What is Texas History Day?

Each year thousands of students, encouraged by teachers and parents statewide, participate in the National History Day program in Texas. Texas History Day, an affiliate of NHD and is a highly regarded academic program for 6th through 12th grade students. Texas History Day now has an Elementary Poster Category for grades 4th to 5th, ask your regional coordinator if your region offers that category. Each year more than 55,000 Texas students join more than 500,000 students across the country for National History Day!

Texas History Day provides a framework for successful student projects. Each student bases their project on the same annual theme and rule book. Students choose historical topics related to a theme and conduct extensive primary and secondary research at libraries, archives, museums, historic sites, and more. Projects are not limited to any particular time period or geographic area. After analyzing and interpreting their source material, create a plan to present their findings to the peers and teachers before moving on to regional, state, and possibly national contests. Students can create and present original research papers, exhibits, performances, websites, and documentaries.

The student projects may be entered into competitions in the spring at one of our regional contests across Texas. Winners from each regional competition will advance to the state contest in Austin. Students who place first or second at our state contest advance to the National Contest held each June held at the University of Maryland at College Park.

For more info, visit: TSHA: Texas History Day

Location: 

The 45th Annual Texas History Day competition will be held In-Person.

Judging locations include the Bullock Texas State History Museum

and various buildings on the University of Texas at Austin campus

JUDGING INSTRUCTIONS

For category based judging instructions, click on the links below:

Paper Category

Exhibit Category

Documentary Category

Website Category

Performance Category

Essential Project Elements ...Explained

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Historical context is the larger setting in which your topic took place. Consider the relevant economic, social,
intellectual, religious, cultural, and political conditions of the place and time. Pay attention to how your topic
developed over time.

Example: The modern Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s developed in response to the context of
segregation legalized by Jim Crow laws that marginalized blacks and enforced racial separation. Over time, the
movement expanded to include the rights of others.

MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
A perspective is one point of view, one person’s experience, or one side of the story. Think of perspective as
what one person saw, thought, or wrote about the events or issues you are studying. An individual’s perspective
on a historical event can be afected by many factors and can change over time. Like a detective solving a crime,
you must look for multiple perspectives as you piece together what happened in the past. You must examine and
show more than one side of the story. To do that, look for primary and secondary sources created by people with
diferent viewpoints.

Example: When studying a law, look at people who supported the law as well as those who opposed it. Try to
understand why both sides believed the way they did.

HISTORICAL ACCURACY
Historians must be accurate when presenting information about the past. Facts matter. You must present
accurate historical facts before you can make your historical argument and interpret historical signifcance. If you
fnd sources that are contradictory about a fact, dig deeper to determine the correct information.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Signifcance refers to the impact or consequences of your topic. What occurred as a result of your topic, both in
the short term and the long term? What changed or stayed the same? What impact did your topic have on society
or on the course of human events? Think of historical signifcance as answering the question, “So what, why
does this matter?”

HISTORICAL ARGUMENT
Your historical argument states the central point or focus of your project in two or three sentences. It is
sometimes called a thesis or claim. Historians create historical arguments after carefully analyzing evidence from
the past. The evidence that supports your argument will come from the primary and secondary sources that you
discover during your research. Your argument should refect your analysis of the historical evidence that you
gathered.
Your historical argument must make a meaningful connection to the theme and show why your topic is signifcant
in history. It must be incorporated into your project and be clear to those who read or view it. However, labeling
your historical argument in or on your project is not required.

Example for the theme, Breaking Barriers in History: The 1919 Treaty of Versailles subjected Germany to
signifcant economic penalties. The treaty created an economic barrier between Germany and the rest of Europe,
which led to hyperinfation and, when coupled with the Great Depression, the rise of the Nazi Party.