​​​​Overview of material
 

Research

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• Providing good historical context. Your context should provide information on what life was like during the time period of your topic, while being specific to your project. Make sure any context relates to your thesis! Explore existing structures that could explain why your topic could take place. The audience should understand how it might have felt to live in that place in history.  

• Integrating evidence into your project. Ensure you have a wide variety of evidence types and perspectives. Telling a balanced and historically correct story means balancing your sources! Don't forget to analyze the effects of your evidence on the topic, as well as the context in which the evidence comes.

• Look for quotes that showcase the impact of your topic! These can be found in books, newspapers, and other primary sources. Make sure student-written and quoted words are differentiated in your project.

• Your project should strengthen your argument. Make sure your project flows and is easy to understand! The audience needs to be able to follow your project for your words to make an impact.  Integrate your evidence/quotes in creative ways. Your evidence should be specific to your project, but also understandable by viewers. Finally, remember to make the order of evidence accurate to the timeline of events!

• Telling a story with your project. Keep your project on-topic and your words concise. Only say what is necessary to move the story forward. Don't forget to add primary sources to add to your project's impact!

• Weave your argument throughout your project. Everything in your project should tie back to your argument. Do not include anything that does not support your central argument. Follow the claim -> evidence -> reasoning structure to keep your project analytical and focused. Make sure your argument is yours! Your project should reflect your voice. Evidence should be used to support what you have to say.

• Including multiple perspectives. Include the opinions and voices of multiple demographics in your project. Presenting multiple sides of a story shows that you are a historical thinker. 

• Historical landscape and context. Before presenting your main topic, zoom out and explore social, political, and economic conditions of the time period. Afterwards, you can zoom back in. Context helps explain what problems existed and why change was needed. 

• Contrasting and additional perspectives. Contrasting perspectives are directly related to your topic and go against your historical event. Your project should explore these perspectives and provide a counterargument to them. Additional perspectives may not be directly related to your event, but provide context for other regions or groups and help explain the broader impact. Make sure to include both in your project.

• Finding new perspectives. When finding new perspectives to include in your project, ask yourself the following questions: Who was impacted? Who is affected today? Who represented the topic and spread the dominant narrative in the past? Who represents the topic now? These questions allow you to find blind spots in your research. It is important to take into account many perspectives, not just the dominant one(s).