Midterm Prep (Fall Review) Due by Monday, December 9 by 8am The short-term reason: You have a midterm in December simply so you have experience “chunking” large amounts of material. It’s not worth more than any normal 2-part chapter test. Students have told me that the chapter tests don’t always give them experience with huge swaths of material that the AP Exam requires, so the midterm is an exercise to expose you to that. Nothing more. It is no reason to stress, and I will count it the same as any unit test (the grade gets “doubled” like Necker’s plan for the 3rd Estate, so it goes in the book like a blue side and green side). I want you to study for this exam. A study guide for the first half of the course will be helpful. The long-term benefit: With a little effort during the next few weeks, you can have summaries of the key terms from this course for easy access for the midterm, but also in May when the AP exam is near, and you have begun to forget all that you have learned. Students consistently report to me that these review assignments are extremely useful. There is no grade here. There is only the upside of creating a study guide for the class. Teachers do listen: I want you to benefit from the review assignments, but I don’t like to give assignments that are tedious if I can avoid it. From 1998-2021, students had to define every one of these terms for themselves and they told me that while the assignment was very helpful, the amount of work was challenging and the work itself was tedious. I listened. Starting in 2022, I tried to crowd-source. Every row is going to be given a section to complete with 10 IDs. Depending on the number of kids in your row, you might have 2-5 terms for which you are responsible. You need to provide the ESSENTIAL information in a brief 3 or 4 bullet points, so you have to work together. Everyone in the row is tasked with these IDs, including having a 2nd person go over the original person’s work for accuracy and completeness as their editor. If something is inaccurate or incomplete, it will affect everyone in the class. I will go over the study guide, commenting on incomplete, overly wordy, or incorrect entries. But I will not grade it, so once again, you don’t really have an incentive to cheat. The work is reasonable, the endgame is helpful to all, so just do your job. Google/AI is not your friend: Each term should have 3 or 4 bullet points (no more, no less). Use your notes and/or the textbook for info. Simply googling will not help. AI will not help. Your teacher and your textbook authors have already ensured you have good information. Google owes you nothing. AI does not analyze properly. Year after year, I see answers generated from Google or AI which are either incomplete or flat-out wrong. Google does not analyze. It gives you facts. You need analysis. AI gives you the appearance of analysis without actual analysis. Take a shortcut and you will most likely hurt the class. Take the time to find the right answer in your notes. It is worth the extra few minutes to be right because this is meant as a study guide! Be certain you include the essential facts. This is an exercise in analyzing each term, to prove you can draw out the most significant facts without sacrificing brevity! Be specific but be succinct. We don’t need background or biography; we need to reduce each ID to the most important and essential 3-4 items. I will use an AI/plagiarism detector! Division of labor: Everyone in the row is responsible for dividing up their section and each student should put his name next to the IDs he completed. A second student should put his name next to the ones he checked over (“edited”). Two sets of eyes will help ensure that each term is accurate and complete. You must list the responsible student for each term and his editor, so every point should have both, e.g. “completed by Lafayette, edited by Sieyes.” If I comment on a term, then that means those two must fix it. One of the ten terms for each row is made up of 1-3 “bookmark” dates. One bullet point per year is usually sufficient to explain what vital event happened that year. The admission: I know group work is a challenge and many students loathe it. We have 3 of these review assignments during the year (so you have a complete study guide for the AP Exam) and I am open to changing how we organize in future assignments. For this one, rows are the easiest way to divide the class into 6 sections: **If there are 5 guys, then everyone completes 2 terms and everyone edits 2 terms. **If there are 4 guys, then give 2 guys 3 terms and 2 guys 2 terms. The guys who have only 2 terms edit 3 of the 10 terms, while the guys with 3 terms should edit 2 terms. **If you only have 3 people in your row, then 2 of you have 3 terms, 1 guy has 4 terms. Let the guy with 4 terms edit 2, and the guys with 3 terms each edit 4. **If you have 2 guys in your row, then each guy does 5 terms, and no one has to edit. Create a Google Doc for your row and do your work together on that doc. Title it “Period (A or E), Row (1-6) Fall Review” and have ONE person submit it to the portal. Each term should have 3-4 bullet points with the essential information. Be concise! ROW 1 (row closest to the door) 1) The Renaissance & Reformation: Niccolo Machiavelli the Renaissance view of Man Impact of Renaissance on Art Desiderius Erasmus and The Northern Renaissance Martin Luther’s theology Why does Luther succeed? Major Non-Lutheran Protestants The Council of Trent & The Jesuits The Peace of Augsburg Essential Dates: 1517, 1555 ROW 2 (2nd row from the door) 2) The 16th and 17thC Mercantilism Columbian Exchange Philip II (Hapsburg) and the Armada Henry IV (Bourbon) and The Edict of Nantes Cardinal Richelieu The English Civil War The Test Act The Glorious Revolution The Act of Settlement Essential Dates: 1588, 1688 ROW 3 (3rd row from the door…closer to the door than the windows) 3) Conflicts in 17th-18thc Europe The 30 Years War The Peace of Westphalia The Fronde and Cardinal Mazarin Louis XIV (Bourbon) Peter the Great (Romanov) War of Spanish Succession & Balance of Power The Peace of Utrecht The Impact of the 18thc Economic “Bubbles” in both England & France The impact of the Austrian Succession and 7 Years Wars Essential Dates: 1648, 1713 ROW 4 (4th row from the door…closer to the windows than the door) 4) Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment: Heliocentrism in the context of the 16th and 17thc Newton’s view of the world Natural Law Theory Thomas Hobbes and John Locke Montesquieu Voltaire Rousseau Adam Smith & Laissez-faire The Enlightened Despots The American Revolution in an Enlightenment context Essential Dates: 1776 (More) ROW 5 (2nd row from the windows) 5) French Revolution: The Ancien Regime and the Estates system Economic challenges for France in the 1780s The National Assembly and the Tennis Court Oath Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen The Great Fear The Sans Culottes and the Mountain Robespierre & the “2nd Revolution” The Terror and The Thermidorian Reaction The Fructidorian Coup Essential Date: 1789 ROW 6 (Closest row to the windows) 6) The 1st French Empire The Coup of Brumaire The end of the Consulate and Napoleon becoming emperor The Battle of Trafalgar The Napoleonic Code The Continental System’s failure Is Napoleon a “liberal”? Charles Talleyrand Klemens von Metternich The Congress of Vienna Essential Date: 1815 **Use your notes whenever possible. If we haven’t gone over something by the time the assignment is due, just look it up in the textbook.
