03/27/2006
Knotty Oak students roll out PowerPoints, poster boards and a skit for National History Day
By: Jessica Selby , Kent County Daily Times

The computers in the Media Center at Knotty Oak Middle School were overshadowed last week by the rows and rows of posters boards that seventh grade students had created for their school's first participation in the National History Day contest.

Martin Luther King, Helen Keller and Jackie Robinson were among the many subjects on which the seventh graders at Knotty Oak Middle School chose to do their projects. They said they felt these were the people who had "taken a stand in history," the theme of this year's National History Day contest.
Meagan Silva, a student in Ted Mitchell's social studies class at Knotty Oak Middle, chose to do her project on Rosa Parks.

"I chose Rosa Parks because she took a stand for her rights by not moving to the back of the bus so a white man could have her seat in the front," Silva said. "I think it was wrong of people to think that they could boss people like her around like that just because of the color of their skin."

Silva said one of the most interesting facts she learned through her research was that Parks was the first black female to be laid out in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., after her death. This, she said, was a symbol of what an influential person Parks had become.

Tia Amore and Coryne Clesos, both seventh graders, performed a skit for their project in the National History Day contest. The topic of their skit was Martin Luther King and the idea of discrimination. The girls used minimal props and wore their normal clothing as costumes as they acted out a 10-minute skit.

"We thought it would be really fun to do something like this instead of just a poster board," said Amore. "We had no idea how difficult it was going to turn out to be."
Despite the unexpected challenges the girls faced, their teachers, the judges, said they were impressed with the final project.

"They were good about integrating Martin Luther King's words into their characters in the script and I think it was a nice way to present the facts," Constance Tundis said of the girls' project. Tundis is the English teacher on the Inferno team who graded the girls' skit. "I think they were very brave to do this. It is not easy to sit and read that much of a script out loud and perform in front of a bunch of adults."

Of the 117 projects entered at Knotty Oak Middle School, only two were skits. There were 14 Power Point presentations and the rest were poster boards.
"The students were a little confused at first about the assignment, basically because they are used to more direction and, in this case, they were given a bit more leeway than they are familiar with for a project like this," said Michael Bettez, the social studies teacher on the Inferno team helping to coordinate the school's involvement in the NHD events and the social studies curriculum coordinator for the school. "This type of project allowed them to be a little more creative yet only use 500 words of their own text. It is not as easy of a task as one might think."

The students were allowed to work on their projects either individually, in teams or in groups. They were given two months to work on them and their teachers guided them through the entire process. Over the course of the last two weeks, they were allocated many hours of class time to work on their projects as well.
"The process is very much a part of the seventh-grade curriculum this year," Bettez said. "The students were given credit and did receive grades on these projects."
Seventh-grade teachers at the school, acting as judges, were provided with rubrics from the National History Day coordinators on which to base their assessments. Historic quality, relation to the theme, clarity of presentation and compliance to the rules were some of the criteria that the judges took into consideration when looking through the projects.

"Each seventh grade social studies teacher had their students start working on these projects in early January; but, it wasn't until the last few weeks that we as teachers started to feel better about things as the students began bringing their poster boards in so we could see the progress and then the results," Bettez said. "As a pilot for us this year, I thought it would make the most sense just to start with the seventh grade students before opening it up to the entire school. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but I think everything turned out very well for the first year."

The winners of the Flat River Middle School National History Day contest were, for individual exhibit, Peter Molo for his topic on the Under-ground Railroad, and, for group exhibit, Charlotte Brachen and Kelsey Underwood for their project on Rosa Parks.