IB History of the Americas: Summer Assignment
IB History HL - Year 1
In a world that is increasingly globalized it is important to have American students develop a greater awareness of
the relationships of the United States within the global community. This course is aimed at preparing you for your
educational future as well as becoming educated citizens of the world. To this end, our summer reading will begin
our study with a focus on the colonial era in North America. This will introduce you the content of the course as well
as the types of readings that you will be doing all year in this course. You will need to recognize not only the
important people, events and themes in the history of the region, but also the historiography. This will mean that you
need to recognize how the interpretations of these people, events and themes have changed over time.
Please complete all assignments in your IB History notebook – this means you need to buy a new notebook,
dedicated solely to IB HOA! (This can be a spiral notebook or a binder.)
You will be reading Eric Foner’s Give me Liberty! You will be reading Chapters 2, 4 and 5 in this textbook to give you
background on the colonial era, and the American Revolution. The readings will be available on the district website.
You should take notes while reading and we will be having a test on this content the first week of school.
Chapter 2 – Beginnings of English America
Chapter 4 – The Struggle for Empire
Chapter 5 – The American Revolution
This is the beginning of your journey in IB and hopefully many of you will be setting your sights on the IB diploma, we
hope that this summer you will begin to think like a true historian as you prepare for the challenges that lie ahead
next year!
Feel free to contact me with questions over the summer, and I will begin to upload resources on the district website
and the MyBigCampus group soon!
Have a great summer,
Ms. Orban
orbanm@harrisoncsd.org