U. S. History exam. We are here with jason stacy and Matthew Ellington, who are going to help our students prep for the test. Good morning, gentlemen. Guest good morning. Guest good morning. Host this is the first year we have done the u. S. History cram for the exam for the advanced placement test on cspan. The first question everybody wants to know, what is changing this year for this test because of the coronavirus pandemic . Guest well, there is quite a lot. Is aiggest change is this shorter test, only 45 minutes long. It is going to be an online test for students. Just oneon, it is documentbased essay question with five documents. Examly, it is an students can to get home from their computers. In this era of distance learning, the College Board has modified the test while still keeping the same skills that students need to be successful. Finally, this test is an open note test. The College Board will not try to prohibit students from using their notes, so students may refer to notes as they take the exam. Guest that is right. And i think it is exciting the change they have made and they kept the documentbased questions. Dbq in a lot of ways is the crown jewel of the test, allowing you to show off your arguments,lls, make interpret documents, and to bring in the information youve learned. T is important to remember that i is a modified time period covered, concentrating on. Starting in 1754 and going to. Seven, ending in 1945 going inperiods seven, ending 1945. Host we will open up our phone lines to High School Students only. We want you to call in with questions about the test or about history for our distinguished teachers. If you have questions on the test or if you would like to attempt one of our practice questions onair, we want to hear from you. High School Students only. We will open up regional phone lines. That means if you are a High School Student in the eastern or tral time zonez, ws zones, we want to hear from you at 202 7488000. If you are a High School Student in the mountain and pacific time zones, and you have a question about the test or about u. S. History, or about how you should answer this question, we want to hear from you at 202 7488001. Once again, Eastern Central time zone, 202 7488000. Mountain pacific time zone 202 7488001. Gentlemen, i was looking over some of the questions for this test, and the first question that popped to mind is that this is an essay test, so how much are you expected to write . Great well, that is a question, jesse. The amount you are expected to there is no number of words required. You should expect to write an essay that is multiparagraph and has a clear argument and that argument is probably going to be proven through a number of paragraphs. You should plan on having an introduction. If you have time for it, a conclusion. Guest that is right. It is graded on the rubric, so you need to make sure they are familiar with the rubric and writing in such a way that they can accomplish various paths and demonstrate they have learned the skills asked of them on the ap u. S. History exam, nobody is counting words or pages or characters. Test now, you said this will be taken by students at home. Atl me, can you take this any time at home, or is there only a certain time period it will be open for students at home . Will everyone be taking it at the same time or different times . Guest go ahead, matt. Guest this test will be taken by everyone across the world at the same exact time. It is going to be given friday, may 15, at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, 11 00 a. M. Pacific time, and whatever local time people are, so folks in the u. S. , it will not be bad. For folks overseas, they could be testing at odd hours. The College Board is doing this to ensure the test can be as secure as possible. Guest that is right. As i understand it, there was a number of ways in which students can record their answer. They can write it in a word file or some kind of text file and turn it in as a file that the upload, they can handwrite it and take a picture of their responses and upload those with the phone, or they can even i write it into a text box the College Board provides and respond that way. Host what is it students will see they can base their essay on, and how long will they have to write the essay and get it submitted . Click onudents will their exam ticket, it will open up their exam. The College Board recommends students log in 30 minutes prior to the exam because there will be some security screens and questions they have to answer to verify their identities. Begins, students will see the full questions, so they will see the directions, they will see the five primary source documents that go with that question, and they will also see the submission window students can use to cut and paste, as jason mentioned, or they can attach the documents that. Attach their documents to that. Host we have students waiting on the line to talk to you gentlemen or try a test question. Lets start with julia, calling from montclair, new jersey. Good morning. Guest hi, julia. Host julia, are you there . Lost julia, sove lets move to sarah, calling from bay city, michigan. Good morning. Caller good morning. Guest morning, sarah. Guest hi, sarah. Caller hi host sarah, do you have a question about u. S. History or do you want to try one of our sample questions and see how you would write your essay . Caller umm, i have a question. Yearong is the exam this and what is the format for it . Minutesarah, it is 45 you will have to write, and it is only one dbq you will have to answer, and that dbq will have five documents. Guest that is right. Basically a is shorter, more condensed version of the traditional ap exam. It is the same skills with everything you would have learned in your class, but you are only going to have one dbq to show what you know on this exam. Host now, a question for both of you gentlemen. Do only High School Seniors take the ap test this year, or can juniors take it, as well . Who is taking the test . Guest go ahead, jason. Host [laughter] guest go ahead, matt. Host lets try you, jason. Guest teachers, we love to talk. Anyone who is signed up for the school, is in high usually High School Juniors to take the test, and i assume a school can have a sophomore class of ap history or students who have signed up. I do not believe there is a designated age, as long as students are in high school. Usually it is juniors who take the exam. Guest that is correct. My classes are all junior classes at my high school, and most high schools i know test juniors. Host here is a question for you, are either one of you suggesting that any of your students wait until next year to take it, or are you saying just go ahead and do this . Lets start with you, matthew. Guest absolutely not. I do not recommend waiting because theres a lot of content that students need to remember. That is a long time to go because those students will not be enrolled in ap u. S. History next year. I definitely recommend that students take the exam this year. As i said, it is the same skills as the regular exam, it is just shorter and in an online format. Guest that is right, matt. I agree. If you prepared for it and spent all this time in your classes reading your textbook, practicing your essays, learning the information over the course of this academic year, the real reward is to take the test. The College Board has made a great choice in choosing the dbq as being the feature that they are going to keep in this unusual year because the dbq allows you to show off all of the skills, your knowledge, your ability to make arguments, your ability to interpret documents. That dbq is going to allow you to show off all of the work you have done. Host lets talk to another student calling in from selma, calling from cambridge, maryland sorry sorry, cambridge, massachusetts. Guest morning, selma. Host are you there . Caller yeah. Host good morning. Caller good morning. My question is what is meant by the revolution of reconstruction . Getwhat are good points to that extra complexity point on askedsay when if we are about radical reconstruction or the revolution of reconstruction . Host lets start with you, jason with that question. Guest i will start with the first part of the question and then i will go to matt for the complexity point because he has a lot of good stuff to say about it. The revolution of reconstruction is in reference primarily to the amendments that come after the civil war, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. 13th amendment, of course, abolishing slavery in the United States. 14th amendment establishing civil rights that will be protected by the federal government against state powers, specifically those in the former confederacy that are oppressing africanamerican populations in the south, and the 15th amendment that granted voting ,ights to africanamericans ideally throughout the United States. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is a lot going on on the ground during reconstruction after the civil war between the time periods 1865 and 1877. A lot of what is going on on the ground, especially in the south period, is running contrary to the 13th, 14, and 15th amendment. It is important to keep in mind that the socalled revolution of reconstruction has a very, very mixed legacy. By the end of that time period, africanamericans, former slaves in the south, former enslaved African Americans in the south, are finding it difficult to acquire their own land. Many of them are in a sharecropping contract that produced them to a situation where they are permanently in debt to landholders, many of whom are former slaveholders especially and also, by the end of reconstruction, and even into the 1880s, Voting Rights are being curtailed in the south for africanamericans through terrorism organizations, like the ku klux klan, and also through local legislation, like grandfather clauses and literacy tests that prevent africanamericans from fulfilling those rights that they helped acquire in fighting the civil war on the side of the union and that the Republican Congress sought to instill and place into the constitution through that 13th, 14, and 15th amendments. Guest jason is right. If you remember even a fraction of what he just said, you are going to earn that complexity point. Complexity is College Boards attempt to award a more sophisticated essay. If you look at the rubric, the complexity point is given for or modifying an argument for qualifying or modifying an argument. There are tips we can give you to maximize chances at earning the complexity point. We wrote fabric of the nation, which outlined a three step strategy called gem because you annecy write a gem of and it stands for generate nuance. You want to use more sophisticated language like jason used, and talking about not just the successes but also talking about the limitations of reconstruction. How it applies differently to different groups. What did and did not work. The second part of that strategy is to explain both sides of the reasoning skill. Grades theirs essay questions around one of three reasoning skills, causation, comparison, or continuity and change over time. All three of those reasoning skills actually have two sides to them. Causation is causeandeffect. Comparison is similarity and difference, and continuity in and change is continuity in change. One of the tipster and the complexity point is to make sure that if the prompt only calls for one side for example, if it said to evaluate the extent of change in terms of reconstruction, you would also want to talk about some of the continuities, some of the things that do not change. The third part of the strategy, the m is to make connections across time. Connectple, you could reconstruction and unfulfilled legacies of the 15th amendment to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, the 1960s, and your concluding paragraph is often a great place to do that. Readers are looking for evidence that you have done these kinds of things, so if you take a multiprompt approach, where you are taking several attempts at trying to earn the complexity point, you are going to greatly increase your chance of getting that point on the rubric. Host what is the grading scale, matthew, on this test . When you get your results, what can you tell from the score that is on the test . Host guest ok, the grading scale is similar but a little bit different than in years past. Traditionally, the rubric has been a seven point rubric for the document based essay question this year because that is the only part of the exam. The College Board has expanded to 10 rubric points. However, all of the skills and tasks are still the same. College board will then take the essay score and in past, it would have taken your essay scores, plural, and the short answer and multiplechoice. This time they will take the essay score and translated into an overall a peace corps. With students and colleges overall ap score. What students and colleges will see is a score of one through five. Some will accept three or above, although some require 4s, and some will accept scores of 2 and above. Usually on the ap exam, a slim majority, 52 to 55 , will earn a three or above to them eligible for college credit. Host lets go back to another to come in. Ing lets talk to miles, calling from fayetteville, North Carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. Guest morning, miles. Guest hey, miles. Host do you have a question or do you want to try one of the questions we have prepared here . I have a question, and it is more about the testing. Host go ahead, then. Caller so i was just wondering, like, how do i say it . Thell the people taking test at the same time, there should not be a chance that the server or website should go down, is there . Guest [laughter] oh, boy, miles, i hope not. Guest there is no chance, miles. Guest i hope not. [laughter] but, do make sure you have enough bandwidth on your end. If you have siblings or family members that are heavy streamers, heavy gamers, and your internet is a little more limited, you are going to want to ask them to pause what they are doing so you have the bandwidth to be able to upload when you are done writing your essay. Guest miles, are you still on the line . Host miles already dropped off. To look at one of the questions or documents that may show up in some form. Maybe not on this test, but maybe has shown up before. Us what your tell student is supposed to do once they see this. Ok, so here is something that a student could see on as an example for one of the tests. This is a North Carolina says tofrom 1882 that everyone applying to rent land upon shares, the following conditions must be read and everd to, the sales of croppers part of the cotton to be made by me when and where i to to sell, and after deducting il dayowe and all sums that may be responsible for on their accounts, to pay them the net proceeds. Matthew guest yes . Host tell us what you should do after you read that document. Guest this is a great document, very much the kind that students may see on the ap u. S. History exam. There are several tasks the student should complete when they see a document like this. The first task is to ask themselves, what is this document really about . Sometimes the title will tell you. In this case, a sharecroppers contract. They should ask themselves, what do they know and remember about sharecropping and where does that fit in the historical timeline . Most importantly, how does that relate to the exam . There is one point on the rubric for using two of the five documents in a simple descriptive manner, essentially being able to summarize that. Even if a student is somewhat limited, most students can read and summarize. That is the first task students want to do. Ideally, students want to connect that document to an argument. Depending on what the essay question is, students want to use the document to move their essays forward to support whatever point or points they are making. And then, finally, students also want to complete the task of sourcing. There are upo to two points possible this year for the dbq on the exam for sourcing a document. Sourcing is College Boards of asking students to think like an apprentice historian. Can they examine and analyze the document in one of four ways by looking and discussing the documents historical situation . In other words, the context around the document by identifying the intended audience. Who was the document for and how does that help us understand the document . By looking at the authors purpose, what is the goal and what was the author trying to accomplish in this document . Or by looking at the point of view that is being expressed in this document. There are a few strategies to approaching these documents that i think are important. I imagine you have talked about these in your classes with your teacher, but, jesse, could you one more time read that first line after the word source in the document . Or what is the title of it that they put their . Host North Carolina contract 1882. Guest sometimes when we have a document in front of us, and it is written in a language over 100 years old, and we start reading it, it gets intimidating. The language in which it is written is not the normal language we speak to each other and it is talking about something that happened a long time ago. It is often important not to go looking for the answers in the document at first. It is often important to take a look at that source line that jesse just read. Notice here you have the word contract and you have the date 1882. Clues as to what the document is likely going to be about. So you probably remember a few key dates from your class. All of theremember dates and that is ok, but some of the key dates, for example, the years of the civil war. Our first question today about the revolution of reconstruction between 1865 and 1877, and if you have 1865 in mind as the end of the civil war between 1861 and 1865, you know this is a postcivil war document. With that in mind, you can begin to recall some of the important pieces of information and the broad context of the time period in the generation after the civil war. If you look at that word contract, it may trigger in your mind there sharecropping contracts that you recalled from class and that i talked about briefly at the beginning of enslavedere former African Americans, who are newly freed, found it very difficult to acquire land, primarily because except for a short period after the civil war, many of the governments in the former confederacy are controlled by those who want to prevent formerly enslaved African Americans from acquiring property and civil rights. Many former africanamerican slaves found themselves in these sharecropping contracts, where they were effectively forced to rent land and pay for that rent with a portion of their crops, which send them into a cycle of debt, which made it a most impossible for them to ever acquire land, and often even leave the places where they were currently working the land. So that in that first line, you can begin to have a sense of what this document might be talking about. And then when you begin to read the document, you can begin to think, alright, well, who is actually talking in this document . Could it be a formerly enslaved africanamerican . Could it be a white landholder . There is a portion in there, where the speaker is talking me, andt is owed to this should clue you in that this is probably a white landholder who is creating a contract for a formerly enslaved africanamerican, and it is probably not going to be to their benefit. This begins to bring in all of the information that will help you get those extra points on the dbq. The point of view of the speaker, the context in which it is being written, and all of that good historical apprenticeship that you have been trained over the last year to begin to make this document work for your argument. Host lets go back to our phone lines and talk to another student. This will be julia, who was calling from montclair, new jersey. Good morning. Caller hi. So i know there is a lot of information and time periods covered on the test, so how do you recommend studying those, and are there online resources . What specifically should we focus on when we are going through our notes to study . Host lets let you take that one, matthew. Guest a great question, julia. As jason has mentioned, College Board has narrowed the focus of the test a little busier, so it will be somewhere between 1754, the beginning of the frenchindian war, and 1945, the end of world war ii. There are a lot of resources online to help ap students go from the College Board and other resources, commercial, and that teachers have put out. Let me give a plug to ap teachers across the country because rather than simply going andand buying a review book finding additional resources, i think many ap students already have everything they need from what they have done in the course during the year. I would encourage you to consider using some of those resources, those lecture notes, the homework or the outlines that you have done in your class, and then strategically supplement them with resources you find online that are helpful. One resource in particular i want to call out is the concept outline from the College Board. If your teacher has not shared this with you, you can find this at the College Boards website, outline forconcept ap history. For the three time periods covered on the test, that is about 15 pages of content that the College Board says here are the essential concepts. They will be enduring and understanding the big picture ideas, sprinkled with a few specific terms and events that we believe you need to know. So one good strategy is to go through that concept outline, make sure that you understand those concepts. Make sure you can explain those concepts. They sure you could provide a couple of examples for each of those and really, really make sure there are not any terms or Vocabulary Words in those 15 pages that are unfamiliar to you because if they are, you have got time between now and the exam to familiarize yourself with that. That is really, in my opinion, the alternate study guide for the ap u. S. History exam. Guest the great thing about that concept outline is it also includes in each section row can down by subsections very clear broken each section down by subsections with very clear tasks to analyze, explain and describe things of that not only is it information to stare at and memorize, which is never necessarily a great way to study for this test because you have to do so much analysis and argumentation, to have a series of tasks where it asks you to think about it. One of those sub questions asks you to describe, explain or evaluate, and then you could take that particular question and just test yourself on how much you remember from that particular section, and then after you have done that, you can go back to the concept outline and see some of the information that they had ther toe the question they embedded. Host lets talk about time management. I have seen graduatelevel writing classes, and one of the things i insist for i get an essay from anyone is in outline. Do you suggest the students taking the ap test spend time writing an outline of their essay or do you suggest to get right into it . How long should they study the photo or study the contract or the paragraph before getting into the writing portion . Matthew, we will start with you. Essence on is of the this years ap exam. Students have less time they have ever had before. 45 minutes to read, think k, outline and write the essay with a fiveminute submission window. The College Board says you have 50 minutes total and not a second more. As much as i would love for students to be able to fully outline, there is no time for that. Maybe a brief, quick outline, jot down your main points, plug in the documents, plug in your output information, but then you have got to go. As jason said, you want a multiparagraph or five paragraph essay, and you need the time to submit this essay electronically to College Board, all within 50 minutes, so time is of the essence. Students need to move quickly. It is only the written essay that will be graded, not outline. Guest i used to instruct my students to read the dbq questions first and to maybe take a minute or two to think about how they would answer that question if it were just an essay question without documents. I am interested in matts opinion on this and if you would support that, as well. I found sometimes my students would read the question and not really think about what the question is asking or how they could answer it, and then they would immediately go to the documents to try and find the answer. Then times in that panic, documents would confuse them more than guide them. I actually think that some of the answer to a question will already be in your head before you go to the documents. , insteadncourage you of doing an extensive outline, is verysuggested it difficult to do in the amount of time you have to write it, take a minute or two to think about the question itself and to think about how you would answer it without the documents. I think you will find that many of the documents will fit into an argument you have already generated just by looking at the question at first. Matt, what do you think . Guest absolutely. That is the same advice i give my students because of fear is that if you just jump into the documents without doing any thought whatsoever, you will forget some of the outset information you know, and you are liable to write an essay about the documents. Remember, this essay needs to be about the essay prompt. There is an old joke that goes around ap teachers that ap should stand for answer the prompt. That is more than just summarizing and writing about the documents. Jason is right. That is excellent advice. Do a little bit of a quick brainstorm, think about how you might organize your argument, try to develop two or three categories, and go ahead if they had given you the categories in the prompt, use those categories. Even if they have not, remember, the prompts are based on reasoning skills. If it is a causation essay, ask yourself what are two or three causes or effects, and make sure to do the same if it is continuity in change or comparison, which is similarity and difference. Guest Something Else jesses question brings to mind is after you have taken the step where you look at the question and you have thought about possible answers, and you maybe have generated the beginning of an argument and jotted down a word or two to help you remember it, when you go to the documents, keep in mind that when you are looking at the documents, they will help trigger outside information that you will want to bring in on your own. For example, if we look at the first document we talked about today, the sharecropping contract from 1882, once you have thought about that source line, where you see the word contract and you see 1882 and you think about the time period , then you have gone into the document itself, looked it over, read it, and concluded this is a white landholder who has created a document for a formerly enslaved africanamerican, and to realize you know some of the information that is not in the document itself and you may want to jot that down next to the document and write down sharecropping, which is not in the document itself but could qualify as an example of outside information, especially if you briefly explain that system as part of your argument. If the word reconstruction is not, question or document itself , all off these are examples of outside information that you will recall by taking a look at the documents themselves. Instead of thinking about putting together a complex outline before you begin to tote, do that Quick Response the question that you think might be appropriate, and then when you go to the documents, jot down next to those document some of the outside information that comes to mind, looking at that source line and then reading the document itself. Guest nds hard. It is actually one of the easier skills in theon that and extend, when jason is talking about writing out that information next to the document, on the rubric there is two points possible that students can earn for outside information. That is two out of 10, 20 . There is another category on the rubric, as well. The sourcing category. In the sourcing category, one of the ways the students can get theit is by explaining historical situation or context of a document. Sometimes students wonder how can we do that . It sounds hard. It is actually one of the easier skills in the category. The way students can do that is exactly how jason explained. Documentsecting the test specific piece of out side information in the time period that helps explain what is happening in that document. So outside information, if students are generating it, or even if they are looking at their notes and reminding themselves of a little bit of it, that can help them in multiple ways to improve their score on this years dbq. Host another student will jump in, and this is a student calling from minneapolis, minnesota. Good morning. Caller good morning, sir. Go ahead. Guest good morning. Guest good morning. Caller good morning. Timeaid we have a maximum limit of 50 minutes, and it is a time to dbq. I am going over the time limit, so what is your advice if i have 10 minutes left and i cannot remember a concept, do not know what to write down, so what do i do . Host go ahead. Guest yeah, that is a great question. A lot of students, including some of mine, are struggling because this year, even though they have reduced the number of documents, have reduced the amount of time. It is not easy to write a full dbq and simply 45 minutes. I would be stressed and struggling under those constraints, so here is my advice to you. Look at the rubric. Also, look at yourself and look at what you have accomplished. When i say look at the rubric, the rubric tells you how the essay is going to be graded. So one of the strategies that you can do is to ask yourself how many points of my on track for, and what can i let go of . For example, there are five documents on this years exam, but in theory, you can earn nine of the 10 points by only talking about two documents if you do them well and meet all the other criteria, so one strategy might be that you shorten the number of documents that you talk about and maybe you only discuss three documents more indepth instead of trying to cover all five documents. Conversely, if you struggle with the sourcing component but you feel like you know how to integrate these documents well into your essay, then you could do that. You could go for all of the documents but then they go the sourcing. So you are going to have to look at what you have done and what you are able to accomplish and then make some strategic choices as the test is going, which is why it is so important to practice this ahead of time. Point abouto that running out of time, this year in particular, there will be a great m patient because it is open note to go to the internet, to try and find something you cannot remember, to go to your notes and flip through them and try to find that one date that you know that is in there somewhere to go through the index of your textbook. I want to stress just because it is open note, do not get pulled into trying to find a particular fact, name, or argument that you know might be somewhere in the sources that you have. That will eat up more time that can be better spent on using the strategies that matt just mentioned, sticking to what you know and what you remember, using the documents that you can apply to the fullest. Do not be tempted by the fact that it is open note because it is also a very limited amount of time. You could spend five minutes or 10 minutes trying to research one small thing, and then you will find, even if you find that thing, you have used time that could have been better spent making a broader argument and finishing that paragraph, establishing context, or interpreting if you were documents. Host lets go to another student, tom, calling from buffalo, new york. Good morning. Caller morning. Guest hey, tom. Guest good morning, tom. Caller my question is, what would you say that the most challenging aspect of this format of the exam is compared to the previous format . Host takedown, matthew. Guest sure. I will take that one. I think the answer will depend a little bit on each student. For a lot of students, it will be the fact that it is timed but also that it is online. I students have been practicing handwritten time writing through the year and then all of a sudden, with the move to distancelearning, and with the new exam this year, it is in an online format. Again, i think it is critical for students to practice. Practice their typing. Practice submitting the essay. And of course practice the actual writing of the essay, as well. Fortunately, College Board has opened up an exam demo. If you google ap exam demo 2020, i think it is the first hit that will come up and linked directly on the College Boards website. I strongly encourage all students to practice the online while many of us may feel it is easy, if you have not submitted an online example four, you do not want may 15 to be the first time you do that without the familiarity of having already worked through the College Board system. Guest tom, i would turn it around, too, this year there is a certain advantage to this format. By the time students get to the dbq, they have already answered the short answer questions, and they have spent a lot of energy to do that, and then they have to come to the dbq. You are coming to the dbq brush. One thing to keep in mind and the good news about the format is the dbq is challenging every year and requires you to use all of the skills you have acquired, and now you will be able to hit the ground running because you will come to that dbq fresh. Host let me ask this question so we are on the same page. We will look at an image could be one of those source documents in an image called the first vote from harpers weekly 1867, as a blackandwhite drawing of an elderly africanamerican man casting a ballot. What would be the possible dbq or question that this document would be relating to for our students . Jason, lets start with you. Guest thanks, jesse. That is a great document. Notice how important the source line is here, both the title, where it is published, and when it is published. If we are going to talk about a possible question, it is important to keep in mind that in the last three years, 2017, 2018, and 2019, the dbq questions have started with the word evaluate. To my looking at the last three years, i believe that is correct. You to evaluate something, it is asking you to judge it. You will be usually asked to judge something to the extent it is or isnt. This is just one document, so there would be four more, but the question could be Something Like evaluate the extent to economic political and reforms of reconstruction ultimately help those they sought to assist or something along those lines, and then a student looking at this document so wenote it is in 1867, are two years after the end of the civil war. We are really at the beginning of the reconstruction period, and at the beginning, there was toespread voting available formally enslaved african smericans, and here i harpers magazine, and students would not have to know this, but it is a northern magazine published out of boston, and heres this northern magazine showing or proclaiming that there is progress on the part of civil rights for africanamericans, but of course, students will also keep in mind that if it is in evaluating question, evaluate the extent to where there was progress, and as i mentioned, this will be a mixed legacy, so that within 10 years of the publication of this cartoon, celebrating an africanamerican man voting for the first time, in fact, many africanamericans will find the rights curtailed. Guest yeah, and i would simply add to that the College Board is in the habit, as i mentioned earlier, of framing the questions around the historical reasoning skills, causation, cause and effect, comparison, similarity or difference, and continuity and change, which is continuity in change. Students can ask themselves, what is this document say about the effects of reconstruction perhaps on the lives of africanamericans were on the political system in the south . Or how does this document illustrates one of the kinds of changes that is taking place . Or how is this similar or different to the experiences that africanamericans faced before reconstruction in the civil war or in a different time period . Host lets go to another student. This one is megan, calling from winchester, virginia. Good morning. Caller good morning. Guest morning. Guest morning, megan. Caller so i have a few questions, but i can take one if that is all you can take. My first question is, how is making connections across time periods for the complexity point different from contextualization . Guest that is a good question, megan. The way i explained that to my students is contextualization connect to a broader process or topic, often times. I encourage students to do that at the beginning of their essay to connected to something prior or at the beginning of the time period, although it can be done at the end to connect forward during the middle of the essay. The way i distinguish contextualization for making connections is contextualization means it is either within or to the time period. Making connections , you are making a jump, maybe 15 to 100 years but i would not go much farther than that. It is not directly connected to the time period. That is one way to keep it straight. Guest a good example of that with what weve been talking about with reconstruction today is that contextualization might take into account the situation for africanamericans in the United States immediately prior to the civil war, may in the 1850s or the 1840s, and a complexity point might be at the end of the essay to look forward to well after reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, in the 1950s and 1960s as an attempt to address many of the problems that came out of reconstruction and that failed revolution. Host lets go to will, calling from buffalo, new york. Will, do you have a question for our distinguished teachers here . Caller yeah, this is pretty much like the question you just answered, but i was wondering what the importance is of comparing the cross eras . Guest well, as we were just explaining, the importance of explaining a cross era is it gives the reader another opportunity to reward you for complexity. It is one of the ways that College Board has defined for readers to assess whether or not an essay is more sophisticated and more historically complex. Keep in mind, you do not need to do that because one, you do not have to earn the complexity point most years over 90 of students do not. It is the hardest point on the ap dbq to earn. Some teachers referred to it as the unicorn point. There are other ways, such as generating new ones, explaining both sides of the reasoning skills, that you can earn the complexity point, as well. It can be part of a coherent strategy to maximize your chances of success. If you are running short of time, that might be something that doesnt make it into your essay. Host go ahead. Guest the most important thing on your dbq is to generate an argument and to prove that argument by analyzing the documents where you can bring in outside information and you understand the ways in which they support your argument, and following through with your argument through multiple paragraphs. The complexity point is very important, but it isnt essential. What is essential is you have your argument clear, you bring to bear evidence to prove that argument, and that evidence be a combination of the documents provided, as many as you can use, and outside information that you remember from class, from your reading. Much of that outside information can be triggered by the documents itself. Host here is one of the questions a student has texted or sent on twitter, since the test is open note, what do you believe are the key things to have printed out and sitting in front of us for the test . I do not want to have too many things in front of me, but i want to have the most important things with easy access. Guest that is a great question because it is very easy to become overwhelmed in the test. Recommend you have a set of study guides, whether they are the concepts outlined that perhaps you have annotated, whether they are your lecture notes, whether they are homework outlines. It will look different for every student, it is important that whatever it is, it is organized in something you are familiar and comfortable with. You do not want to just rent something off the internet for the first time i look at it during the exam. Print something off the internet for the first time and look at it during the exam. The purpose of the notes for students is it is there to refresher memory. There is not time, as jason said, to do any research. Now is the time if you still need to learn something new to go ahead and learn it. During the ap exam, it is all about reminding yourself of what you already know, so those notes can be used as a quick cheat sheet to pecan refresher memory, light, oh, that is right. I remember that event, this person and that law, and i know them so i can intelligently incorporate them into my essay and show off everything that i know. Host we have eight minutes left, so lets you can get our last couple of students in who have waited patiently on the line. Lets go to kylie from cornelius, North Carolina. What is your question . Caller hi, i actually just got mine answered on twitter. But i do have another question. There are 10 points this year. How many do we need to get a five on the exam, and what are the points you recommend we focus on the most . Guest that is a great questionguest . The truth is we do not know for sure, and College Board does not know for sure because they are not going to make that decision until after everyone has taken the exam and they have read thousands of exams and have gone through a process called norming, and they have looked at the statistics across various years. What we can take educated guesses. I think it is safe to say that you need a majority of the points to make sure that you pass, and since you asked specifically about a five, i feel 100 confident saying if you get 10 out of 10 you got a five, and if you get a nine, you will get a five, as well. Again, we will not know for sure. In theory, i suppose it is possible an eight could do it. A good rule of thumb is to go by categories, 1, 2, three and four, five and 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. That would correlate to 1, 2, 3, 4, five, and that is an estimate but that is as good as we can do right now. Host lets see if we can get one more student in, and that is emily calling from orlando, florida. Go ahead. Caller good morning, everyone. Guest good morning, emily. Caller my question is i know that crunch time and everybody will be studying for the exam. Do you have any tips on what we should be studying or anything we should be looking over . Host jason, take that one. Guest i think the way to start is to just take the five time periods, periods three through seven that are in the concept outlined, and to just create on a piece of paper, just list the dates so that you have got the whole period you will be tested on divided by those five time periods. Use that list with spaces in between the time periods to jot down some of the key trends you recall in that time. If you are looking at the big one at the end, 1890 to 1945, some things that immediately come to mind, for example, are the progressive era, the First World War and second world war, the 1920s, and once you have begun to write down the larger teams within each one of the time periods, some of the facts should come back to you. You will have that outline. Again, it is not going to be very detailed, but as matt said, in the midst of the test, it will help remind you what you already know. That sheet can serve as a roadmap for the whole period you are being tested on. You will make that roadmap as you do your final preparations for the test and organizing it according to the five time periods you are evaluated on. Host here is a question sent in a student earlier. This question comes in from adrian, who is a student at north shore senior and houston texas. Maden wants to know, what the kansasnebraska act a key part in the civil war . Guest how much time do we have left . Host [laughter] about five minutes. Act iskansas nebraska important for a lot of reasons. First, it is really at the end of a long process since the u. S. Mexico war that reopened the debate about the extension of slavery. The kansasnebraska act opened from therritory missouri compromise of 1820 that was close to slavery and made possible the extension of the institution of slavery into the west, north of the 3630 line or the southern border of missouri. It effectively started the violence in the kansas territory in 1856, where you remember john brown and the border ruffians from missouri are fighting it out in the kansas territory over whether kansas will become a slave state or not, ultimately leading to violence on the senate floor with senator sumner, and was caned on the ofor of the senate in may 1856, and passed that, it just accelerates toward the first recession of estate in december of 1860, south carolina. The kansasnebraska act is significant because it is effectively the trigger for the violence that spirals into those secession of the first state in 1860 after the election of Abraham Lincoln in november of that year. Matt, do you want to add . Guest there is a lot there. I would simply add the kansasnebraska act accelerated the demise of the week party and led to the rise of the republican party, which was a regional party. They were not represented in the south, and it was the election of a republican president , Abraham Lincoln, without a southern electoral vote that prompted 10 states to secede from the union. Host host a couple of technical questions from students. They want to know your advice. The first is from sydney, school inom pious x lincoln, nebraska. How do you correctly cite the document . And another quick question from one of our online followers who wants to know, will the question to the same for everyone on the test . Host lets start with jason and they go to matthew. Guest to the first question, there is no official way in which you have to cite your documents. I recommended that my students cite them at the end of the sentence where they use them in a parenthesis, where it just b. S doc ao or matt . Guest that is exactly the same thing i encourage my students. Often times, the document citation is as much for the student to make sure they keep track they covered the documents they want to cover because the reader would haveread hundreds of the dbqs and he or she will have those memorized by the time they read your essay. Host does everybody get this in question . The same question . Guest we dont know. College board will probably not that. If you asked them, they would probably see all the questions will be equivalent. My guess is, based on past history, most students will see the same question but they usually run several versions of the exam every year. Host perfect. We would like to thank Matthew Ellington and jason kelly, the jason stacy, the coauthors of a brief history of the fabric of the nation, and we would like to thank both of you for helping us prep for this ap u. S. History exam. Thank you so much. Guest good luck, everyone. Have a good time. Guest cspans washington journal. Live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up sunday morning, Research Fellow Michael Faron will be with us to discuss the april jobs report and the Overall Health of the u. S. Economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. White house transition project director martha will talk about whats involved with switching in a new president. And dr. Oliver brooks will be on and healthut racial this parodies in the covid19 pandemic. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern sunday morning. Join the discussion. Sunday night on q a. A look at american president s through the looks at the books they have written. The story has often been, and you side in that quote that kennedys father was the one pulling the strings. But jack kennedy wanted the Pulitzer Prize. He told another historian, id rather win a Pulitzer Prize than be president. Because he had the strong desire for literary fame, even though he did not want to do literary work, he got himself the prize. In new york city and washington, d. C. , people were gossiping if he really wrote the book. I wonder how much money they are getting from the royalty checks . The pulitzer changed the equation. It made it a moral and ethical question. Readers realized this as well. I looked at the letters that kennedy received in 1957. Librarians were sending him letters, School Teachers sent him letters saying, did you really write this book . You would not have accepted the prize if you did not write the book, would you . At 8 00 sunday night p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a ceremony in all ,wearingin for kweisi mfume lose returning to congress to fill the seat of the late representative of the late representative elijah cummings. Following this wearing in, the
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