Welcome to Advanced Placement United States History…
I truly hope you will enjoy our forced march through the last 400 years. (Bataan will have nothing
on us.). There is a tremendous amount of material we have to cover – as a matter of fact,
there is no way that we can go over it all in class. That means you, yes you, dear reader, will
have to take some responsibility for your learning and actually read the book and take notes. You
will have to become an independent learner. I realize this may come as a rude shock, but you
have to come to think of this as college – not the usual high school routine you have come to
know and loathe. In APUS, even smart people have to have a work ethic…just warning you.
To help facilitate this transition, you have a summer project to complete. Since few students
come into the class with much of a grasp of American history, and since you will have to learn
some of this on your own, it will help if you have some sort of basic framework on which to hang
all of this new information. A good way to acquire that framework is from reading a quick and
dirty overview of the subject (Wiki, the book). That’s what the project is about.
What I want you to do is to read a “Cliff Notes” of US history – like US History for
Dummies, Don’t know much about History or something of that ilk. I want you to pick your
“Top Ten” most significant events in US history - events that changed the course of
American history. These events should have taken place between roughly 1550 and 1990.
Once you have your list, write (type) a brief description of that event and describe how that
event impacted subsequent events – and why it mattered. All together, it should work out
to about 2 short paragraphs per event.
As with all written work in this class, you should use a more formal register than is usual in your
spoken language. You should avoid using first person. Don’t use contractions. Punctuation and
capitalization rules are not optional. All out of class writing assignments must be typed.
Remember, you are not texting a friend, but rather trying to demonstrate that you are the
intelligent, thoughtful person you are.
It will be due the first day of class in the fall. It will count as a test grade. It will give
everyone an opportunity to begin the year on a positive note. It will also serve as an introduction
to the content of the course. (Please understand that you will need all the fluff grades you can
possibly get.) The first couple test grades will probably not be pretty and this assignment can
help balance those initial shocks.)
Scoring will be done on the following rubric:
Did the student choose 10 appropriate events?
Does the student give a concise explanation of the events?
Does the student link each event to significant changes that follow?
Yes
Yes
Yes
no
no
no
If you have any questions, my e-mail is [email protected]. I do not check e-mail daily
over the summer, but I do check it on occasion.
There are some copies of the books around here, but it might be worthwhile buying or borrowing
a copy. You may find it could come in handy on a routine basis…
Have fun, see you next fall – if there is funding and the schools can actually open on time.
Ken Jones