Advanced Placement United States
History
Welcome to APUSH! You have chosen to experience American history in a challenging and fast paced
environment. It is imperative that you understand the following: you will get out of this class what
you put into this class. Advanced Placement United States History is a College Board approved course,
and covers a college level curriculum. In order to prepare for the AP exam in May, you need to prepare
yourself to move quickly through our nation’s history so that we may remain on track throughout the
year. I have high expectations of you, including that you complete some preparatory work over the
summer so that we may begin the school year ready to go. Please develop a plan of attack for the summer
assignment so that you are not scrambling to complete the assignment with only a few days left before
school begins.
What to do before the end of the school year and over the summer:
 Check out an AP United States History textbook from the bookstore before the end of the year. Be
sure to specify that you are checking out the AP level textbook.
 Visit our class website at: www.mssmithsapush.weebly.com . Familiarize yourself with the
website, visit the tabs, and familiarize yourself with the resources posted.
 You may follow the class Twitter account (@smithsapush) for updates over the summer, however
this is not required. If you follow the class account, do not use Twitter to communicate with me.
Use my TUSD email address (sarah.smith.13@tusd1.org).
 Purchase a 2” or 3” three-ring binder in which to organize your assignments.
 Purchase a composition notebook for class notes.
 Familiarize yourself with the Cornell method of taking notes (link is on the website)
 Complete the summer assignment presented below.
If you have any questions, please email me at sarah.smith@tusd1.org.
There will be a vocabulary quiz on the second day of school, and we will begin writing AP style essays in class
during the third week of school.
I hope you have a wonderful and refreshing summer, and I look forward to meeting you on the first day of
school!
Ms. Smith
Summer Assignment
This assignment needs to be completed over summer break and is due by the first day of school. Your
assignment over the summer is to read Chapters One through Four (in the new textbook, The Enduring
Vision), or Chapters One through Four (in the old textbook, America Past and Present) and answer the
following questions. Your responses need to be typed, and they need to be completed in the order in
which the questions appear. Please see the “Instructions for submission” below. Each response needs to
be answered in a minimum of one paragraph of at least seven sentences. As you read, you should
take notes from each chapter. I recommend using the Cornell method (see website for example).
Additionally, you need to identify and define the attached vocabulary terms for each of these chapters in
at least 3 sentences for each term. As you define the terms consider why the event/idea/person is
significant enough to be on our vocabulary list. Number each vocabulary term, single space the
definition and then double space between each term.
This is an individual assignment! Duplicate assignments will be considered plagiarism and will be given a
score of zero.
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Instructions for submission
You will submit your question responses and vocabulary terms using turnitin.com. You will need
to create an account for turnitin.com by going to the website and following instructions. This
website is only used for turning in written work, and checks for plagiarism. Any work containing
more than 10% plagiarized material will be given a score of zero. Please email me with concerns.
Create two separate files to be turned in, one with your vocab and one with your written
responses. There are two assignments in Turnitin.com, please make sure you are uploading the
correct work to the correct assignment.
The class ID is 9878510 and the enrollment password is sabino2015. You will need this
information to join the class.
Submit your assignments through the site any time over the summer, but no later than 8am on the
first day of school, Thursday, August 6.
The Planting of English America, 1500 – 1733
Theme: After a late start, a proud, nationalistic England joined the colonial race and successfully
established five colonies along the southeastern seacoast of North America. Although varying somewhat
in origins and character, all these colonies exhibited plantation agriculture, indentured and slave labor, a
tendency toward strong economic and social hierarchies, and a pattern of widely scattered, institutionally
weak settlement.
Theme: The early southern colonies’ encounters with Indians and African slaves established the patterns
of race relations that would shape the North American experience – in particular, warfare and
reservations for the Indians and lifelong slave codes for African-Americans.
Questions:
1. What did England and the English settlers really want from colonization? National glory?
Wealth? Adventure? A solution to social tensions? New sources of goods and trade? Did they get
what they wanted?
2. Were the English colonizers crueler or more tolerant than the Spanish conquistadores? Why did
the Spanish tend to settle and intermarry with the Native American population, whereas the
English did not?
3. Was the development of African slavery in the North American colonies inevitable? (Consider
that it never developed in some other colonial areas, for example, Mexico and New France.) How
would the North American colonies have been different without slavery?
Settling the Northern Colonies, 1619 – 1700
Theme: The Protestant Reformation, in its English Calvinist (Reformed) version, provided the impetus
for the settlement of New England. The New England colonies developed a fairly homogeneous social
order based on religion and semi-communal family and town settlements.
Theme: The middle colonies developed with far greater political, ethnic, religious, and social diversity,
and represented a more cosmopolitan middle ground between the tightly knit New England towns and
the scattered, hierarchical plantation south.
Questions:
1. Did the Puritans really come to America seeking religious freedom? How did they reconcile their
own religious dissent from the Church of England with their persecution of dissenters like
Hutchinson and Williams? Does their outlook make them hypocrites?
2. How does the founding of the New England colonies compare with the origin of the middle
colonies? In what ways were New England and the middle colonies each like the South, and in
what ways were they different?
American Life in the Seventeenth Century, 1607 – 1692
Theme: In the Chesapeake region, seventeenth-century colonial society was characterized by diseaseshortened lives, weak family life, and a social hierarchy that included hardworking planters at the top and
restless poor whites and black slaves at the bottom.
Theme: By contrast, early New England life was characterized by healthy, extended life spans, strong
family life, closely knit towns and churches, and a demanding economic and moral environment.
Questions:
1. Why did slavery grow to be such an important institution in colonial America? What were the
effects of slavery on the Africans who were brought to the New World?
2. What was attractive and unattractive about the closely knit New England way of life?
3. Were the Salem witch trials a peculiar, aberrant moment in an age of superstition, or did they
reflect common human psychological and social anxieties that could appear in any age? How
harshly should those who prosecuted the “witches” be condemned?
Colonial Society on the Eve of Revolution, 1700 – 1775
Theme: Compared with its seventeenth-century counterpart, eighteenth-century colonial society became
more complex and hierarchical, more ethnically and religiously diverse, and more economically and
politically developed.
Theme: Colonial culture, while still limited, took on distinct American qualities in such areas as
evangelical religion, education, press freedom, and self-government.
Questions:
1. How democratic was colonial American society? Why was it apparently becoming less equal?
2. What were the causes and effects of the Great Awakening? How did such an intense religious
revival affect those who experienced “conversion” as well as those who did not? How did the
Awakening help to create a sense of shared American identity?
Each term on this page must be defined in at least two sentences. Do not copy the first two
sentences from Wikipedia (or whatever website you reference). Make the definitions meaningful
to you.
Political/Economic Theory Vocabulary
Mercantilism
Capitalism
Socialism
Communism
Nationalism
Fascism
Imperialism
Liberalism
Deterrence Theory
Balance of Power Theory
Nation-State
Nongovernmental
Organizations (NGOs)
Hegemonic Stability Theory
Collective Defense Theory
International Political
Economy (AKA – Global
Political Economy)
Exploration and Colonization (1492-1763)
Virginia Company
Virginia House of Burgesses
William Bradford
Mayflower Compact
John Winthrop
“City on a Hill”
Salem Witch Trials
Roger Williams
Pequot War
King Phillip’s War
Bacon’s Rebellion
New Amsterdam
Society of Friends
Maryland Toleration Act
(1649)
Fundamental Orders of
Connecticut (1639)
Restoration Colonies
Dominion of New England
John Peter Zenger
Jonathan Edwards
George Whitefield
Albany Plan of Union
Benjamin Franklin
Great Awakening
Half-Way Covenant
Headright System
Indentured Servants
Middle Passage
Separatists
Triangular Trade
John Rolfe