In this activity, you’ll begin to explore some of the characteristics that make up your identity, that define you and make you unique. This will allow you to see that you are a member of multiple communities and that people no longer have singular identities or communities, but rather multiple ones that are interconnected. This activity will challenge the idea of a single narrative that tells the story of your life or (on a larger or more global scale) that of history.

Contextualization, scale
You’ll assess your roles or identities in a variety of the communities of which you are a part. You’ll begin to contextualize your identities within different communities and your role in a broader or more global framework. In addition, you’ll engage in some scale switching as you view your identity on a local, regional, national, and then global scale.

In this activity, you’ll start with a discussion about identity and list the different identities you have (for example, at school, home, on sports teams). Then, you’ll draw representations of how these identities fit into different spatial scales using the Who Am I? Worksheet. Finally, you’ll wrap up the activity with a discussion about similarities and differences that can be seen when comparing each of your drawings.

Today, most people identify as citizens of a nation. But this wasn’t always the case. Nations and nationalism are only about 200 years old. Nationalism is an idea that describes the common bonds that bind people together in a nation. At the heart of nationalism is the idea that a people had the right to govern themselves. Napoleon, by showing the world the power of a unified nation-state, inspired many Europeans to follow suit. As Enlightenment ideas collided with Atlantic revolutions, old loyalties to religions and kings were replaced by loyalty to a nation.

This article provides an introduction to nationalism as one of the changes in political identity and political experience central to the unit problem. It will also help you identify connections between the political revolutions you learned about earlier in this unit and the spread of nationalism in the nineteenth century. As you watch, think about how you identify yourself. Is the first thing that comes to mind a national, religious, or some other identity?

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 does the author define nationalism?
2. How did the French, Haitian, and American revolutions help spread nationalism?
3. How does the author explain the decline in religious identity during the long nineteenth century?
4. Why was it harder for Germans and Italians to build a unified nation-state than it was for the French?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. The author argues that national identities have replaced traditional identities like religion. Is this true for you? What about for people you know, like grandparents or teachers? Do you see any new types of communities that people are identifying with in our world today?
2. How do you think changes in communication helped spread nationalism through networks across the Atlantic Ocean?

Nationalism is the most impactful ideology in modern history. It is a cultural and political concept that argues that nations exist and have a right to govern themselves. That might not seem controversial, but it has been an incredibly disruptive force over the last 200 years. From the Atlantic Revolutions, the concept of nationalism spread around the world, sometimes liberating people from empires, and sometimes warping into new, destructive ideologies like fascism. Nationalists make historical claims that help them achieve their political goals. It’s time for you to test those claims. Is nationalism good or bad?

This video is intended to introduce you to a concept you’re going to hear a lot about for the rest of the course: nationalism. The video defines the ideology of nationalism, provides an overview of where it got started and how it spread, and concludes by providing some evidence to help you evaluate nationalism as an ideology. It will provide you with evidence to evaluate the communities frame narrative. It will also help you better understand the revolutions of the long nineteenth century and the remarkable violence of the twentieth century.

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 does this video define nationalism?
2. What did Benedict Anderson mean when he called the nation an “imagined political community”?
3. According to the video, where did nationalism begin and how did it spread?
4. How did nationalism contribute to the extreme violence of the twentieth century?
5. How do nationalists construct ideas about their nation?
6. What is some evidence referenced in this video as to whether nationalism is good or bad?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. The opening quote of this video is by the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut. In the quote, Vonnegut warns that “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Why do you think this quote was included in this video?
2. This video is pretty clear about nationalism’s impacts on communities. What are some ways that nationalism affected networks and production and distribution?

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.

1848 was a huge year for Europe. Several bad harvests in the 1840s created the conditions that led to dozens of revolutions all over Europe. Diverse coalitions of liberals, republicans, and working class radicals demanded independent nations, political sovereignty, and constitutions. They succeeded at first, but soon they started fighting amongst themselves. The kings of Europe made alliances with liberals and returned to power, stronger than ever, and the workers lost out. But in India and China huge wars against the status quo erupted, failing in the short term but setting long-term events into motion.

This article provides evidence at a global scale to respond to the Unit 4 Problem: How did people transform the political systems under which they lived, and were these changes felt equally around the world and within communities? You have read about political revolutions and nationalist wars of unification. This article is intended to emphasize the connection between those two types of conflict. As you read, ask how ideas about political sovereignty and nationalism traveled so far and so fast after 1848. You might also think about what this evidence tells you about the limits of political revolution in 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. What caused the revolutions of 1848 in Europe?
2. Why did the revolutions of 1848 fail?
3. What effects did the Taiping Revolution and the Great Revolt of 1857 have on British power in Asia?
4. Why does the author suggest that all these revolutions happened around the same time?
5. From Europe to China, what was the common effect of the failed world revolutions from 1848 to 1865?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. All the revolutions mentioned in this article failed. However, thinking back to your discussions from the last lesson, how revolutionary would the revolutions of 1848, the Taiping Revolution, and the Indian Rebellion of 1857 have been, if they had succeeded?
2. The 1848 revolutions were driven by two questions: a communities frame question that mostly the middle class liberals pushed (who gets to participate in ruling?) and a production and distribution frame question that mostly working class radicals pushed (who gets the profit from industrialization?) Were either of these questions resolved by these revolutions?

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.

This collection explores changing belief systems, from the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation to devotional movements like Sufism and the Bhakti movement. It also looks at the political dimensions of religion, from Christian Europe to the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Courts, all of which were entangled in sectarian struggles.

The primary source excerpts in this collection will help you assess how the revolutionary changes of the long nineteenth century impacted communities and networks. In turn, this will help you understand how ideas like popular sovereignty and nationalism continue to influence our world today. 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.

This activity builds on the Who Am I activity and asks you to think about your sense of responsibility (duty) to your community at the local, national, and global scale. In addition, you are asked about your compassion for members of your communities. By looking at our levels of responsibility and compassion in relation to communities at various scales, you will begin to see how interconnected we all are but also how humans can sometimes be passionate about their local community or nation while also being critical or judgmental of others outside of these communities. This can lead people both to value their community or nation over all others (nationalism) and turn away from their fellow humans.

Contextualization, scale
You will use your scale-switching skills to look at communities across different spatial scales. First, you’ll zoom in on your local community and then zoom out to your nation, and finally switch to one of the largest scales—the world—to see how your sense of responsibility or duty tends to decrease as you zoom out. In addition, you will think about how this relates to historical events such as genocide and how developing our sense of empathy, or compassion, might help to prevent these events from occurring in the future.

Take out the Responsibility and Compassion Worksheet and look at the image of the boxes. As you review the boxes, your teacher will ask you a series of questions about them. Once you’re done discussing these as a class, answer the additional questions on the worksheet on your own.

Finally, think about how the idea of belonging to a nation and being willing to fight and die for it is a relatively modern idea. People living before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thought of themselves in a much more local way. Their sense of community was much smaller. Why do you think that might have been the case and what led to changes in the ways we view our obligation to our national community? Do you think there are any negative aspects to having a strong sense of being a part of a national community?

The Atlantic revolutions helped birth nationalism in the eighteenth century. But in the nineteenth century, people in Europe started embracing a different form of nationalism. In large land-based empires like the Ottoman and Austrian Empires, ethnic groups within the empire started demanding their own independent nation-states and a broke away from the empire. In Italy and Germany, by contrast, people used nationalism to unite many different states into larger nation-states.

This article provides evidence to respond to the Unit 4 Problem: How did nationalism spread, and change as it spread, over the course of the long nineteenth century? The article provides examples of how nationalism played out in different types of communities in the nineteenth century. As you read, use the communities frame to compare ethnic nationalism to the types of nationalism you’ve read about in France, the Americas, Japan, Germany, and Italy.

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 does the author define ethnicity?
2. Why was ethnic nationalism such a threat to the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires?
3. How did nationalist ideas spread to Greek communities?
4. What was the dark side of ethnic nationalism?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Use the evidence from this article, and others you have read, to answer this question: Does nationalism liberate people, or does it oppress them? Or neither? Or both?
2. Throughout this unit, we have seen people adopt new identities—from being British to being American, from being Ottoman subjects to being Greek citizens, etc. What does this flexibility suggest about the nature of our identities as members of communities?

In the long nineteenth century, people in many parts of the world were trying out new ideas and seeing how they fit into their own societies. Rifa’a al-Tahtawi was an Egyptian intellectual who studied French society and the ideas of the Enlightenment in the age of revolutions. He theorized ways to combine European scientific ideas with Islamic belief, reflecting the great Muslim contributions to science of earlier centuries. He was also an Egyptian nationalist and a liberal theorist.

In this unit we see a number of new ideas about politics and governance. These led to liberal and national political revolutions in many parts of the world. Much of the focus is on France, the United States, Haiti, and Latin America. But Enlightenment ideas, including ideas about politics, were debated widely. This biography introduces an important Egyptian political philosopher. You can explore the ways he tried to fit Enlightenment ideas into his own society, and also those ideas he rejected, and see how these ideas helped to create a sense of nationalism in Egypt.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Where was Rifa’a al-Tahtawi from, and what was he doing in France in 1827?
2. Who was in charge of Egypt in this period, and what were some of his ideas?
3. What ideas did al-Tahtawi come up with and share when he returned to France?
4. What idea did al-Tahtawi reject for Egypt?
5. How does the artist use art and design to demonstrate al-Tahtawi’s belief that science and religion could co-exist, as opposed to French ideas that they were in opposition to each other?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in this unit of the course. On the bottom of the tool, record what you learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what you’re learning.

1. How does this biography of al-Tahtawi support, extend, or challenge what you have learned about the Enlightenment and political revolutions of the long nineteenth century?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

In this activity, you’ll continue to learn how to identify, categorize, and evaluate changes and continuities. By focusing on the changes and continuities that took place from one unit to the next, you’ll further develop this historical thinking practice and will apply your historical knowledge to formulate thesis statements for two CCOT prompts.

Comparison, causation, contextualization, writing
As with the other CCOT activities that you’ve encountered, this historical thinking practice combines elements of comparison, contextualization, and causation. You’ll compare events and processes that took place from Unit 3: Transoceanic Connections to Unit 4: Revolutions (1450–1914); expand the context for the changes and continuities of this period; and begin to consider what caused these changes to take place. In addition, you’ll be writing thesis statements in response to two CCOT prompts.

By now, you should be familiar with the CCOT Tool (which is included in this activity’s worksheet) and practice. Your teacher will start by either handing out or asking you to download the CCOT – Transoceanic Connections to Revolutions worksheet and breaking the class into small groups of three to four students. Once you’re in groups, follow the tool directions, and start by adding the timeframe. Then, you’ll identify the continuities and changes that took place from Unit 3: Transoceanic Connections to Unit 4: Revolutions (1450–1914). Remember, you can use any of the articles and videos from these units to help you identify continuities and changes—the Units 3 and 4 overview articles are a good place to start!

Once your group has identified the continuities and changes, write these on sticky notes (one change or continuity per note). Then, decide if the continuities and changes you identified are positive or negative, and place them on the graph in the tool.

Next, your group will join up with another group to share your continuities and changes and reasons for their positions on the graph. Members of each group are allowed to reposition the other group’s sticky notes as long as they justify their reasoning.

Then, return to your original group to complete the remaining questions on the tool. Be prepared to share your most significant continuity and change. Remember that you can use the acronym ADE to determine historical significance. Consider if most people’s lives were affected by these changes and continuities (amount); if people living in this time period were deeply affected by these changes and continuities (depth); or if these changes and continuities were long lasting (endurance).

Finally, work with your group members to craft thesis statements in response to the following CCOT prompts:

• To what extent were the changes that occurred from c. 1450 to c. 1914 positive?
• To what extent were the continuities that occurred from c. 1450 to c. 1914 positive?

Write each of your thesis statements on a large piece of paper and post your papers on the board. Then, walk around the classroom and read other groups’ thesis statements. You’ll write at least two comments on the thesis statements of at least three other groups in the class. One comment should be a suggestion for how to improve the thesis statement and the second comment should be a counterclaim—an argument against the thesis statement.

Finally, you’ll write down the thesis statement that you think best answers or addresses one of the prompts. Note that it cannot be your own group’s thesis statement. Then, provide a one- to two-sentence explanation for why you believe the thesis statement you chose best answers the prompt. Hand this in as an exit ticket so your teacher can assess your understanding of CCOT and the content addressed in this activity.

This activity will help you to pull together some of your ideas for responding to the Unit Problem: How did people transform the political systems under which they lived, and were these changes felt equally around the world and within communities? You will look back on what you have learned during this unit by exploring the geography of revolution. You’re also going to review your predictions about revolutions during the long nineteenth century. Finally, you’ll be able to look at other revolutions, and discuss what patterns might connect them!

This activity begins with an identification opening in which you will identify 13 revolutions and rebellions. Next, you will revisit your predictions about where revolutions would happen from Part 1 of this geography activity, which you completed at the beginning of the unit. Finally, you will look for additional patterns in the location of revolutions and rebellions around the world.

Step 1

Individually, identify the revolutions associated with the numbers on the black-and-white maps of Afro-Eurasia and the Americas and record your answers on the worksheet. You will likely complete this part of the activity without referencing outside sources or the rest of the maps in this activity, or your teacher might provide you with access to the Empires, Enslavement, and Revolutions Thematic Map at this stage.

Step 2

Review the Empires, Enslavement, and Revolutions Thematic Map and correct your identifications. Next, examine the map more closely. You will compare this map with the predictions you made at the beginning of the unit. Were you correct at guessing where revolutions would take place?

Step 3

Remaining in small groups, you will answer three questions, and write a short paragraph or bullet list in response to the prompt below. Be prepared to share your answers with the class:

What kinds of geographic and political patterns contributed to the spread of revolutions around the world? What other factors have you learned about that were important, but that are not shown on this map?

As we continue the progression on writing, you will look at the elements of organization and language and style to ensure you have a solid grasp on each of these essentials of good writing. You will analyze another student essay to both identify and improve upon these aspects of the essay, helping to make sure you improve your historical writing skills.

It’s time for another writing activity! By now, you’re probably getting familiar with these. In this one, you’re going to examine another student essay this time against the WHP Writing Rubric criteria for organization and language and style. The essay was written in response to the prompt, “Assess and compare the impact of the Industrial Revolution on Britain and India c. 1750-1914 CE.”

Before starting your analysis, take a look at the WHP Writing Rubric and review the Organization and Language and Style rows of the rubric with your class.

Once you’ve reviewed these criteria, your teacher will probably put you into pairs or small groups to work collaboratively on the Writing – Organization and Language and Style worksheet. First, work with your group to identify the major claim in the essay. While the thesis is not the focus of this activity, as always, it’s difficult to assess the rest of the essay without being aware of the major claim, since everything in the essay should be tied to that claim.

Next, review the essay, first paying close attention to important elements of language and style. Underline any elements of language and style that could be improved upon. Then, suggest improvements for two of the issues you’ve identified. Next, look at the organization of the essay and highlight any areas where organization could be improved. For example, if there are any missing transitions, highlight this issue as an area that could be improved upon. Next, provide suggested improvements to two of the issues you’ve found with the essay’s organization. Finally, provide a score (advanced, proficient, developing, or emerging) and comments for each of these rows of the rubric. Be prepared to share your answers 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.

Make sure you have drafted the thesis/major claim you intend to use in response to the essay prompt.

This warm-up focuses on the Organization row of the WHP Writing Rubric and allows you to refine the way you structure your writing to most effectively support your argument and ideas. You will practice skills to use organization strategies and transitions to support your analysis and establish clear, meaningful connections between ideas. These writing skills are essential not just to essay-writing in all your classes, but are applicable to academic, professional, and personal writing at all levels.

In this warm-up activity, you will learn how to organize your essays to help you create a paper that’s easy for your reader to understand. First, you’ll review the Organization row of the rubric, and then, you’ll work through a three-step process that will help you think about how you’ll organize your essay.

First, take out the WHP Writing Rubric and review the Organization row with your class. Discuss what you think organization is in this context and why it’s important to consider when writing essays. Remember, all arguments should have three components that make up the basic organization: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Within those components, writers make choices about the best way to order and present their ideas. Some writers use categories to structure their paragraphs (for example, economic, social, etc.) Others lay out their points in order of importance or move from most general to most specific. When we discuss organization in the context of the rubric, we’re really talking about the existence and effectiveness of the introduction and conclusion, along with the order in which ideas are presented within the body.

Additionally, a well-organized essay provides the reader with a roadmap, which should help them follow your argument more easily. So, how do you organize a paper? Well, there is a tool for that!

Take out the Organization Prewriting Tool and work through it according to your teacher’s instructions.

First, add the thesis/major claim to the top of the tool. Then, for Step 1, come up with three claims—or reasons—that support the thesis/major claim statement you just wrote. Then, for Step 2, use transition words to help you write your introduction and organize your body paragraphs.

Now you’re ready for Step 3, your conclusion. First, choose a transition word that will help you start your concluding paragraph. Then, summarize your supporting claims and their significance, describe why your argument is important, and then restate your thesis/major claim. The work you complete in Step 3 will help you write your concluding paragraph later.

Once you’ve completed the steps, it’s time to write!

DBQ Prompt: Analyze the most significant causes of the political revolutions of the long nineteenth century (c. 1750 to 1914 CE).

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

This DBQ is another opportunity to get a sense of your progress in developing your historical thinking and writing skills. Additionally, writing DBQs will help prepare you to be successful on the written portion of standardized tests.

Day 1

It’s time for another DBQ. This time, you’ll be thinking about political revolutions. The DBQ prompt is: Analyze the most significant causes of the political revolutions of the long nineteenth century (c. 1750 to 1914 CE). Start out by using the Question Parsing Tool to help you figure out what this prompt is really asking, so you can write an appropriate response.

Take out the DBQ and skim the documents quickly. Then, pick the thinking tool you want to use to help you analyze the documents (comparison, causation, or CCOT). Once you’ve picked a tool, read each document a bit more closely and write down or underline the information you think you might use in your essay, along with any additional sourcing you have time for. Write your ideas on your chosen tool as you work through the documents.

Next, create a major claim or thesis statement that responds to the prompt. The notes you have taken should help you form a defensible thesis statement.

Finally, it’s time to contextualize. As you likely know, all historical essays require this. If needed, you can use the Contextualization Tool to help you decide what to include.

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.

When you take the opportunity to revisit and revise your writing, you are building editing skills that will serve you in all types of academic and professional writing. While the ‘revision’ stage of essay-writing is often the most dreaded (or, let’s be honest, sometimes skipped over entirely) part of the process, editing using targeted feedback is how you raise the level of your writing. This activity focuses on the Organization row of the WHP rubric and helps you identify areas of success and areas for improvement in your essays. You’ll use these fine-tuning structure and transition skills for writing in class and in life.

In this activity, you’ll first review the Organization row of the WHP Writing Rubric with your class if you haven’t already done so. Then, you’ll review the Organization Revision Tool and learn how to use it to improve upon the essay’s overall clarity and organization. Finally, you’ll use the Organization Revision Tool to review and revise an essay.

If needed, start by reviewing the Organization row of the WHP Writing Rubric with your class. Discuss why it’s important to think carefully about how an essay is structured. Also, keep in mind that a well-organized essay always has an intro, a body, and a conclusion.

Next, take out the Organization Revision Tool and walk through it with your class. First, note the directions at the top, which ask you to review the feedback from an essay. This is a helpful step because it gives you a general sense of how the essay fared in terms of overall organization and clarity and where improvement is needed.

Now, it’s time to go through each item on the checklist to make sure all criteria related to organization were included in the essay. Work through the list with your class and be sure to ask questions if you aren’t clear about what an item is asking for. Remember, only check the boxes if the criteria are met. If any criteria from the checklist were not met, leave those boxes blank. The final step is to revise the essay based on all the blank checkboxes. Use the unchecked boxes as guidance for what can be done to improve the organization of the essay. You can also use the Organization Prewriting Tool to help structure revisions.

Once you feel like you have mastered how the Organization Revision Tool works, your teacher may have you work on another essay to practice your skills.