AP World History Syllabus
Instructor:
Mr. Burns
Phone: Work: 571-434-4400
Room:
Email:
L302
corey.burns@lcps.org
I.
Overview:
AP World History is a year-long survey course intended to give students a
fundamental understanding of significant developments in world history.
It is also organized and taught in such a way as to prepare students for the
Advanced Placement exam in May. It is a secondary- school equivalent to a
one-semester college introductory course on world history. Like other AP
History courses, this class involves considerable amounts of reading and is
arranged chronologically for the most part. The Acorn Book, published
annually by the College Board (accessible online at
www.collegeboard.org/ap), has a detailed list of topics that we will use as a
guide. Students are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the College
Board program in World History and to make use of related review books
(such as the Princeton Review Guide or Barron’s).
II.
Course materials:
A. Duiker, William and Jackson Spielvogel. World History, 3rd ed. Australia,
Wadsworth/ Thomson Learning, 2001. [Main textbook]
B. Primary sources and documents available on the Internet (such as Paul
Halsall’s Modern History Sourcebook)
C. Newspapers and magazines (some of which are available for free online),
including The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The New York
Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, The National Review,
and The Economist.
III.
Goals:
Students successfully completing this course will:
1) know important facts, concepts, and theories pertaining to world history
and politics;
2) improve their writing and research skills;
3) be able to analyze original sources (documents, images, and maps) and
interpret basic data (graphs, charts, and tables) relevant to
historical developments from 8000 BCE to the present;
4) gain valuable experience collaborating with other students; and
5) have a better understanding of world history.
IV.
The Five Themes of AP World History:
1) Interaction between Humans and the Environment.
- Demography and Disease
- Migration
- Patterns of settlement
- Technology
2) Development and Interaction of Cultures.
- Religions
- Belief systems, philosophies, and ideologies
- Science and technology
- The arts and architecture
3) State-Building, Expansion, and Conflict.
- Political structures and forms of governance
- Empires
- Nations and nationalism
- Revolts and revolutions
- Regional, transregional, and global structures and organizations.
4) Creation, Expansion and Interaction of Economic Systems.
- Agricultural and pastoral production
- Trade and commerce
- Labor systems
- Industrialization
- Capitalism and socialism
5) Development and Transformation of Social Structures.
- Gender roles and relations
- Family and kinship
- Racial and ethnic constructions
- Social and economic classes
V.
Historical Thinking Skills (as recommended by the AP Course Description
Book)
1) Crafting Historical Arguments from Historical Evidence
-Identify, describe, and evaluate evidence from different sources
-Extract useful information, make supportable inferences, and draw
appropriate conclusions
2) Chronological Reasoning
-Identify cause-and-effect relationships throughout various cultures and
periods
-Identify and analyze large-scale cause-and-effect relationships across
various cultures and periods
-Separate clearly delineated periods of history from each other
3) Comparison and Contextualization
-Compare related historical developments and processes across place and
time and/or different societies
-Evaluate ways in which historical phenomena/ processes relate to broader
regional, national or global processes
4) Historical Interpretation and Synthesis
-Recognize the constructed nature of historical interpretation
-Identify the ways that an historian’s point of view can influence his or her
interpretation
-Recognize how models of historical interpretation/ understanding can
change over time.
VI.
Periodization (or Time Frame) for AP Exam:
1) Technological and Environmental Transformations: to c. 600 B.C.E.
2) Organization and Reorganization of Human Societies: c. 600 B.C.E. to
c. 600 C.E.
3) Regional and Transregional Interactions: c. 600 C.E. to c. 1450 C.E.
4) Global Interactions: c. 1450 C.E. to c. 1750 C.E.
5) Industrialization and Global Integration: c. 1750 C.E. to c. 1900 C.E.
6) Accelerating Global Change and Realignments: c. 1900 C.E. to the
Present
VII.
Format for the AP Exam in World History:
1) Multiple-Choice Questions (70 questions to do in 55 minutes)
2) Essay Questions (130 minutes to do all three essay questions):
a) Document-based question (or DBQ)
b) Continuity and Change-over-time question (or CCOT)
c) Comparative essay question
VIII.
Grading for this class:
Assessment will be based on:
i. multiple-choice quizzes;
ii. traditional multi-dimensional tests (with multiple-choice questions,
true-false questions, IDs (identification questions), and essays);
iii. document- or data-based questions (in which students write an
extended essay based on the analysis of original source material
and the judicious use of background knowledge);
iv. free-response questions (i.e., without documents): this includes the
Continuity and Change-Over-Time (CCOT) Essays and
Comparative Essays;
v. oral reports and PowerPoint presentations;
vi. simulations and debates; and
vii. research projects
Homework and class participation will also be factored into a student’s
quarter-, semester- and year grade at Dominion High School. The AP
grade, it should be remembered, is issued separately by the College Board
and does not always correlate to a student’s grade at Dominion High School;
those students who have taken other AP tests should already know
this.
IX.
Social Science Fair:
Every student enrolled in AP World History is required to submit a research
project for the Social Science Fair.
X.
Academic Integrity:
Students are required to do their own work. Copying other students’ work,
cheating on tests, or plagiarizing material (whether from the Internet or from
books) is a violation of Dominion High School’s Honor Code and is clearly
unacceptable. If students are ever in doubt as to what is permissible and what
is not, they may ask the instructor.
XI.
Summer Assignment: As part of their summer assignment, students will read
the following the book:
Tolan, Sandy. The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the
Middle East. New York, Bloomsbury USA, 2006; and