Focus on Pre-AP for
History and Social Sciences
Using the AP Vertical Teams Guide in Teaching U.S. History
Cora Greer
University of Maine at Machias
Machias, Maine
In an ideal world, all students would come to an AP U.S. History class with the skills
needed to analyze primary source materials and to write coherent responses to essay
questions. Unfortunately, far too many AP U.S. History teachers find that their students
lack the experience to do either. For these teachers, an AP Social Studies Vertical
Team workshop or summer institute offers the opportunity to explore and discuss
Pre-AP strategies that can be applied in their AP U.S. History classes to improve
the performance of their students. If attending these workshops is not possible, the
AP Vertical Teams® Guide for Social Studies is an invaluable tool. The Guide may be
purchased online (http://store.collegeboard.com/) for $30.
The AP Vertical Teams concept, which was initially developed in 1999, gives voice to the
belief of many educators that the essential academic skills and habits of mind necessary
for success in AP classes can be introduced to all students in regular classroom settings.
The Vertical Teams concept has two components. The first component is the creation of
discipline-based teams across grade levels to develop a systemwide curriculum that will
prepare all students to do AP-level work. The second component concerns the particular
strategies teachers can use to develop these skills in the Pre-AP years.
The Guide covers all AP history and social science courses—European and World
History, Government and Politics, Human Geography, Psychology, and Economics. The
strategies found in the Guide can be adapted to courses in the Pre-AP years as well as to
AP classes, and all are content-based. The Guide is divided into five chapters:
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Improving Student Comprehension of Primary Sources
Improving Student Comprehension of Secondary Sources
Synthesizing Information: Categorizations, Generalization, and Evaluation
Preparing Students for AP Assessment
Tying It All Together (Creating a Model AP Unit)
The chapters are organized so that there is a logical progression from reading
comprehension to synthesizing and evaluation, writing, and finally assessment.
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Focus on Pre-AP for
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The Vertical Team strategies are directed at teachers who work in the regular classroom
and who find that their students are unprepared for the AP challenge; these Pre-AP
strategies can, and should, be woven into the AP curriculum. This article focuses
primarily on those strategies in the Guide that can be easily integrated into an AP U.S.
History syllabus. Those teachers who teach non-AP classes will find that these strategies
also work well there, and most can be adapted to group and/or individual assignments.
Examples of these strategies appear at the end of this article.
Applying the Strategies to AP History Courses
To be successful in AP history classes, students must be able to read and analyze primary
source materials. One of the most useful tools in the Guide, and one used by many
AP U.S. History teachers, is known by the acronym APPARTS (see the explanation of
this tool below). This tool provides students with prompts that give them a format
for dissecting and analyzing primary sources. As with all the strategies described in
this article, APPARTS should be introduced at the beginning of the school year and
reinforced as the year progresses. Getting students to use APPARTS may take time,
but once students are comfortable using this strategy, they will have a valuable
analytical tool.
AP students in any discipline must be able to comprehend, retain, and communicate
to others the facts and main ideas from secondary sources. Chapter 2 of the Guide
provides strategies to help students understand the relationship between bits of factual
information and the “Big Picture” to which they relate. For instance, AP U.S. History
teachers can help students focus by prefacing each chapter or unit with a Big Picture
statement or question. These statements or questions may be used to help with a review,
or they may become part of the assessment process. For instance, the following is a Big
Picture statement that might accompany a unit on the colonial period:
Between 1607 and 1763, the British North American colonists developed experience
in, and the expectation of, self-government in the political, religious, economic, and
social aspects of their lives.
Reading comprehension alone, however, does not help students make sense of names,
dates, and events. The common strategy used by students is memorization, which often
works over the short term, but really does not lead to an understanding of the material.
Vertical Team strategies in social studies are structured so that students gain knowledge
through understanding rather than through memorization. For this reason, perhaps the
most valuable section in the Guide is chapter 3, which focuses on using categorization
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and generalization to help students learn how to synthesize and evaluate information.
Once students have developed these skills, they have a foundation for writing an
intelligent response to an AP essay question.
Strategies for Essay Writing
If students are to do well on the AP U.S. History Examination, they must have the
skills and techniques necessary for this level of assessment. Strategies for doing well
on multiple-choice questions are fairly straightforward; essay writing, however, is
another matter. Students with weak writing skills cannot be expected to do well on AP
document-based questions and free-response questions. As is the case with developing
synthesizing and evaluation skills, a foundation must be built first. This will take time,
but it will be time well spent.
Chapter 4 of the Guide breaks down the steps in essay writing so that students can build
up their skills gradually. The first steps, understanding the question and developing
a thesis, are the most difficult aspects of essay writing, and until these are mastered,
students will have trouble structuring their responses. Rushing to have students
answer a document-based or free-response question before they are ready can be
counterproductive and frustrating. Teachers who build students’ writing skills slowly
will, in the long run, have the most success. The examples toward the end of this article
demonstrate the evolution of an effective essay. It is also important to make students
aware that this process is closely related to the structural foundation built in chapter 3.
Creating Syllabi
Creating a syllabus that covers the time period of 1607 to 1980 by the end of April is
perhaps the most daunting task faced by an AP U.S. History teacher. The final chapter
in the Guide presents sample units that incorporate the various strategies with specific
assignments and assessment models. Here, as in the previous chapters, there is a
combination of individual and group work. These units can act as the blueprint for an
effective syllabus that can cover the AP U.S. History time frame.
Perhaps the Guide’s greatest value is that, in addition to providing strategies, it generates
ideas for innovation and adaptation. Teachers familiar with a particular technique
may well begin to adapt it to suit their particular needs. As the authors state, these
materials can help to stimulate “originality and creativity as social studies educators
continue to search for the best methods to help students become better readers,
thinkers, and writers.”
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Vertical Team Strategies in Social Studies to Be Used in the Opening
Units of an AP U.S. History Class
1. Using APPARTS
Author—Who created the source? What do you know about the author? What is the
author’s point of view?
Place and time—Where and when was the source produced? How might this affect the
meaning of the source?
Prior knowledge—Beyond information about the author and the creation of the
source, what do you know that would help you further understand the primary source?
For example, do you recognize any symbols in the text and what do they represent?
Audience—For whom was the source created and how might this affect the reliability of
the source?
Reason—Why was this source produced and how might this affect the reliability of the
source?
The main idea—What point is the source trying to convey?
Significance—Why is this source important? Ask yourself, “So what?” in relation to the
question asked.
2. Using Categories to Understand Data
A given question might be:
Britain’s colonists developed democracy and expected the application of
democratic principles in the political, religious, and economic aspects of
their lives. Assess the validity of this statement.
Given the preceding question, organize the topics below into the following three
categories:
Political—Having to do with gaining, seeking, and organizing power and having to do
with events related to the functions of government: making laws, enforcing laws, and
interpreting laws
Economic—Having to do with how people meet their basic material needs and with the
production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services (including such issues
as domestic and international trade, monetary policies, and taxation)
Religious—Having to do with religious beliefs, whether organized or traditional, and
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the religious institutions of the culture (sometimes viewed as a subcategory of culture,
but often separated to add emphasis)
The relevant topics include:
Bacon’s Rebellion
Albany Plan
Roger Williams
Mercantilism
Massachusetts School Law of 1642
Navigation Acts
Great Awakening
Slavery
George Whitefield
Mayflower Compact
Town meeting
William Penn
Indentured servants
“City on a hill”
Lord Baltimore
Triangle Trade
House of Burgesses
Cotton Mather
3. Developing Generalization Strategies
Construct the most narrow generalization possible that expresses a main idea for which
all of the following items could serve as supporting information.
King Philip’s War
Bishop de Las Casas
Destruction of the Indies
Pueblo Revolt
Smallpox
Bacon’s Rebellion
Pequot War
4. Synthesizing Information
Examine the following topics:
Land Ordinance of 1785
Shay’s Rebellion
Abigail Adams
Philadelphia Convention
Treaty of Paris (1783)
Antifederalists
Federalist Papers
“Critical Period”
Northwest Ordinance
Power to tax
Emancipation
Alexander Hamilton
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Treaty of Paris
Federalism
John Hancock
George Washington
Western land claims
Great Compromise
Unicameral legislature
Three-Fifths Compromise
James Madison
Bill of Rights
Democracy
Public domain
Patrick Henry
After identifying similarities that various aspects of these topics share, place each piece
of information in one of the following categories:
Articles of Confederation
Constitution of 1787
Ratification of the Constitution
Each bit of information might fit into more than one category, but for the purpose of
this exercise, that bit of information may only be used once. Make sure that you:
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•
•
•
•
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Name each category.
Write a topic sentence for each category that clearly and directly generalizes the
similarity that each individual piece of information has in common with the other
pieces of information within that category.
When the information has been categorized and a generalization has been made,
choose five pieces of factual information that best support the topic sentence.
Evaluate them by rank in their support of the topic sentence, ordering them in
descending order of importance. Write one clear sentence that justifies your first
choice for each topic sentence.
Rank the categories in decreasing order of importance.
Write a thesis statement that directly links the categories to some common theme.
Pre-AP® for History and Social Sciences: 2005–2006 Workshop Materials
Focus on Pre-AP for
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5. Preparing to Write an AP Essay
A rubric/scoring guideline is at the end of this example.
Writing a Thesis Statement
Write a thesis statement for the following question:
Analyze the extent to which the American Revolution represented a radical
alteration in American political ideas and institutions.
List the pieces of evidence you would use to support your thesis.
Writing Supporting Paragraphs
Write your revised thesis. List the evidence you will use in the three paragraphs to
support your thesis:
a.
b.
c.
Write ONE of the supporting paragraphs using the relevant evidence.
Writing a Concluding Paragraph
Finally, write a concluding paragraph for this question using your revised thesis and
supporting paragraphs.
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Simple Rubric/Scoring Guidelines for Initial Essays
______0—Not present
______1—Present, but flawed and incomplete
______2—Present
______3—Present and sophisticated
Thesis Statement
______Fully addresses the question
______Takes a position
______Provides organizational categories
Total______
Supporting Paragraphs
______Topic sentence
______Evidence and interaction of same
______Clincher sentence that ties the paragraph back to the thesis statement
Total______
Concluding Paragraph
______Reinforces the thesis
______Synthesizes clincher sentences
______Addresses the question “So what?”
Total______
Total Score______
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Pre-AP® for History and Social Sciences: 2005–2006 Workshop Materials