generalinformationfromthe"acorn"book

General Information from the "Acorn" Book

The College Board creates course description guides for each of its exams; on the cover they have a picture of an acorn with an oak leaf which is their logo, this is what we call the “acorn book.” I will periodically be giving you excerpts from this booklet. Below is general information on the course. I suggest you keep this, along with any other “acorn” handouts for the rest of the year for reference or in a section dedicated to preparing for the exam.

Chronological Boundaries [Note, these divisions will constitute your Eras for tests]

• Foundations 8000 BCE – 600 CE
• 600 CE – 1450 CE
• 1450 CE – 1750 CE
• 1750 CE – 1914 CE
• 1914 CE – the present

The Advanced Placement (APWH) Examination

The APWH Examination is approximately three hours and five minutes long and includes:

• Section I - 70 multiple-choice questions (55 minutes) designed to measure the students’ knowledge of world history from the Foundations period to the present. A number of questions are cross-chronological, while the rest are from the different time periods. This section is half of your grade.
• Section II - the following three questions (essays) will comprise the remaining half of your grade and are weighted equally. The section will begin with a mandatory 10-minute reading period, in theory for the document-based question, but can be used for the other essays as well. You will have a total of 130 minutes (including the reading period) for this section.
  • Document-based question or DBQ – focusing on assessing students’ ability to construct arguments; use primary documents; analyze point of view, context and bias; and understand the global context.
  • Change-over-time or COT essay question – focusing on global patterns over time.
  • Comparative essay question – focusing on comparisons within and among societies.

Themes

APWH highlights six overarching themes that should receive approximately equal attention throughout the course beginning with the Foundations section:

1. Dynamics of change and continuity across the world history periods covered in the course, and the causes and processes involved in major changes of these dynamics.

2. Patterns and effects of interaction among societies and regions: trade, war, diplomacy, and international organization.

3. Effects of technology, economics, and demography on people and the environment (population growth and decline, disease, labor systems, manufacturing, migrations, agriculture, weaponry).

4. Systems of social structure and gender structure (comparing major features within and among societies, and assessing change and continuity).

5. Cultural, intellectual, and religious developments, including interactions among and within societies.

6. Changes in functions and structures of states and in attitudes toward states and political identities (political culture), including the emergence of the nation-state (types of political organization).

The themes serve throughout the course as unifying threads, helping to put what is particular about each period or society into a larger framework. The themes also provide ways to make comparisons over time. The interaction of themes and periodization encourage cross-period questions such as “To what extent have civilizations maintained their cultural and political distinctiveness over the time periods the course covers?”; “Compare the justification of social inequality in 1450 with that at the end of the twentieth century”; or “Discuss the changes in international trading systems between 1300 and 1600.”

Habits of Mind or Skills

The APWH course addresses habits of mind or skills in two categories:

1) those addressed by any rigorous history course, and

2) those addressed by a world history course.

Four Habits of Mind are in the first category:

• Constructing and evaluating arguments: using evidence to make plausible arguments.
• Using documents and other primary data: developing the skills necessary to analyze point of view, context, and bias, and to understand and interpret information.
• Assessing issues of change and continuity over time, including the capacity to deal with change as a process and with questions of causation.
• Understanding diversity of interpretations through analysis of context, point of view, and frame of reference.

Three Habits of Mind are in the second category:

• Seeing global patterns and processes over time and space while also connecting local developments to global ones and moving through levels of generalizations from the global to the particular.
• Comparing within and among societies, including comparing societies’ reactions to global processes.
• Being aware of human commonalities and differences while assessing claims of universal standards, and understanding culturally diverse ideas and values in historical context.

Every part of the APWH Examination assesses habits of mind as well as content. For example:

• In the multiple-choice section, maps, graphs, artwork, and quotations are used to judge students’ ability to assess primary data, while other questions focus on evaluating arguments, handling diversity of interpretation and making comparisons among societies, drawing generalizations and understanding historical context.
• In the essay section of the examination, the document-based question (DBQ) focuses on assessing students’ ability to construct arguments; use primary documents; analyze point of view and context; and understand the global context.
• The remaining two essay questions focus on global patterns over time and space with emphasis on processes of change and continuity and on comparisons within and among societies.