AP United States History

2015 Changes to the class

7 Themes

• Identity• Work, exchange, and technology• Peopling• Politics and power• America in the world• Environment and geography• Ideas, beliefs, and culture

Identity

• Focuses on the formation on American national identity and group identities

• Overarching Question: How and why debates over American national identity changed over time?

Work, exchange, and technology

• Focus on the development of American economies based on agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing.

• Overarching Question: How have changes in markets, transportation, and technology affected American society from colonial times to present day?

Peopling

• Focus on why and how the various people who moved to and within the United States adapted to their new social and physical environments.

• Overarching Question: Why have people migrated to, from, and within North America?

Politics and power

• Examines the debates over the role of the state in society as well as its potential as an active agent for change.

• Overarching Question: How and why have different political and social groups competed for influence over society and government in what would become the United States?

America in the world

• Focus on the global context in which the United States originated and developed as well as the influence of the United States on world affairs.

• Overarching Question: How have events in North America and the United States related to contemporary developments in the rest of the world?

Environment and geography

• Examination of the role of the environment, geography, and climate in both constraining and shaping human actions.

• Overarching Questions: How did interactions with the natural environment shape the institutions and values of various groups living on the North American continent?

Ideas, beliefs, and culture

• Explores the roles that ideas, beliefs, social mores, and creative expression have played in shaping the United States.

• Overarching Question: How and why have moral, philosophical, and cultural values changed in what would become the United States?

Historical Thinking Skills

College Board requires that all questions address at least on of the following.

It is YOUR responsibility to address these in your responses.

Historical causation

•The ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate the relationships among multiple historical causes and effects, distinguishing between those that are long term and proximate, and among coincidence, causation, and correlation.

Continuity and change over time

•The ability to recognize and analyze the dynamics of historical continuity and change over periods of time of varying lengths

Periodization

•Historical thinking involves the ability to describe, analyze, evaluate, and construct models that historians use to organize history into discrete periods.

Comparison

•The ability to describe, compare, and evaluate multiple historical developments within one society or more

Contextualization

•The ability to connect historical events and processes to specific circumstances of time and place and to broader regional, national, or global processes

Historical argumentation

•The ability to define and frame a question about the past and address it through the construct of an arguement

Appropriate use of relevant historical information

•Ability to evaluate and describe evidence about the past from diverse sources

Interpretation

•Ability to describe, analyze, evaluate, and construct diverse interpretations of the past, and being aware of how a particular circumstance affects interpretation.

synthesis

•Ability to develop meaningful and persuasive new understandings of the past by applying all of the other historical thinking skills

AP Test FormatChanges for the 2015 test

Multiple Choice

• 55 questions in 55 minutes• Sets relate to a given stimuli• 4 answer choices• Related to a thinking skill• Worth 40% of the exam grade

Short Answer

• 45 minutes• Worth 20 % of the exam• 4 Questions

DBQ: data based question

• 1 question in 60 minutes • 7 documents • Answers an historical thinking question• Worth 25% of the exam

Long essay question

• Choice of 2 prompts• Worth 15% of test• Approximate time 35 minutes