Course Description

AP World History is designed to be the equivalent of a two-semester introductory college world history course. Students investigate significant events, individuals, developments, and processes in six historical periods from approximately 8000 B.C.E. to the present. Students develop and use the same skills, practices and methods employed by historians as they investigate five themes, making connections among historical developments in different times and places. Students explore state building, expansion and conflicts across multiple time periods.

Essential Concepts/Skills

Students analyze primary and secondary sources to develop historical arguments.
Students make historical comparisons and utilize reasoning skills about contextualization, causation, and continuity and change over time.
Students write about interactions between humans and the environment, as well as how cultures develop and interact with each other over time.
Students explain how the creation, expansion and interaction of economic systems affected the development and transformation of social structures.
Students use context to explain specific the relative historical significance of a specific historical development or process, using charts, graphs and other documents as necessary.

Major Units:

FALL SEMESTER
Unit 1: Technological and Environmental Transformations to c. 600 B.C.E.
Unit 2: Organization and Reorganization of Human Societies, c. 600 B.C.E. to 600 C.E.
Unit 3: Regional and Interregional Interactions, c. 600 C.E. to 1450

SPRING SEMESTER
Unit 4: Global Interactions, c. 1450 to c. 1750
Unit 5: Industrialization and Global Integration, c. 1750 to c. 1900
Unit 8: Accelerating Global Change and Realignments, c. 1900 to the Present