Region 15 Students Participate In National History Day Contest

From Pomperaug Regional School District 15: 20 Students representing Memorial Middle School, Rochambeau Middle School and Pomperaug High School participated in the Connecticut History Day Contest held on April 28h, 2018 at Central Connecticut State University.

The Connecticut History Day Contest is part of the National History Day program for students in grades 6-12 that encourages exploration of local, state, national, and world history. To participate, students select a historical topic related to a theme and conduct extensive research using libraries, archives, museums, and oral history interviews.

This year’s theme was “Conflict and Compromise in History.” Using their research, students analyze and interpret their findings, draw conclusions about their topic's significance in history, and create final projects that demonstrate their work. They present their research in one of five ways: write a paper, do a theatrical performance, design a website, make a short documentary or create an exhibit.

Professional historians and educators evaluate the students’ final projects in a series of competitions at the regional, state (Connecticut History Day Contest), and national (National History Day Contest) levels in 15 categories and two divisions, Junior (Grades 6-8) and Senior (Grades 9-12). The top three projects in each category at the regional level advance to Connecticut History Day and the top two projects at Connecticut History Day advance to the National History Day Contest.

75 students from Region 15 created 29 projects that were entered into competition at the regional level, and 11 projects advanced to the Connecticut History Day competition. Five students finished in the top two of their respective categories, and will be representing Region 15 at the National History Day competition:

David Roper, Emmett Reilly, William Miller, Griffin Wolf from Pomperaug High School in the category Senior Group Documentary for their project, “New Haven Black Panthers Trials” and Meredith Griegel from Rochambeau Middle School in the category Junior Individual Exhibit for her project, “Parent Advisory: The Four Words that Changed Music.”

The 2018 National Contest will be held June 10-14, 2018 at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Photos courtesy of Pomperaug Regional School District 15 (Meredith NHD CT, national History Day PHS Students)