Students advance to State History Day

After extensive research and meticulous project preparation, nearly two dozen Delano Middle School students are advancing to the State History Day competition at the University of Minnesota on April 28.

 

History Day is open to students in sixth grade and eighth grade who are members of the Advanced Language Arts program. This year’s theme of “Conflict and Compromise in History” challenged them to not only build a base of knowledge about a topic of their choice, but also offer analysis and an explanation of why that event was significant.

 

“It’s just a higher level of learning,” said eighth-grader Livia Loecken, who along with team members Erin Green and Grace Ward were part of a Delano sweep in the Documentary category at the regional competition in Mankato on March 19. “We do learn about some of this stuff in advance, but some of the techniques we learn as far as making videos and presenting our project and getting feedback from judges (requires more than a typical assignment).”

 

Those qualifying for state and their categories included:

• Performance: Katie Harder, Faith Tellers, Isaac Jacobson

• Website: Victoria Schafer, Grace Danielson, Aubrey Wittwer

• Exhibit: Larissa Gust, Elizabeth Hajas, Campbell Logan, Nick Black, Tommy Huotari, Jacob Hendrickson

• Documentary: Erin Green, Grace Ward, Livia Loecken, Erica Kazin, Megan Westberg, Kiersten Koets, Katherine Baker, Gabby Stoudt, Abby Hohenstein.

 

Students earning Honorable Mention honors at the regional competition included Paris Kolstad, Jaxon Duberstein, Dylan Teig, Logan Felknor, Larissa Pietila and Peyton Logan.

 

Projects

Loecken, Green and Ward presented on Eleanor Roosevelt because they wanted to explore the progression of women’s rights.

 

“We took a trip to the Minneapolis Public Library to research more in depth about our topic and get primary sources from their archives,” said Green. “I really like doing History Day this year because this is the first year that I’ve done a documentary and it was really fun to put it together.”

 

In the website category Danielson and Wittwer, both three-sport athletes, did a project on Title IX.

 

“We were kind of struggling to come up with a topic at first,” said Danielson. “Then we looked into Title IX and realized that it wasn’t just about sports, it was about education too, so we got really interested.”

 

Wittwer said the beginning of the year consisted of research on the topic, but learning to build a website that included text, audio, video and photos was an additional process.

 

“Over the last two months we started putting it together and finished it,” she said.

 

Danielson said the technical knowledge has transferred to other classes as well.

 

“After we started our website we started doing more of them in science and other classes, so it has helped us,” she said.

 

Overall, Green said the chance to participate in History Day is one that she doesn’t take for granted.

 

“Not a lot of people get to do it, so it’s a good opportunity and a privilege, I guess, to be able to compete in it,” she said.