Go into phase two. Washington journal continues. Host once again, we are back. Are help him high school helping Highschool Students around the country prepare for the advanced u. S. History placement exam. Matthewere with ellington and jason stacy. 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 advanced placement. We want everybody to know what is changing this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Guest there is quite a bit that is changing this year. Probably the biggest change is that it is a shorter test. It is usually about 45minutes long. It is going to be an online test for students. In addition, it is just one documentbased essay question with five documents. Finally, it is an exam that students can take athome from their computers. Era, of Distance Learning, colleges have modified the test while keeping the same skills students need to be successful. Finally, this test is an opennote test. Students may refer to the notes as they take the exam. Guest and i think it is really exciting the changes they have made. They have kept the documentbased questions. Ways is the lot of crown jewel of the test. It allows them to interpret documents and bring in all the good information you have learned this year. It is important also to remember that this year is a modified time period that will be covered, concentrating on period in 1770 four, and ending in period seven, which ends in 1945. Host we will open up our phone lines for Highschool Students only. We went Highschool Students to call in with questions about u. S. History for our distinguished teachers. If you have questions or if you want to attempt one of our practice questions on air this morning, we want to hear from you as well. Highschool students only. We will open up regional phone lines. That means if you are a highschool student in the eastern or central time zones, we want to hear from you at 2027488000. If you are a highschool student in the mountain and pacific time zones and you have a question about the test, about u. S. History, or a question about how you should answer this question, we want to hear from you at 2027488001. Once again, easterncentral time zone, 2027488000. Zones,n and pacific time 2027488001. Gentlemen, i was looking at some questions. The first one that immaturely popped to mind is that since of this is an essay test, how much are you expected to write . Guest that is a great question, jesse. The amount you are expected to write is enough to answer the question. There is no number of words required. You should expect to write an essay that is multiparagraph and has a clear argument and the argument is probably going to be driven through a number of paragraphs. You should plan on having an introduction, and if you have time for it, a conclusion. Guest thats right. All essays are graded on a rubric. Students need to make sure they are familiar with the rubric and they are writing in a way that they can accomplish the various tasks. But nobody is counting words or pages, nobody is counting characters. Test will bed this taken by students at home. Can you take this at any time at home, or is there only at certain time periods let the test will be open to students at home . Be taking it at the same time or at different times. Guest goahead, matt. Guest this test will be taken by everyone across the world at the same exact time. It is going to be given on friday, may 15 at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, 11 00 a. M. Pacific time, and whatever local time people are. For 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 as i understand it, there is a number of ways students can record their answer, write it in a work file word file or text file and turn it in as a file that they upload. They can take a picture of their responses and upload those with a phone, or they can even, i believe, right into a text box College Board will provide write it into a text box that College Board will provide. Host how long will students have to write this essay and get it submitted . Guest students will click on their exam ticket, it will open up their exam. College board strongly recommends students log in 30 minutes prior to the exam, because there will be some security screens and questions they have to verify their identity. When the exam begins, students will see the full question. They will say that direction. They will see the five primary source documents that go with the question, and then there will also be the submission window that students can use. Either cutandpaste, as jason was mentioning. Or they can attach their document to that. Well, we have some students waiting on the line to talk to you or perhaps to ask some questions. We start with julia from new jersey. Good morning. Guest hi, julia. Host julia, are you there . We seem to have lost julia. Lets move to sarah calling from bay city, michigan. Good morning. Caller good morning. Guest hi, sarah. Caller hi. Host do you want to try one of our sample questions and see how you would write your essay . Caller i have a question. Exam this year, and what is the format for it . Guest it is 45 minutes you will have to write. And it is just one dbq that you will have to answer, and that bbq will have five documents. Guest thats right. This exam is basically a shorter , more condensed version of the traditional ap exam. The same scale as everything you would have learned in your class , but you will only have one dbq to show what you know on the exam. Host a question for both of you gentlemen. School seniors taking the ap test this year, or can juniors take it as well . Who is taking the test . Guest actually. Guest goahead. [laughter] host lets start with you, jason. Guest teachers, we left a talk. [laughter] anyone who has signed up for a test in high school. It is usually High School Seniors who take the test. Juniors can take it and i assume this will can also have sophomores who have signed up. I dont believe there is a designated age as long as students are in high school. Usually, it is juniors would take the exam. Guest that is correct. My classes are all junior classes. Most high schools i know test juniors. Host now, 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, go ahead and do this. Lets start with you, matthew. Guest absolutely not. I dont recommend waiting, because there is a lot of content students need to remember and that is a long time to go, because of those students will not be enrolled in ap u. S. History next year, so i definitely recommend students take it this year. As i said, it is the same skills as on the regular exam, it is just shorter and in an online format. Guest thats right, matt. I agree. If you prepare for it, if you spend all this time in your classes, reading your textbooks, practicing your essays, learning the information over the course of the academic year, the real reward is to take the test. College board made a great test in choosing the dbq as the feature they will keep in this unusual year, because it allows you to show off all the skills. Your knowledge, your ability to make arguments, ability to documents. That dbqs will allow you to show off all the work you have done. Host lets talk to another student, thelma, calling from cambridge, massachusetts. Guest good morning, thelma. Host thelma, good morning. Caller good morning. Question, what is meant by the revolution of reconstruction, and what are the points to get the extra complexity point on the essay, if we are asked about radical reconstruction or the revolution of reconstruction. Host lets start with jason. Guest i will start with the first part of the question and 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 15 amendments. The 13th amendment abolishing slavery in the United States. 14th amendment, establishing civil rights rejected by the federal government against state those inpecifically the former confederacy that are oppressing africanamerican populations in the south. And the 15th amendment that grants Voting Rights 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 18651877. A lot of of what is going on especially in the south during to theriod is contrary 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Keep in important to mind that the socalled revolution of reconstruction has a very mixed legacy. By the end of that time frame, africanamericans, former slaves south, former enslaved africanamericans in the south are finding it very difficult to acquire their own land. Many of them are in sharecropping contracts that reduce them to a situation where they are permanently in debt to land holders, many of whom are former slaveholders themselves. And also, especially 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 local legislation, 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 American Congress salt to instill and sought to instill in place in the constitution in those amendments. Guest jason is right. If you remember even a fraction of what he said, you will earn the complexity point. It is College Boards attempt to award a more sophisticated essay. If you look at the rubric, the complexity point is given for qualifying or modifying an argument. Now, there are some tips we can give you to maximize your chances at earning the complexity point. The textbook jason and i wrote called fabric of the nation, we outlined a threestep strategy called gem. The acronym stands for generate nunance. You want to use more sophisticated language click jason used in talking about not just the successes, but also talking about the limitations of reconstruction. How it applied differently to different groups. What did and did not work. The second part of the strategy is to explain both sides of the reasoning skill. College board frames their essay questions around one of three causation,kills comparison, or continuity and change over time. All three of those reasoning skills actually have two sides to them. Causation is cause and effect. Comparison is similarity and difference. Continuity and change obviously, continuity and change. One of the tipster on the complexity point is to make sure that if the prompt only calls for one side, for example, if it said, 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 dont change. The third part of the strategy, is to make connections across time. You could connect the construction and of the 15th amendment to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, in your completing paragraph, that is often times a great place to do that. Readers are looking for evidence that you have done this. If you take a multipron ged approach to earn the complexity point, you will greatly increase your chance of getting that point on the rubric. Host what is the grading scale test . S when you get your results, what can you tell from the score that is on the test. Guest ok. The grading scale is similar but a little bit different than it has been in years past. Traditionally, the rubric has been a sevenpoint rubric for the documentbased as a question. This year, because that is the only part of the exam, College Board has extended that to 10rubric points. All the skills and tasks, however, are still the same. College board will take your this timeand they are just taking the essay score and they will translate that into an overall a peace corps. So what overall into an ap score. Generally, colleges will accept a score of three and above. Others are more strict and accept scores of two and above. Usually on an ap exam, a slim majority will earn a three and above in any given year to make them eligible for college credit. Host lets go back to another , lets who is waiting talk to miles calling from fayetteville, North Carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. Miles. Good morning, host do you want to try one of the questions we have prepared here . Caller i have a question that is more about the testing. Host go ahead, then. Wondering,i was just of all the people taking the test at the same time, there shouldnt be a chance that the server or website should go down, is there . [laughter] guest i hope not. Guest there is no chance, miles. Caller ok. Guest but make sure if you have siblings or family members that are heavy streamers or gamers and your internet is a little more limited, you will want to ask them to pause what they are doing so you have the bandwidth to be able to upload when you are done right in your essay. Guest miles, are you still on the line . Host i think he has already dropped off. One of theto look at documents that may show up in some form, maybe not on this test, may be short up before. I want you maybe showed up before. Tell us what the student is supposed to do once they see this. Here is something a student could see as an example for one of these tests. This is in North Carolina contract from 1882 that says, to everyone applying to rent land, the following conditions must be agreed to. Of the con to be made by me when and where i choose to sell, and after deducting all that they only and all the sums that i may be responsible for on their accounts, to pay them their half of the net proceeds, now come matthew, tell us what you should do after you read document. Guest this is a great document, very much to the kind of document students may see on the ap u. S. History exam. Students several tasks should complete when they see a document like this. The first half is to ask themselves, what is this document about . Sometimes the title will tell you. In this case, it is a sharecroppers contract. So ask themselves, what do they remember about sharecropping, where does that fit in the historical timeline, and most importantly, how does it relate exam . There is one point on the rubric for using two of the five documents in a simple, district descriptive manner. Being able to summarize that. Most students can read and summarize. That is the first task students want to do. But ideally, students want to connect that document into an argument. Depending on what the question is students want to use the document to move their essay forward, to support whatever point or points they are making. Toally, students also want complete the task of sourcing. There are up to two points possible on the ap exam for the dbq for sourcing a document. Sourcing is College Boards way of asking students to think like historian. Ce can they examine and analyze the document in one of four ways, by anding at discussing the context around the document, by identifying the intended audience who was a document for, and how does it help us understand the document by looking at the authors purpose. What is the goal. What is the author trying to accomplish in this document . Or, by looking at the point of view being expressed in the document. Guest thats right. There are a few strategies to approaching these documents, that i think are important. I imagine you have talked about this in class with your teacher. Jessie, one more time, could you read the first line after the document . Ce in the host after the word source . 1882. Carolina contract, guest sometimes wouldnt have a document in front of us written in the language that is over 100 years old and we start reading it, it gets very intimidating. The language it is written is not the way we normally speak today. Normally it is talking about something that happened a long time ago, so it is often important not to go looking for the answers in the document at first. It is often important to look at kesse just line that k read. You have the work contract and you have the word 1882. This provides you some clues as to what the document is likely going to be about. You probably remember a few key dates from the class. Not all the dates you heard this entire year, and that is ok, that some of the key dates, for example, the years of the civil war. The question about the revolution of her construction between 18551877, if you have a65 in mind, you know this is 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 the word contract, it may trigger in your mind, the sharecropping contracts that you recall from class and that i talked about briefly at the beginning of where former enslaved africanamericans who were newly freed found it very difficult to acquire land, primarily because, except for a very short period after the civil war, many of the governments in the former confederacy are controlled by those who want to prevent formerly enslaved africanamericans from acquiring property and civil rights. Former africanamerican slaves found themselves in these sharecropping contracts where they were forced to rent land and pay for the rent with a portion of their crops, which send them into a cycle of debt and made it impossible for them to ever acquire land and even use the places where they were currently working the land. So in the first line, you can begin to have a sense of what the document might be talking about. Then when you begin to read the document, you can begin to think, who is actually talking in this document . Could it be a formerly enslaved African American . A white landholder . And there is a portion in there where the writer or speaker is talking about what is owed to me. It should clue you in that this is probably a white landholder creating a contract for formerly enslaved africanamericans. And that contract will probably not be in those peoples benefit. This begins to bring in all the information to help you get those extra points on the dbq the point of view of the speaker, the context in which it is being written, all that good historical apprenticeship that you have been trained over the last year, to begin to make this document work for a argument. Host lets go back to the phone