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Ohio Youth History Day

Selecting and Narrowing Down a Topic

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What makes a good research topic?

How can we gather information on a topic?

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Topic Selection

  • What are you interested in learning more about?
  • What ideas connect to the National History Day theme?
  • What sources can you use to learn more about your topic?

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Gallery Walk

  • To help you decide on a topic of interest, we will be exploring different sources on different topic ideas.
  • You will have 15 minutes to make your way through the Gallery and explore the books, photos, timelines, etc.
  • In a Museum Gallery, what etiquette is expected?

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Gallery Walk

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Narrowing Down a Topic

  • What can happen if your topic is too big?
  • What if your topic is too small?

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Goldilocks

“JUST RIGHT” Topics= A Narrow Topic

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Topic Idea: Plants

TOO BROAD

Narrow

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Topic Idea: Pollinating Plants

TOO BROAD

Narrow

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Topic Idea: The Revolutionary War

TOO BROAD

Narrow

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Topic Idea: the Battle of Gettysburg

TOO BROAD

Narrow

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Topic Idea: The Declaration of Independence

TOO BROAD

Narrow

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Topic Idea: Government

TOO BROAD

Narrow

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Broad v. Narrow Topic Sort

  • Work with a partner to sort the topics along the bottom of your page into TOO BROAD or NARROW topics
  • Our goal is to find narrow topics

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Brain Dump

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  • Think about what topic most interested you on the Gallery Walk.
  • It is most likely a Broad topic.
  • You will have 2 mins. to write down as many “Narrow” topics connected to that larger topic that you can think of

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PIEs

  • Now that you have an initial list of ideas, we can begin to sort those ideas into different categories:
    • People
    • Places
    • Ideas
    • Events
  • You may not have ideas for every single category, but this will help you expand on topic ideas