Welcome to AP World History! You are about to take a journey that begins at the dawn of human existence and ends in modern times.
This course is designed to blend a variety of digital resources and technology. Much of the course content is flipped so we can dedicate a significant amount of class time to focus on building skills required for analyzing documents and writing sophisticated essays. Therefore, much of the responsibility for learning the historical facts is yours.
The purpose of the AP World History course is to develop greater understanding of the evolution of global processes and contacts, in interaction with deifferent types of human socities. This understanding is advanced through a combination of selective factual knowledge and appropriate analytical skills. AP World History highlights the nature of changes in international frameworks and their causes and consequences, as well as comparisons among major societies. AP World World History emphasizes relevant factual knowledge used in conjunction with leading interpretive issues and types of historical evidence. The course builds on an understanding of cultural, institutional and technological precedents that, along with geography, set the human stage. Periodization, explicatity discussed, forms an organizing principle for dealing with change and continuity throughout the course, along with consistent attention to contacts among societies that form the core of world history as a field of study.
According to the College Board’s website, AP World History focuses primarily on developing the four History Thinking Skills, and teaching students to analyze history form there. From taking AP World History, students will be able to:
Craft Historical Arguments from Historical Evidence- developing the ability to make inferences based on different information and crafting arguments about of that information.
Use Chronological Reasoning- understanding that sequences of events play a key role in understanding and analyzing history. Students will be able to differentiate between long term effects and isolated incidents, and the different impacts of the two.
Use Comparison and Contextualization- Comparison and contextualization are useful to more than just World History. Learning hose to do both will help students to solve problems in their everyday life as well as in an academic setting.
Conduct Historical Interpretation and Synthesis- developing the ability to describe, analyze, and evaluate interpretations of the past as revealed through primary and secondary sources.
Student will also study four separate themes of world history:
Theme 1: Interaction between Humans and Environment. Students will learn about diseases and the demographics the affect, the migration of humans across time, patterns of settlement around the world, and the importance of technology in developing civilizations.
Theme 2: Development and Interaction of Cultures. Students will develop an understanding of religions, belief systems, science and technologies effect on government, and the arts and architecture’s effect on the general population.
Theme 3: State-Building, Expansion, and Conflict. Students will learn about political structures and their forms of governance, empires, nationalism, and revolutions across different types of government.
Theme 4: Creation, Expansion, and Interaction of Economic Systems. Students will gain an appreciation for agricultural and pastoral production, trade and commerce patterns, labor systems, and industrialization.
Students considering taking AP World History or any other Advanced Placement course should remember how much time and energy they require. Students that commit themselves to AP classes will see a dramatic improvements in their SAT scores as well as their college preparedness.
Accountability is key and the teacher will check your content knowledge (whether or not you are doing the assigned readings) through regular assessments (quizzes and chapter reading outline assignments). Check the assignment calendar on this web site regularly, complete your readings and assignments, learn and apply the skills we learn in class, and your likelihood of being successful on the AP World History Exam May 17, 2018 will be high. Work hard, work smart, ask good questions, and be the best student you can be!
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This is the powerpoint presentation that I used at the Advanced Placement World History Student Curriculum Review at John A Ferguson Senior High School on Saturday, November 19, 2016.
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