This quick skill-building activity is intended to help you understand what is being asked of you when you’re presented with historical prompts, particularly those you’ll encounter in assessment prompts such as document-based questions (DBQs) and long essay questions (LEQs).

In this activity, you’re going to learn how to parse a prompt. What is parsing a prompt? It’s the process of analyzing a string of words. Or, put more simply, it’s trying to figure out what something—in this case a historical prompt—is saying and asking.

For the majority of historical prompts you encounter, you’ll be asked to do five things, so a LOT is packed into these sentences. Here are those the five things—keep in mind, most if not all of these elements should be included in your thesis statements:

1. Periodization – What’s the timeframe referred to in the prompt?
2. Location – Where in the world this is happening?
3. Topic – What is the main topic being explored?
4. Historical reasoning practice – Which of these three historical reasoning practices are you being asked to use: comparison, causation, or CCOT?
5. Composition – What type of essay are you writing (for example, is it expository or argumentative)?

Note that although there are historical thinking practices in addition to comparison, causation, and CCOT, those other practices are implicitly included in every response you’ll give to every historical prompt, so there’s no need to mention them. (In case you need reminding, those other practices are contextualization, claim testing, and sourcing.)

Now that you have that background, take out the Question Parsing Tool and write down the following prompt: Analyze continuities and changes in trade networks between Africa and Eurasia from circa 300 CE to 1450 CE. Walk through the process with your teacher, and fill out the tool as you go. If you get confused, don’t hesitate to ask questions—this is a tricky process, but you’ll surely master with a little practice!

This article introduces five of the largest belief systems in Afro-Eurasia and explains how and why they have changed over time. These five religions: Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, connected people in communities of faith across vast distances. Along the way, these religions changed dramatically as they encountered new societies and in turn transformed those societies. Yet, many aspects of faith remained remarkably unchanged over long historical periods.

This article serves three important purposes. First, it provides you with a brief overview of five major world religions that you’ll encounter throughout this course. Second, it uses religion as a lens to help you evaluate change and continuity over time. Each of these religions has changed dramatically since their founding, but some elements have remained constant throughout these transformations. Finally, the religious examples in this article provide important evidence to support, extend, and challenge the communities and networks frame narratives.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What is the Jewish diaspora, and how did it influence Judaism in the period from 1200 to 1450?
2. What effect did the development of Hinduism have on societies in South Asia?
3. To what does the author attribute the spread of Buddhism? Where did it spread?
4. How did interaction with the Roman Empire change the development of early Christianity?
5. What are the five pillars of Islam?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. The Communities frame narrative for this course asserts that human communities generally grow larger and more complex over time. Belief systems are one form of human community, and this article covers several millennia of time. How does this article help you support, extend, or challenge this narrative?

This article introduces some of the intangible connections between the peoples and cultures of the Afro-Eurasian landmass between 1200 and 1450. Besides goods and people, the author notes that ideas including science, technology, and religions also moved throughout these regions. The movement of these ideas, arriving with merchants, pilgrims, and conquerors, transformed cultures and societies throughout Afro-Eurasia. The people who encountered these new ideas decided how to interpret them, as well as whether to accept them, reject them, or to blend their existing ideas with the new ones.

This article helps you understand how people interacted throughout Afro-Eurasia between 1200 and 1450, beyond the histories you’ve read about trade, warfare, and diplomacy. The way societies interacted in this period is the main question shaping this entire unit. In reading this article, consider how people receiving new ideas and new information could react with a spectrum of choices including rejection, acceptance, or syncretism—blending old ideas with the new ideas.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Did most people in Afro-Eurasia travel extensively between 1200 and 1450?
2. In this same period, what two main regions/cultures of Afro-Eurasia made the most remarkable contributions to technology throughout other regions?
3. What were some of the major technological contributions made by China and the Islamic world in this period, 1200 to 1450?
4. What different religious traditions came together in Southeast Asia in this period?
5. According to the article, what shape did Islam take in many of its movements and adaptations around the region?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. This article gives some examples about how ideas, including religions, were adopted in new areas in this period. Based on evidence from the article, why do you think people were willing or even enthusiastic to adopt ideas coming in from other places? What were their motives?

You will play a trading game in this activity that will help you learn about some specific events that occurred during this era, which will help make this topic more concrete.

Causation
You will be asked to model the spread of disease and pandemics, which in many ways creates a causal map of how disease travels and its effects.

In this activity, you will first play a card trading game, and you will then be asked to create an infographic that relates to the game’s outcome.

Part 1

As you come into the room, your teacher will hand you a 5x7 card that will tell you if you are going to play the role of a peasant, a merchant, or a nobleman or woman in this game. Then, your teacher will give you each some playing cards. The goal of the game is to gather more of one card suit than anyone else. The suit you must collect depends on the role you’re playing. Each card is worth one point. Here is the key to determining which suit each role should collect:

You can decide how you want to make trades. There is only one rule to the game: Every time you trade with someone, you have to write that person’s name down on your 5x7 card.

Once everyone has their cards and is ready, you will have 5 minutes to trade. Your teacher will tell you when the time is up, and will explain what to do next.

Part 2

Now that you know the game is actually about pandemics and not just trading, you are going to think about how dangerous pandemics really are to humanity. There are some scientists, such as Amesh Adalja from Johns Hopkins University, who believe that pandemics are one of the greatest threats to our species. They think pandemics are more likely to destroy humanity than the impacts of climate change and natural disasters, more than the threat of nuclear war, or even cyberwar. It is your job to do some research on the history and spread of pandemics and to create an infographic that displays this history. Then, you’ll decide if you agree that pandemics are the greatest threat to humanity.

Get into small groups to start working on your infographic. Note that your infographics must include information about at least four pandemics, and one of those them must be the Black Death. The infographic should also include information about the causal relationships between the pandemics and the WHP frames of communities, networks, and production and distribution. More specifically, show how pandemics may have impacted the community, networks, and production and distribution frames, and conversely, how those frames impacted the spread of pandemics.

As you create your infographic, pay attention to the following:

• Topic – Make sure the topic—pandemics—is somehow defined or explained through visuals.
• Type – The type of infographic chosen (for example, timeline or informational) should strongly support the content being presented.
• Objects – The objects included in the infographic should be relevant and support the topic.
• Data visualizations – The data visualizations must present accurate data and be easy to understand.
• Style – Fonts, colors, and organization should be aesthetically pleasing, appropriate to the content, and enhance the viewer’s understanding of the information presented.
• Citations – Full citations for all sources must be included.

Take some time to research some past pandemics and gather the information for your infographic. Once you’ve designed and constructed your infographic, be prepared to display it. You and your classmates will take part in a gallery walk so you can get more familiar with the information shared on each. As you view each of the infographics, write down three pieces of evidence that either support or challenge the argument that a pandemic is the greatest threat to our society today. You’ll either share your findings with the class or hand them to your teacher.

This is an article about unintended consequences. It traces the spread of the Black Death, also called the Bubonic Plague, across the same networks that moved ideas and trade goods. With increasing connections, merchants and the animals that accompanied them—sometimes without their knowledge—came in contact with more and more people. That in turn helped disease spread, devastating many communities in Europe, Asia, and North Africa.

This article focuses on how networks facilitated the spread of a disease, which in turn had a massive impact on production and distribution. It provides evidence that will equip you to evaluate both of these frame narratives for this era.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. How did the success of the Mongol state help the Black Death spread?
2. How many people are estimated to have died from the plague?
3. What do gerbils have to do with plague?
4. Where was plague the worst? Why?
5. How did the plague affect economies?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. In both the networks and production and distribution narratives, we generally hear about expanded trade routes as a purely good thing. How does this article affect that view?

3x5 note cards or cut up paper

This sourcing collection, along with the Quick-Sourcing Tool, gives you an opportunity to practice a quicker kind of sourcing than you do in the sourcing practice progression. The tool and the process for using it—specifically designed for unpacking document collections—will help you be successful when responding to DBQs.

Note: If you are unfamiliar with the Quick-Sourcing Tool or the process for using it, we recommend reviewing the Quick-Sourcing Introduction activity in Lesson 2.1.

The Quick-Sourcing Tool can be used any time you encounter a set of sources and are trying to respond to a prompt or question, as opposed to the deeper analysis you do when using the HAPPY tool that is part of the sourcing progression.

First, take out or download the sourcing collection and review the guiding question that appears on the first page. Then, take out or download the Quick-Sourcing Tool and review the directions. For Part 1, you’ll write a quick summary of each source in terms of how it relates to the guiding question (we recommend using one note card or scrap of paper for each source).

For Part 2, which uses the first four letters of the acronym from the HAPPY tool, you only have to respond to one of these four questions. You should always include the historical significance or “why” (the “Y” in “HAPPY”) for any of the four questions you choose to respond to.

In Part 3, you’ll gather the evidence you found in each document and add it to your note cards so you can include it in a response later. Once each document is analyzed, look at your note cards and try to categorize the cards. There might be a group of documents that support the claim you want to make in your response, and another group that will help you consider counterclaims, for example.

To wrap up, try to respond to the guiding question.

The Black Death devastated Afro-Eurasian communities in the fourteenth century, but the origins of the bubonic plague may have begun much earlier than previously thought. The sources in this collection range from firsthand accounts of the plague’s devastation in the fourteenth century to scholarly articles from the twenty-first century.

The primary and secondary source excerpts in this collection will help you understand the origins and spread of the fourteenth-century Black Death and how our understanding of this epidemic has changed over time. In addition, you’ll work on your sourcing skills using the Quick-Sourcing Tool.

We recommend using the accompanying Quick Sourcing activity (above) to help you analyze these sources.

Make sure you have the UP Notebook worksheets that you partially filled out earlier in the unit.

This is a continuation of the UP Notebook activity that you started in this unit. As part of WHP, you are asked to revisit the Unit Problems in order to maintain a connection to the core themes of the course. Because this is the second time you’re working with this unit’s problems, you are asked to explain how your understanding of the unit’s core concepts has changed over the unit. Make sure you use evidence from this unit and sound reasoning in your answers.

Fill out the second table on your partially completed worksheet from earlier in the unit. Be prepared to talk about your ideas with your class.

Beginning in fourteenth-century Italy, a cultural movement of artists and scholars—mostly wealthy men—kicked off the European Renaissance. They sought to revive the arts, architecture, and literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans…At least, that’s the usual story we get. Arguably, however, the Renaissance was as much about linkages to other regions of Afro-Eurasia than it was about reviving an ancient European past. It wasn’t just European men who took part in this movement. Women, trade with the Islamic world and Africa, and global economic developments each played a significant role in shaping Renaissance art and thinking.

The Renaissance is a hotly debated historical topic. Many states require your teachers to cover the Renaissance. Some scholars argue it was central to the development of the modern world. Others argue that it didn’t actually happen. This article provides you with evidence to support, extend, and challenge narratives about the Renaissance.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. According to the author, what was the Renaissance?
2. What did Renaissance thinkers and artists in Italy believe they were doing?
3. According to the author, how did historians in the nineteenth century use the Renaissance to build narratives?
4. How did different types of people experience the Renaissance?
5. How did trade help start the Renaissance?
6. How does the author use connections with the Islamic world to challenge the narrative that the Renaissance was all about reviving Greek and Roman culture?
7. What does the author argue that the painting, “The King’s Fountain,” shows us about life in Renaissance Europe?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. How does your interpretation of the Renaissance change if you explain it through each of the three course frames?
2. How would you describe the Renaissance to somebody who knew nothing about it? Use evidence from the article to support, extend, or challenge the idea of a uniquely European cultural movement that started in fourteenth-century Italy.

In this activity, you will continue to grapple with cause and consequence and how causal reasoning can be used to help you understand change over time. Causal reasoning can help you develop evidence-based explanations or arguments in response to a causal question that considers human actions, events, and larger structures or processes. You will think about both the causes and consequences of the spread of the Black Death, which will push you from thinking about causation as linear, toward an understanding of the complex relationship between cause and consequence. In addition, by working through the causes and consequences of this pandemic, you’ll begin to understand how, due to an increasingly connected world, the causes and consequences might look similar today.

Claim testing
Causation requires a great deal of sound reasoning, which is another way of saying claim testing. In order to identify and categorize causes and consequences, you’ll have to use logic, evidence, and (usually) authority to decide if these were long term or short term and if the causes or effects were historically significant.

In this activity, you’ll first identify the factors that may have caused the Black Death to spread so easily. If you need to refresh your memory, review the articles “Trade Networks and the Black Death” and “Source Collection – The Black Death.” Then, you’ll think about the consequences that resulted from the spread of the Black Death and construct a causal map that will help you put all of this into perspective. Historians use causal maps to help them organize historical events or processes. Creating a causal map allows you to see the connections between events over time. In addition, these maps will help you understand that causation is rarely linear.

First, your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Causation – The Black Death worksheet, which includes the Causation Tool. Working together with your class, follow these directions:

1. In the Event box, write the name of the event you’re studying, along with the dates, location, and a brief description.
2. Using what you’ve learned so far in the course about the Black Death, think of all the possible causes that led to the spread of this disease. Your teacher will write these on the board.
3. As you think about the causes listed, decide which should be categorized as long term, intermediate term, or short term. Make sure you’re able to justify your categorizations.
4. Write each cause in the appropriate box of the worksheet (long term, intermediate term, and short term).

We’ll get to the other parts of the tool later in the course. For now, categorizing by time will be a sufficient way to understand these causes.

Now, your teacher will assign you to a small group. Look at the causal map for the spread of the Black Death. Think about these questions as you review the map:

• Are all the causes that were written on the board included in this causal map?
• Would you have organized this causal map differently? If so, how?

Working with your group, try to think of all the possible consequences (effects) of the Black Death and add them to your tool. Then, add those effects to your causal map. Fill in the circles on the map and add at least three more circles. Next, label your causal maps. For each circle that’s a cause, write the letter “C” next to it. For consequences/effects, write the letter “E” next to those circles.

Once you’re done, be ready to discuss what you labeled as causes or consequences, and which of those are the most historically significant. You can determine historical significance in several ways. Use the acronym ADE to help you determine if historical events or processes, in this case the causes and consequences of the Black Death, were significant.

• Amount – How many people’s lives were affected by the cause/effect?
• Depth – Were people living in the time period being studied deeply affected by the cause/effect?
• Endurance – Were the changes people experienced as a result of this cause/effect long-lasting and/or recurring?

Your teacher will collect your worksheets and use them to assess how your causation skills are progressing.

Diseases have been around for all of human history. But in different times and places, the same microbes have had very different effects. Where diseases have spread rapidly, they have contributed to some world historical changes, like the decline of empires, reorganized labor systems, or colonization. The impact of disease leads us to question whether the humans are the authors of our story or whether other species are really the agents of change.

One of the problem questions for this unit asks about why networks grew and shrank during this period. Another question asks about the positive and negative consequences of increased connectivity. Some logical responses to these questions might start with the impact of diseases. This video introduces the topic of the impact of disease in human history to help prepare you to look at this era specifically.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. How did migration and population density contribute to the historical rise and fall of disease rates?
2. Why might hunters and gatherers have had fewer diseases than farmers or pastoralists?
3. What made ancient Greece more susceptible to disease?
4. What are some world historical effects of plague?
5. Did the Black Death or the Great Dying have more fatalities? Why did one have much higher mortality rates?
6. How did population density and disease contribute to European colonization in the Americas?
7. Why do we have relatively lower disease rates now? Why are disease rates in danger of rising again?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. According to the author of the video, humans are not the only agents of history, meaning they’re not the only species to cause change. What other sources or facts that you have studied support, extend, or challenge the author’s argument?

This activity will provide additional evidence to help you respond to the Unit Problem: How did networks of exchange connect societies, and how were communities changed by these connections? You will reflect on what you’ve learned during this unit by comparing two political maps. You’ll also review the predictions you made about the consequences of long-distance trade in the Unit 2 Part 1 map activity earlier in this unit. Finally, you’ll be able to look at a map showing trade routes, the spread of the Mongol Empire, and the Black Death as you discuss what patterns might connect them.

This activity begins with an identification opening in which you identify 10 political communities in the year 1450 CE. Next, you will compare maps of political communities in 1200 and 1450 CE as you evaluate how communities changed and stayed the same over this 250-year period. Finally, you will compare your guesses and predictions from the Part 1 activity to a map of the Black Death and the Mongol Empire and write a response to a prompt about the consequences of connectivity.

Step 1

Identify the political communities associated with the numbers on the black-and-white map of the world in 1450 CE and record your answers on the worksheet. You should complete this part of the activity without referencing outside sources or the rest of the maps in this activity.

Step 2

Open and review the 1450 CE Political Map and correct your identifications. Then, in small groups, examine the 1450 CE Political Map alongside the 1200 CE Political Map you first saw in the Part 1 map activity at the start of the unit. You should compare these two maps and identify three significant changes or continuities between the two.

Step 3

Remaining in small groups, open and review the Black Death and Mongols Thematic Map. Review the guesses and predictions you made in the Part 1 map activity for this unit. What did you get right? What did you miss? Finally, prepare a short paragraph or bullet list in response to this prompt:

The period in this unit saw rapid expansions, collapses, and recoveries of long-distance trade routes. Using the maps you encountered in this unit as evidence, explain how empires, trade, and environmental factors (including disease) were connected in Afro-Eurasia from 1200 to 1450.

Being able to write clearly and convincingly—to write well—helps us communicate our thinking and conclusions. Writing well will help you in many areas of life, and being a good writer is a prerequisite for being a good historical writer. Throughout the course, your historical writing is assessed at the end of each era through a document-based question (DBQ). To help you become a better writer, we have included a series of rubric- based writing activities in this course. In this activity, you will learn more about the WHP Writing Rubric generally, and you’ll start to examine the areas of claim and focus more specifically as you begin your journey to become a more skilled writer.

Reading
You will read an article, and then identify its claim and focus. Each of the writing progression activities will involve some reading, which probably isn’t surprising, since reading and writing are often considered two sides of the same coin.

Did you know that grammar can save lives? Take a look at these two images, and you’ll see why.

OK, these are silly, but they’re also a good reminder of why being able to write well is an important skill to develop. Throughout the course, you’re going to spend some time focusing on your writing skills. No, this is not your English language arts class, but being a writer who can communicate well is vital to being a historian. Most historians share their ideas through writing, and as student historians, you are asked to do the same. The next activity is a writing assignment, and it’s important that you understand what is expected of you when writing in this course.

Take out the WHP Writing Rubric and quickly review it. For this activity, you are going to pay close attention to the Claim and Focus section of the rubric. Review the criteria for claim and focus, and then think about the following questions and discuss them one by one with your class.

1. What is a claim?
2. What does a claim do in an essay?
3. Why should we care about claims?
4. What is a focused essay?

Once you’ve covered these concepts, review the article “Cultural Consequences of Connectivity,” which you likely read earlier in the course. First, find and circle the major claim in the article. Sometimes finding the claim is hard, and one thing that can help you identify it is to look at the focus of the article to help you figure it out. So, you’ll do that next. The best way to do this is to look for any ideas that are repeated over and over again. Any time you find repeated ideas, underline them. Your teacher may have you do this in pairs or small groups.

Once you are done, share your thinking with the class. Finally, would you give this article a grade of advanced, proficient, developing, or emerging based on the Claim and Focus criteria in the WHP Writing Rubric? Be prepared to share your thoughts and reasoning with your class.

Carefully read the DBQ prompt you will be responding to. Be sure to have read and analyzed the documents prior to doing this warm-up activity.

As you develop your close reading, critical thinking, and historical thinking skills, you also build writing skills that will help you in a lot of other classes. This warm-up explores the Claim and Focus row of the Writing Rubric and allows you to better understand those concepts and how they apply to thinking and writing.

In this quick warm-up activity, you’ll practice using the language of an essay prompt to make a claim, provide focus for that claim, and then make a counterclaim. Your teacher might ask you to do just some of the steps in this activity, so be sure to listen for instructions.

Part 1 – Claim

What is a thesis or major claim in an essay? Discuss your ideas with your class.

How do we figure out how to write a thesis/major claim in response to a prompt? One way to do this is by turning the essay prompt/question into the stem of a statement, and then adding a little more information to make it a claim. Then, you can make an even stronger claim statement by getting even more specific. Work through an example of this with your class.

Then, repeat this process using the prompt you are getting ready to respond to.

Part 2 – Focus

What is focus in an essay? Discuss your ideas with your class and refer to the WHP Writing Rubric for more information.

How do you maintain focus in an essay? One way to do this is by linking back to key words and ideas from the thesis/major claim. Review the thesis/major claim from Step 1 and underline the key points that were included that you could write more about in the body of the paper. Then, work with your class to create three supporting claims that mirror the language or ideas from the original claim.

Now, do the same thing using the thesis/major claim you wrote in Step 1 in response to the prompt you’ve been assigned.

Part 3 – Counterclaim

What is a counterclaim? Discuss your thinking with your class.

How do you make a counterclaim? To weave a counterclaim into your thesis/major claim statement, ask yourself this: Who would disagree with your statement and why? What alternative or opposing viewpoints might you encounter when discussing this topic? Once you’ve considered other viewpoints, try weaving them in. Work through the following example with your class.

Now, create a counterclaim related to the prompt you will be responding to.

Once you’re done, you’re ready to write!

DBQ Prompt: Develop an argument that analyzes the growth of networks of exchange after 1200 CE.

Have the Comparison, CCOT, and Causation tools available (find all resources on the Student Resources page)

This assessment will help prepare you for the document-based questions (DBQs) you will probably encounter on exams. It will also give you a better understanding of your skills development and overall progress related to constructing an argument, interpreting historical documents, and employing the historical thinking practices you are using in this course.

Continuity and change over time, contextualization, sourcing, reading, writing
All DBQs require you to contextualize, source documents, and of course as part of this, read and write. This particular DBQ asks you to evaluate the continuities and changes that took place in relation to the expansion of exchange networks after 1200 CE.

Day 1

In this activity, you are going to prepare to respond to a DBQ, or document-based question. In this course, document-based questions give you a prompt or question along with seven source documents, and you’ll use the information in those documents (and any additional knowledge you have) to respond to the prompt. Your responses will be written in essay format, and will usually be five or six paragraphs long.

This DBQ asks you to respond to the following prompt: Develop an argument that analyzes the growth of networks of exchange after 1200 CE. To make sure you’re clear on what you’re being asked, take out the Question Parsing Tool. Work with your classmates to deconstruct the prompt.

Next, take out the DBQ and relevant thinking tool to help you analyze the documents. Take a look at the document library. As you do with the Three Close Reads process, quickly skim each of the documents for gist. Then, do a closer read of each one. For each document, write down the information you think you might use in your essay. If possible, also provide a source analysis for each document. Write your ideas on the relevant tool as you work through the documents. Discuss your ideas with the class.

Now, come up with a major claim or thesis statement that responds to the prompt. Use the information from your thinking tool to help you come up with an idea. What you have written should help you support your claim. One common mistake students make when responding to a DBQ is not directly answering the prompt—so, in creating your thesis, make sure that it directly answers and is relevant to the prompt.

Finally, it’s time to contextualize. Remember, that ALL historical essays require you to contextualize. If you need to refresh your memory, contextualization is the process of placing a document, an event, a person, or process within its larger historical setting, and includes situating it in time, space, and sociocultural setting. In this case, you are contextualizing the documents. Contextualization will often come at the beginning of your essay, or at least in the first paragraph, either before or after your thesis statement. As needed, you can use the Contextualization Tool for this part of the process.

Day 2

This second day is your writing day. Feel free to use your tools and notes from any prewriting work you completed as you craft your essay response. Make sure you have a copy of the WHP Writing Rubric available to remind you of what’s important to include in your essay. And don’t forget to contextualize! In doing that, think of the entire time period, not just the time immediately preceding the historical event or process you are writing about. Your teacher will give you a time limit for completing your five- to six-paragraph essay responding to the DBQ.

In order to improve your writing skills, it is important to read examples—both good and bad—written by other people. Reviewing writing samples will help you develop and practice your own skills in order to better understand what makes for a strong essay.

Your teacher will provide sample essays for this unit’s DBQ prompt and provide instructions for how you will use them to refine your writing skills. Whether you’re working with a high-level example or improving on a not-so-great essay, we recommend having the WHP Writing Rubric on hand to help better understand how you can improve your own writing. As you work to identify and improve upon aspects of a sample essay, you’ll also be developing your own historical writing skills!

Have your graded essay ready to use for annotation and revision purposes.

The purpose of this activity is to show you how to use a rubric-aligned tool to evaluate and improve upon a piece of writing. A useful strategy for improving writing skills is to analyze samples as an editor, using peer drafts or your own graded essays. As you think critically about the criteria in the WHP Writing Rubric and evaluate a piece of writing against it, you will continue to build your understanding of what makes a piece of writing strong. This, in turn, will make your writing stronger.

In this activity, you’ll first review the Claim and Focus row of the WHP Writing Rubric with your class if you have not already done so. Then, you’ll be introduced to the Claim and Focus Revision Tool and how you to use it to improve upon claim and focus in an essay. Finally, you’ll use the tool to evaluate and revise an essay.

If you are reviewing and discussing the Claim and Focus row of the rubric with your class, remember that a strong thesis/major claim and subclaims will help establish good focus in an essay.

Next, take out the Claim and Focus Revision Tool. First, pay attention to the directions at the top, which ask you to review the prompt for the essay. Review a prompt with your class and underline all the key words in the prompt that relate to what specifically is being asked of the writer. This will help you focus your review on what was specifically asked for in the essay. Next, review the feedback received from your teacher or peers to get a better sense of how the essay fared in terms of claim and focus. This will help give you a general sense of where improvement is needed.

Finally, it’s time to use the table portion of the tool to really start digging into the details of the essay as they relate to claim and focus. This part of the tool is broken into three steps. The first step addresses claim, the second step addresses focus, and the third step addresses counterclaim. Within each step there is a review and revision process. For the review process, look at the checklist under the Review column and see if you can find those elements of writing in the essay. If you find them, check the box and move to the next item in the list. If you didn’t find them, look to the Revision column for suggestions about how to improve that aspect of the essay. Go through each item on the checklist so that you are prepared to revise for claim, focus, and counterclaim in the essay where needed.

Now that you have an idea of how the tool works, it’s time to try this out on your own!