breaking down the apush exam historical thinking skills, thematic analysis, and nine periods of...

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.

Historical Thinking Skill 1: Historical Causation

Historical Thinking Skill 1: Historical Causation

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

Historical Thinking Skill 1: Historical Causation

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

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate

Historical Thinking Skill 1: Historical Causation

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

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate

Historical Thinking Skill 1: Historical Causation

• Slavery

• Secession

• Fort Sumter

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate

Historical Thinking Skill 1: Historical Causation

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

Long-Term

Proximate

Immediate

Historical Thinking Skill 1: Historical Causation

• 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.

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

• Understand how particular circumstances and perspectives shape interpretations.

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

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

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

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

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

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

Why the Change?

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

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

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

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

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

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

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

• 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…”

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

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

Historical Thinking Skill 8: Interpretation

• 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).