POLAND — Five Whittier Middle School students from RSU 16 will travel to Washington, D.C., in June to represent Maine in the History Channel’s National History Day Competition.

Making the trip will be Bailee Kinney, Emma Galipeau-Eldridge, Sigrid Sibley, Jonathan Koczkodan and Allison Kelly.

The NHD theme this year was “Turning Points in History.” Ecah Whittier student conducted rigorous research. They developed a claim, identified primary and secondary materials that supported that claim, catalogued their research in annotated bibliographies and wrote multiple drafts of their research findings.

Students were then required to create a high quality product to illustrate their research. The project could be a website, paper, exhibit or documentary. The students spoke in front of judges at a schoolwide event, which included every student and more than 40 community volunteers, to defend their thesis statements and their projects.

The winners were chosen to represent the school at the state level. In the statewide competition the Whittier Middle School students took home five of the 12 awards: more than 40 percent of the projects placing for the national event were from this small middle school in its second year of participating in the event.

The five students now have the opportunity to represent the school at the national level, and they represent so much more than themselves and their history projects. They represent the families, schools and communities that support and educate them.

Students and families are fundraising to cover the expenses of participating in the national contest. To find out more about NHD or to make a donation, visit the link to Whittier’s NHD page at http://www.rsu16.org/WMS/WMS_NHD.html.