National History Day

Outline Instructions

(Due: Friday, October 31, 2014)

Congratulations—at this point, most of your research should be complete!

  • You should have 12 source pages.
  • You now have to reorganize that information into sections based on your topic and your thesis question.
  • You should create section ideas for this outline (although you can still change them). Some possible ideas are Historical Background, People, Timeline of Events, Theme (Leadership and Legacy in History) and Thesis Question.
  • It is up to you to create other outline sections that make sense to you based on your topic. You should have between 5 and 10 topics in your outline.

Here’s how to create your outline:

  1. Write each of the outline section names on a separate piece of paper.
  2. These pages will become Part I, II, III, and so on in your outline.
  3. Go through your NHD Source Pages for information about each section.
  4. Copy information from the source pages to the correct outline section.
  5. You may use bullet comments in your outline.
  6. After you place information in your outline, you may want to highlight it in your Source Page. This will help you keep track of what information you’ve added to the outline.
  7. Your comments must make sense to a person who does not know your topic!
  8. I prefer that the outline be typed and double spaced, but this is not a requirement.
  9. Create your outline by combining all the parts you’ve created.
  10. Your outline should be at least 1200 words long. This is an average of 100 words per source—not bad! There is no upper limit of words.
  11. You should make two copies of your outline—one copy to hand in and one for you to keep.

When you’re done, you’ll have an outline that is organized by section topics. This will be VERY helpful to you as you design your project!