and significance. You must consider not only when and where events happened, but also why they occurred and what factors contributed to their development.
The Theme for 2013 is Turning Points in History.
NHD 2013 Theme Sheet PDF
NHD 2013 Theme Book PDF

Choosing a Topic

How do I choose a topic? Think, read, talk...
Topics for research are everywhere! Think about a time in history or individuals or events that are interesting to you. Start a list. Read books, newspapers or other sources of information and add to your list. Talk with relatives, neighbors, or people you know who have lived through a particular time in history that interests you and add more ideas. Keep thinking, reading and talking to people until you have many ideas that are interesting. Now go back through the list and circle the ideas that connect with the theme. From the ideas that you circled, select one to begin your research. Keep your list because you might need it again.

I have an idea for a topic, now what? Narrow down the topic and connect it to the theme...
Selecting a National History Day topic is a process of gradually narrowing down the area of history (period or event) that interests you to a manageable subject. For example, if you're interested in Native Americans and the theme is Turning Points in History, a natural topic would be treaty rights. From there, you would consider the resources you have available to you - perhaps your local historical society, local library, community museum, or school library.

Your process might look something like this:
Theme: Turning Points in History
Interest: Native Americans
Topic: Treaty Rights
Issue: 1788 Fort Schuyler Treaty