College Board Advanced Placement World History Class Audit
Course Description
Advanced Placement World History is a 5-credit, full year course. The course enables students to develop understanding of the evolution of global processes and contacts, in interaction with different types of human societies. This understanding is advanced through a combination of selective factual knowledge and appropriate analytical analysis. The course highlights the nature of changes in international frameworks and their causes and consequences, as well as comparisons among major societies. It emphasizes relevant factual knowledge used in conjunction with leading interpretive issues and types of historical evidence. The structure of the course involves lectures, class discussions, plus in-depth readings of interpretative and historiographical materials.
The Six AP World History Themes
- The relationship of change and continuity from 8,000 BCE to the present.
- Impact of interaction among and within major societies.
- Impact of technology, economics, and demography on people and the environment.
- Systems of social structure and gender structure.
- Cultural, religious, and intellectual developments.
- Changes in functions and structures of states and in attitudes toward states and political identities, including the emergence of the nation-state.
Purpose and Organization of Course Activities
AP World History is the equivalent of a college-level survey course in world history. Like college students, you are expected to read the assigned pages in the textbook as listed in the unit calendars and take notes in the charts and types of graphic organizers provided by the teacher. In designing this course, the College Board aimed to help you gain the higher-order thinking skills you will need to be successful in college.
For example, we will analyze primary sources, both texts and visuals. This primary source analysis will help you directly with the tasks required for the Document-Based Question (DBQ) essay on the exam, but the daily use of historical materials also will help you practice using evidence to make plausible arguments. You also will become expert at identifying point of view, context, and bias in these sources.
A second important habit of mind you will develop over the year is assessing issues of change and continuity over time, including the capacity to deal with change as a process and with questions of causation. You will constantly be keeping track of changes in history through the annotated timelines and maps you will construct both in class and for homework in all five units. Moreover, these timelines and maps will help you see global patterns and processes over time and space while also connecting local developments to global ones and moving through levels of generalizations from the global to the particular. This skill will be especially useful for writing the Change Over Time essay on the AP World History Exam and often is a major focus in upper-level college courses in the social sciences as well as in the discipline of science. About two or three times in each unit, we will conduct whole-class seminars where you will discuss diversity of interpretations that historians present in your textbook and in other secondary sources such as articles given to you by the teacher. We also will do simulations and debates that challenge you to address questions about human commonalities and differences and the historical context of culturally diverse ideas and values.
As seniors in high school, you have already clearly developed the skill of comparison. You will improve that skill by comparing within and among societies, including comparing societies’ reactions to global processes. On all of the graphic organizers, annotated timelines, and annotated maps you create, there will be directions to write a thesis statement that generalizes the data you presented. An easy thesis statement can be simply a comparison, a statement of the similarities and differences. The third essay you will write on the AP World History Exam in May is the Comparative essay, so this skill is extremely important for you to improve.
Textbook
Bulliet, Richard, et al. The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History. New York Houghton Mifflin Company. 2008.
Supplemental Materials
Archaeology magazine
China-A simulation of ancient Chung Kuo (Sargent, Marcia and Wanda Baral, Interaction Publishers, 1996)
Cracking the AP World History Exam: Student Study Guide (Princeton Review, 2004).
Critical Thinking Using Primary Sources in World History. (Herman, Gerald and Wendy Wilson. Walch Publishing, 2004)
Document-Based Assessment Activities for Global History Classes by Noonan (J., Weston Walch, 1999)
DBQ Practice: 10 AP-Style DBQs, Williams, ed., (Social Studies School Services, 2004)
Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of Human Societies (Diamond, Jared, W.W Norton and Company, 2005)
The Human Record-Volumes I & II (Andrea & Overfield, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005)
World History Best Practices Resources (The College Board Advanced Placement program, 2002)
World History Activators (Interaction Publishers, 2000)
The Write Path: A College Preparatory Reading and Writing Program Teacher Guide History-Social Science. (Swanson, Mary Catherine, and Gary Kroesch. Avid Center: Avid Press, 2002)
AP World History Yearly Syllabus
September/October/November Marking Period One
Emergence of Human Communities (Chapters 1-3)
Formation of New Cultural Communities (Chapters 4-7)
Growth and Interaction of Cultural Communities (Chapters 8-9)
River Valley Civilizations, Greece, Rome, Han China, Iran, India, Communication and Exchange
Activities include:
Writing: Students will write an essay, assessing the validity of the following statement, “The Bible is a reasonably accurate source for the history of the Jewish people from the period of the Egyptian captivity to the Babylonian captivity.”
Cooperative Groups: Judging a Dispute: Students will be randomly assigned to a group. The groups are Monarchy, Aristocracy, Oligarchy or Direct Democracy. Each group will judge a dispute between a wealthy landowner and a poor neighbor; each group is to judge the dispute based on the beliefs of the group. After the group comes to a consensus, the group will create poster outlining its judgment.
Skills include:
Analyzing documents that contradict and how to use them in an effective DBQ
Free Response writing tasks
Simulation-India
Original Poetry
Content specific vocabulary
November/December/January Marking Period Two
Growth and Interaction of Cultural Communities (Chapters 10-11)
Interregional Patterns of Culture and Contact (Chapters 12-15)
The Globe Encompassed (Chapters 16-20)
Islam, Christian Europe, East Asia, Americas, Mongols, and Maritime Revolution
Activities include:
Analyzing Primary Sources: Students will analyze artwork from the Islamic Civilization and Medieval Europe. Each student is to find similarities and differences between the two civilizations and describe why there are similarities and differences.
Cooperative Groups: Talk Show-Each group will create an original talk-show skit presenting the important accomplishments of one of the following people: Genghis Khan, Khubilai Khan, or Zheng He.
Skills include:
Free Response writing tasks
DBQ Development
Research Paper-Americas
Content specific vocabulary
End of January Mid-Term Examination (Chapters 1-20)
February/March/April Marking Period Three
Revolutions Reshape the World (Chapters 21-25)
Global Diversity and Dominance (Chapters 26-30)
Transformations, Diversity, Slavery, Revolutions, and Imperialism
Activities include:
Analyzing Primary Sources: Trial of Robert Peel and the Corn Laws- Using primary sources the class will conduct a mock trial to determine if Robert Peel, Member of Parliament and Prime minister of Great Britain, is charged with the pain and suffering of the industrial working classes in British society due to his support of the Corn Laws.
Writing: Students will write an essay, assessing the validity of the following statement, “The New Imperialism brought improvements in the lives and status of African women.”
Skills include:
Project: What is Diversity?
DBQ Development
Original Songs
Analyzing Political Cartoons
Content specific vocabulary
April/May/June Marking Period Four
Perils and Promises of a Global Community (Chapters 31-33)
Power Balance, Collapse of Imperial Power, Cold War, Dawn of a New Order
Activities include:
Writing: Students will write an essay, assessing the validity of the following statement, “Economic development tends to be accompanied by and requires political liberalization, democratization, and secularization.”
Cooperative Groups: Each group will write a proposal to the United Nations outlining a plan that will solve the problems of population growth and the limited resources of the Earth.
Skills include:
Monologues
DBQ Development
Creating Story Books
Content specific vocabulary