2024 Summer Assignment Materials:

 

 

United States History I Honors prepares students for their AP US History exam at the end of Junior year through critical thinking college-level course work as well as for students to be well informed, educated, active participants in our democratic republic.

The course has been designed to encourage students to become apprentice historians who are able to use historical facts and evidence in the service of creating deeper conceptual understandings of critical developments in U.S. history. This AP course will train students in the application of historical thinking skills as well as the thematic learning objectives outlined below:  

• Identity (ID)
• Work, Exchange, and Technology (WXT)
• Peopling (PEO)
• Politics and Power (POL)
• America in the World (WOR)
• Environment and Geography – Physical and Human (ENV)
• Ideas, Beliefs and Culture (CUL)

Historical Thinking Skills

Skill Group 1: Contextualization

Thinking about contextualization involves the skill to see how a specific event or development fits into the context of larger and broader historical developments, often on the national or global level. For example, American historians have tried to understand the anti-slavery movement in the U.S. in the context of 19th-century efforts by nations in Europe and Latin American to end slavery and even the movement to end serfdom in Russia, as well as how long it took to achieve equality after liberation.

To use proper contextualization, you must do one of the following:

1. Describe an accurate historical context for a specific historical development or process.
2. Explain how a relevant context influenced a specific historical development or process.
3. Use context to explain the relative historical significance of a specific historical development or process.

Skill Group 2: Comparison

Thinking about comparison involves the ability to describe, compare, contrast, and evaluate two or more historical developments in the same era or from different time periods. It involves the ability to study a given historical event or development from multiple perspectives.

Using the Civil War era, the South from its perspective compared its struggle to fight for independence from the Union to the American Revolution. Historians have often compared and contrasted the struggle by African Americans to achieve equal rights after the Civil War with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to better understand each development.

To use the historical thinking skill of comparison, you must do one of the following:

1. Describe similarities and/or differences between different historical developments or processes.
2. Explain relevant similarities and/or differences between specific historical developments and processes.
3. Explain the relative historical significance of similarities and/or differences between different historical developments or processes

Skill Group 3: Causation

Thinking about causation involves the ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate the relationships among many historical events as both causes and effects. Historians often try to distinguish between immediate, proximate, and long term-causes and effects. Some events and conditions may have some correlation without proof of a direct causal relation while others are only coincidental or without a relationship.

The Civil War era is a rich resource for the study of causation. The firing on Fort Sumter sparked the armed conflict, much like the first shots at Lexington Green were the immediate cause that led to fighting in Massachusetts in 1775. One could argue that the secession of the Southern states from the Union after the election of Lincoln was the proximate cause of the conflict, but slavery, states’ rights, and deep-rooted economic and cultural differences were long-term causes of the North and South going to war. Were the failed attempts to compromise before secession primary or secondary causes of the Union’s breakdown? Some historians argue that the economic Panic of 1857 contributed to North-South divisions, while others see it as only a coincidental event. Understanding multiple causes and effects of historical events involves analyzing and making judgments about their relative significance.

To use the historical thinking skill of causation, you must do one of the following:

1. Describe causes or effects of a specific historical development or process.
2. Explain the relationship between causes and effects of a specific historical development or process.
3. Explain the difference between primary and secondary causes, and between short- and long-term effects.
4. Explain the relative historical significance of different causes and/or effects.

Skill Group 4: Continuity and Change Over Time

Thinking about continuity and change over time involves the ability to recognize, analyze, and evaluate the dynamics of history over periods of time of varying lengths. It often involves discovering patterns. The study of themes in history is often the tool of choice to understand change over time.

The decades before the Civil War raise interesting questions about the continuity or change over time concerning attitudes towards slavery in the North and South. Historians are interested in how the institution of slavery, which viewed as a “necessary evil” after the American Revolution, became views as a “positive good” in the South while many in the North came to view slavery as both economically unnecessary and morally wrong. Often continuity and change cannot be measured during a presidential administration or over a generation, but across longer periods of time. Tracing change over time by theme, such as changing views on slavery, often becomes clear only over a number of historical periods.

To use the historical thinking skill of causation, you must do one of the following:

1. Describe and explain patterns of continuity and/or change over time.
2. Explain the relative historical significance of specific historical developments in relation to a larger pattern of continuity and/or change.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
    
    
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