Course Description:  The AP United States History course is designed to provide students with critical thinking skills and factual knowledge necessary to analyze and conceptualize problems and materials in United States history.  The course includes the study of political institutions, social and cultural developments, diplomacy, and economic trends in history.  The program provides students with challenging curricular experiences that equate to the demands made by full-year introductory college courses.  Students should learn to assess historical materials from a variety of perspectives-their relevance to a given interpretive problem, their reliability, and their importance – and to weigh the evidence and interpretations presented in historical scholarship.  The AP United States history course requires a yearlong commitment by the student.  Each student enrolled in the class is expected to take the AP exam at the end of this course.
 
Major Content/Concepts:  The course content covers the study of U.S. History from Discovery to the Present.  The course emphasizes depth of development of important ideas and the significance and meaningfulness of the historical  content that incorporates the themes of American Diversity, American Identity, culture, Demographic Changes, Economic Transformations, Environment, Globalization, Politics and Citizenship, Reform, Religion, Slavery and Its Legacies in North America, War and Diplomacy.

Course Objectives:  The AP course does not merely focus on the acquisition of factual knowledge but trains students to:

• Analyze the impact of historical events on the social fabric of the United States
• Summarize the economic, political and social changes that resulted from conflicts and compromises.
• Investigate, interpret, and analyze multiple historical viewpoints as related to important events.
• Develop skills in writing notes, reading and studying  information, using historical technical vocabulary, writing interpretive essays, and writing analytical thematic essays and research papers.

Course Philosophy:  Varied teaching and learning experiences should provide students with multiple opportunities to discover the numerous ways in which human beings acquire and use knowledge of historical events.  The study of history should involve inquiry, active construction of knowledge, interactive discourse, well-reasoned arguments that show reflective and critical thinking, and real-life applications.  The resources available should reinforce the numerous modes of information available.  Textbooks, reference materials, atlases, historical documents, media resources, Internet, museums, historical societies, and libraries are essential resources for the course.  Teaching and learning experiences should allow students to develop skills as independent or collective thinkers and participants.

Last Revised: March 15, 2007