Breaking Down the APUSH Exam Historical Thinking Skills, Thematic Analysis, and Nine Periods of U.S.…

Breaking Down the APUSH Exam

Historical Thinking Skills, Thematic Analysis, and Nine Periods of U.S. History

9 Historical Thinking Skills:

• Historical Causation• Patterns of Continuity and Change• Periodization• Comparison• Contextualization• Historical Argumentation• Appropriate Use of Historical Evidence• Interpretation• Synthesis

7 Historical Themes

• American and National Identity• Work, Exchange, and Technology• Migration and Settlement• Politics and Power• America in the World• Geography and the Environment• Culture and Society

9 Historical Periods (Henretta)

• Transformations of North America (1450-1700)• British North America & the Atlantic World (1660-1763)• Revolution and Republican Culture (1763-1820)• Overlapping Revolutions (1800-1860)• Creating & Preserving a Continental Nation (1844-1877)• Industrializing America (1877-1917)• Domestic and Global Challenges (1890-1945)• The Modern State & the Age of Liberalism (1945-1980)• Global Capitalism & End of American Century (1980-)

Historical Thinking Skill 1: Historical Causation

• Identify, analyze, and evaluate relationships among historical events as both causes and effects.



• Many events have correlation but no direct proof of causation- beware of coincidental events.


• Historians often try to distinguish between immediate, proximate, and long-term causes and effects.

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate


• Example from reading: what were the causes of the Civil War?

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate


• Slavery

• Secession

• Fort Sumter

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate


• Example from text: what were the causes of the “discovery” of America?

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate


• The Crusades

• New Inventions

• Christopher Columbus

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate

Let’s Try This:

• How did each event lead to the other?

– The Renaissance– The Reformation– National Monarchies– Exploration

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

• Describe, analyze, and evaluate diverse interpretations of historical sources and construct one’s own interpretation.


• Understand how particular circumstances and perspectives shape interpretations.


• Example from reading: “What historians have written tells us as much about their own generation as about the Reconstruction period”


• Dunning Interpretation: Reconstruction was forced upon the South through armed occupation and placed in power incompetent blacks who misruled.


• Revisionist Interpretation: despite its faults, Reconstruction was a bold interracial experiment with positive results.

Why the Change?


• The civil rights movement or “Second Reconstruction” changed historians perspectives in the 1950s and 1960s.


• Example from the text: How is the interaction between Europeans and Native Americans depicted?




• 1844 textbook: “But in every part of the New World there were people to whom this custom [cannibalism] was familiar.”


• 1920 textbook: “His powers of smell, sight, and hearing were incredibly keen … but at the same time he showed a stolid stupidity … The Indian seems to have been generally friendly to the European on their first meeting…”


• After the long period of industrialization and defeat of native tribes, Indians became “noble savages” who were uncorrupted by civilization.


• Still more changes after the civil rights movement evolved in the 1970s…

And Now More on Interpretation…

• As a group- identify and record at least one example of evidence and one example of interpretation for each paragraph (divide and conquer).

Documents

Breaking Down the APUSH Exam Historical Thinking Skills, Thematic Analysis, and Nine Periods of U.S.…