History Day in California is a statewide program sponsored by the Constitutional Rights Foundation and the California Department of Education in cooperation with National History Day. Now in its twenty-first year, History Day is an exciting, history-based learning experience for students from 4-12th grades.

History Day is a performance-based academic endeavor that fully supports the California History-Social Science Framework and History/Social Science and English-Language Arts Content Standards. History Day provides students with an opportunity to become historians and apply what they learn through authentic products such as documentaries, exhibits, posters, performances, websites, or research papers. Any of these can easily be integrated into the everyday classroom curriculum.

Each year the theme changes. For 2005 the theme is Communication in History: Key to Understanding. Students may apply this theme to a wide range of topics in U.S. or world history related to the curriculum at their particular grade level. Though they may focus on only one aspect of the theme whenever possible they should show the connections among the various aspects of it.

There is no better way to enjoy school and learn the research, thinking, and writing skills for college success than creating a History Day Project. If you are a California student in grades 6-12 you may join in the fun by producing a museum exhibit, a documentary, a website, a research paper, or a performance. If you are a fourth or fifth grader, you are invited to do a poster. Any of these projects, except the research paper, may be completed by a group of up to five students as well as by an individual. As you produce one of these projects, you will have many opportunities to meet other students and win awards at the school, county, state or national level.

Documentary Category