This is the first of several posts this summer to keep communication lines open with those who attend my AP World History Summer Workshops. Specifically, I want teachers from my workshops to have a summary of what we covered as well as quick links to the resources mentioned on each day. So, here’s a review of day one . .
Equity and Access. First of all, the College Board’s Equity and Access policy is crucial to Advanced Placement programs. This is not packing classes with as many students as possible but seeking out underrepresented subgroups who have the potential to do well in AP classes. (You can find more this at AP Potential.) Recruiting students not traditionally inclined or recommended to take AP classes is a significant change to how many teachers conceive of Advanced Placement. Personally, I find the greatest satisfaction not in the most advanced students who enter my class, but rather in those who are uncertain of themselves, who work hard and are transformed by the effort. There is a risk in opening the class to a wider range of students but I love being part of the experience that awakens students to their potential.
To deal with an increasingly wider variety of students in AP classes many teachers outsource a lot of the material to the web and devote more class time for skill building. Many do a much better job than I do. For example, see Mrs. Lowe’s site here. On my website, the Key Concept links, readings, articles and podcasts for Period 3 can be found here. With the growing number of students in my classes they also do a great deal of peer review and self reflection. For example, here is an example of a DBQ post-writing self reflection and here is a peer evaluation for the same essay (2003 DBQ). For the 2011 DBQ, click here.
The Nature of AP World History. The discipline of World History is relatively new. It is not the same methods as other modes of historical inquiry just aimed at a larger topic. It seeks rather to identify concepts and recognize large patterns and then subject them to several types of analysis. In AP World history this is accomplished via Historical Themes, Key Concepts, Historical Thinking Skills and Geographic Regions. By the way, if you want the wall posters of the 5 AP World History Themes and the Key Concepts I had in the room you can find the files for them here. Also, I praised the book by Sam Wineburg called Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. If you are serious about revolutionizing your concept of teaching history I highly recommend this book. To illustrate variations on periodization I mentioned the book Destiny Disrupted. I would add that this book is also a fantastic history of the worl
d from a much different point of view than we are used to. But this is redundant; isn’t periodization just another POV on what’s important in history? I urge you to read this book as well.
Although it pertains primarily to US history, another fantastic book is History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History. Want to see the Cuban POV on the Cuban Missile crisis, the French or British view of the American Revolution, or the North Korean view of the Pueblo Incident? This is your book.
The Curriculum Framework. The main point I try to drive home on Day 1 is the centrality of the Curriculum Framework to your teaching. I have strong opinions about this and others disagree, but I believe many teachers teach the course in a far too textbook-centric manner. I prefer to draw from a variety of resources with the goal of completely addressing the Key Concepts and the necessary examples to illustrate them. The textbook is merely one of many resources to that end and my stu
dents do not read every one of its chapters. Perhaps I would feel differently if the AP Exam were a big test on Bentley, Strayer or Stearns, but it’s not.
Scope and Sequence. Because teaching the Key Concepts in order (6.1, 6.2, 6.3 etc) doesn’t seem to flow well, I broke them apart and ordered them into topical and/or chronological mashups in order to ensure coverage. This makes more sense to the students and the mashups serve as great study guides for the Unit Exams.
I have created files for each time period below. Each contains the Key Concepts in brief, the order in which I teach them (mashups), and a list of every essay for that period that has shown up on the AP World History test:
Periods I and 2
Period 3
Period 4
Period 5
Period 6
As you devise your own system for teaching the course you might find the Correlation Guides from the textbook publishers helpful. These link they pages of the textbook to the Key Concept outline. However you decided to order content the Curriculum Framework is your friend and keeps you from being overwhelmed by the scope of the subject.
To see how multiple choice questions on the AP Exam are linked to the Curriculum Framework, look at pages 197-212 in the College Board manual you got at the workshop.
Equally important is continuously subjecting the historical knowledge in the Key Concepts to analyses according to the Historical Thinking Skills. For example, here is a lesson on building the skill of causation based on the trade networks of Key Concept 2.3. (I’ve deleted the key from this version to keep it out of the hands of our students but you can find the full version on the google drive.)
Geography. Students must know the Geographic Regions as outlined in the Curriculum Framework. Confusing regions (East Asia with Southeast Asia for example) can destroy an entire essay attempt. As with the time Periods, there are arguments and ambiguities in these regions students should be aware of (is Egypt in North Africa or the Middle East? Why or why not?) A great video to introduce the POV of map making is this clip from the West Wing TV series. Here is an interesting article of how maps can lie.
Period I 8000 BCE to 600 BCE. I have written another post specifically about designing your first Unit (Period 1). I have also blogged about the specifics of what I do for this Unit, so I won’t belabor those points again on this page.
I am of the opinion that document analysis should come early and often. The one we did as a group in class today you can find here.
Beyond the blog posts mentioned above for Period I, two other files that might be of interest are the Where the Hell is Matt video that can be used to introduce students to the globe. And finally, a great site on the peopling of the earth (key concept 1.1) can be found here.
If there’s anything you remember that I left out please email me and I’ll get it on here.