How to Do a History Project

Recently, I've been doing more teacher-related blog posts than I've meant to. So here's one that should help the students subject to those complicated history projects; more specifically, the ones I've been giving as Lesson Ideas to the teachers. Depending on the level of difficulty, some students may find it hard to come up with a paper or visual that focuses on one area of history, and it can be even harder to have to come up with an artistic flair to match them. But with three easy steps, students can become more confident in making their projects shine.

3. Answer All of the Questions

Usually, a project outline will give you some questions to get you started, ranging from easy (Name? Date of Event? etc.) to hard (what were the motivations of so-and-so?"). It is only after these questions are listed that an average teacher will put directions for what the project is supposed to be. If the teacher doesn't give you a series of events to follow when doing the assignment, it can be hard for some students to stay focused on one area of the project. So what I suggest is just taking a deep breath and answering all the questions that don't involve the physical project. Don't start making the PowerPoint before you've even chosen a topic! Keep yourself away from directions not pertaining to any of the questions, and you'll find that you can focus extra hard and get good information that benefits you greater than if you just dove right in blind. Also, don't forget to record down any outside sources you get your information from! You'll need to cite them later!

2. Look At Examples to Get Inspiration

Chances are, if a teacher has done a project or paper several years in a row, they'll have found a student's project that's perfect to show the following classes how it should be done (or they themselves would've made a sample project close to what they're looking for). If you don't use this to your advantage, you deserve the grade you get on project by just winging it. The whole point of the example is a guideline to what the teacher considers correct. If you think it would be cheating to follow too closely the outline, don't; if you change enough information and wordings to make it mostly yours, the teacher will not care and grade it without bias. The only time using an outline is bad is if you choose the same topic and only use the example as where your information came from; you can cite it as a source, but can you really say you did a new assignment or just turned in a newer version of the old one?

1. Make It as Artistic as You Can

A lot of people don't have artistic skills necessary to make their projects all colorful and flashy (some don't even have the skill to draw a stick figure). But if the teacher at least knows you made an effort to try and make the project a little poppy, they'll give you points for it. All people should understand that not everyone is a van Gogh, and it's hard to do projects that rely heavily on art. Usually, the ones that do end up being group assignments, meaning that there's a good chance you'll get an artistic kid in your group. Now all the hard work is their problem! (Don't actually do that)

All projects have a degree of difficulty. But that doesn't mean the difficulty limits how well you do on the project! If you just follow these steps, you'll have an A-grade assignment in no time!

-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep