1. Where can I get "start up" materials for APWH?
Go to AP Central to order the Teacher's Guide to AP World History and theYou can download a
free copy at: AP Central or
order a hard copy from the same site.
First: Do
not panic. The APWH course is going to be tweaked in a few years,
just as it has
been continually since
2002.
Here's an
example: Instead of asking a multiple choice question
like, "Who was Hammurabi?", after redesign
the questions might be more like,
"What was significant about early legal codes in world
history?"
The idea behind redesign is to incorporate more materials that get
students analyze and link
important themes in World History.
5. What
years does the APWH course cover?
The APWH Course Description Guide (the "Acorn Book") spells out the years of the APWH exam:
| Unit | Years | %
of
Multiple Choice questions on the Exam |
Suggested time to cover the material* |
| Foundations | 8000 BCE- 600 CE | 19-20 | 6 Weeks |
| Unit 2 | 600 - 1450 | 22 | 7 Weeks |
| Unit 3 | 1450 - 1750 | 19-20 | 6 Weeks |
| Unit 4 | 1750-1914 | 19-20 | 6 Weeks |
| Unit 5 | 1914-Present | 19-20 | 6 Weeks |
6.
Where can I
get help from real APWH teachers?
Join the
College
Board-sponsored APWH Electronic Discussion Group.
Remember when
you send a message to the group: be
cordial--and
brief. E-mail the host, Monty Armstrong, to
join.
7. What text
books do APWH teachers recommend?
The three
most popular
texts cited by APWH teachers are: Bentley and Ziegler's Traditions
and Encounters;
Stearns, et al, World
Civilizations:The Global Experience (the AP
edition); and Bulliet, et al, The Earth and Its Peoples
(the AP edition).
There are several other excellent choices, including the new Voyages
in World History and Ways
of the World. To order sample copies, see the link
to
these and other texts at my APWH site.
I use
Stearns, 4th AP ed. I think it is well written and organized and
it
has excellent sections that tie together key themes in APWH.
Some
teachers
have praise for texts other than the above. For example, one
teacher likes World
History, by Upshur, for several reasons:
"It's
shorter than most texts...it reads like a story...good
materials...truly global coverage...." There's the similarly titled The World's History,
by Spodek,
that gets high marks for having a narrative that comes from
one
voice, unlike many of the other texts written by several
people. More APWH texts are coming out all the time.
Regardless,
as
you know, it's the teacher
who
makes the course what it is, not the textbook.
8. What about
supplemental readers?
See the
links at
my site for sample copies of these, too. APWH teachers I
have
talked to like Andrea and Overfield's The Human Record
and
Wiesner-Hank's Discovering the Global Past. Merry
Wiesner-Hanks is the Chief Reader at the annual APWH essay grading.
There
are other good choices. I use Andrea and
Overfield.
It comes in two
volumes.
Each
set
of documents come with excellent questions for the student to consider.
9. What are
some popular APWH reading assignments?
The Big
Daddy of
"New World History" books is the classic The Columbian Exchange:
Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
by Dr. Alfred Crosby.
Other popular titles include:
Guns, Germs and Steel
King
Leopold's Ghost
Nectar in a Sieve
Salt
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
The World in Six Glasses
Things Fall Apart and
The World That Trade Created You can look these up at Amazon.com
&
BN.com.
I'm also a fan of Something
New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the 20th Century.
PS: If you look up The Columbian Exchange at Amazon.com, you'll see a sidebar with a helpful list put together by APWH teacher and exam Table Leader Tom Martin of California.
10. How many
students took the APWH exam in 2009?
Almost 145,000. In 2002, the number was 22,000.
World History
is the fastest-growing AP exam in the College Board's history.
11. Should I become an APWH essay
reader?
YES.
12.
Why?
You will have
the
greatest experience of your professional career. (That's not just
me talking; former Chief Reader Ken Curtis of the University of
California, Long Beach, agrees.)
You will spend a week learning
from and hanging out with some of the best world history teachers and
professors on the planet.
The reading is at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. You
will learn more about APWH in that week
than you would on your own in years.
We have a blast! You
get paid for reading and your travel, room and food is free.
They're looking for
readers, so why
not fill out an application? You need experience
teaching APWH or its college equivalent to apply.
Info Here
13. Is the APWH
exam different from APEH or APUS?
15. Is
APWH
"anti-Western Civ"?
All of the
APWH
people I've run into are "pro-global" rather than "anti"
anything. It was explained to
me this way: Look at history as if you were viewing the world
from space.
What common themes run through all humanity over
time? Another way of looking at it is: When you studied US
History, did you study the history of the 50 individual states?
No, you
studied
American history. Same with this "new" World
History. Although educated primarily in Western Civ, I
am intrigued by this approach.
16.
What about popular APWH movies to show in class?
No
way! The number
of APEH exams continues to grow at a healthy pace.
19. How
do I
incorporate block scheduling into APWH?
One idea
that has
benefitted many 4x4 Block APWH teachers is to cooperate with the AP
English Lit teacher to form an "AP Humanities"
class.
That way,
students have the great advantage of taking both AP courses through the
entire year. College Board studies show that students who take an
AP course for only one semester earn significantly lower scores.
So, students benefit, and parents, administrators and teachers are
happy.
Many of the teachers
on
the APWH e-mail group teach The Block, so sign up and ask.
Many more
questions can be answered by linking to the College Board's APWH
web site at AP Central.
Go back to my web page for these
links. Return
to Jay's APWH
Page