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Step 4:

Explain the Process to Students


A. All History Day projects must have an Annotated Bibliography

  1. Bibliographies can be in Turabian or MLA format.
    Note: You, the teacher, should decide which citation manual all students will use.  While most teachers prefer to use MLA, most historians prefer Turabian.
    Bibliographies should be divided into Primary and Secondary Sources.
  2. Annotation follows each source and simply describes what the student used from the source.
  3. Web sites are legitimate sources but students should neither depend on them nor use too many of them. It is a good idea to tell who or what institution generated the website in the annotation.
  4. Have your students develop their bibliography as they go. They should record all pertinent information about sources (author, title, publisher, city where publication occurred, date of publication, page numbers used, etc.) as they are taking their notes. It is very difficult to retrieve that information later.


B. All History Day projects except historical papers need a process paper.

  1. This is not a historical essay but rather a simple document where the student answers four questions:
    • Why I chose my topic
    • How I did my research
    • How I developed my entry
    • How my topic relates to the theme

      
       2.    The process paper should not be over 500 words.