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 era 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?

In this final vocab activity of the unit, as with all of the final vocab activities in each unit, you will engage in a deeper exploration of the unit’s vocabulary. You’ll move beyond defining words to representing them in a variety of ways, including acting them out, drawing pictures, defining them in sentences, providing antonyms, and connecting them to course content.

Your teacher will give you a vocab card. Once everyone in the class has their cards, hold your card up to your forehead (with the word facing out), and try to find the other students in the room that have synonyms of your card. You and your synonyms are a group.

Now, you’re going to play a few rounds of the Word Wheel Game. The Word Wheel game works like this:

• Your teacher spins the wheel and calls out the action.
• For each spin, one person in your group has to complete the action related to where the spinner has landed. The actions are as follows for each word:
  • Use it in a sentence
    • Come up with a sentence that uses the word.
  • Think of an antonym
    • Come up with a word that is the opposite of the card you have.
  • Draw it
    • Create a quick sketch of the word.
  • Act it out
    • Act out the definition of the word. (Don’t just act out the word itself!)
  • Explain how your word relates to course content.
    • Relate your word to an activity, a lesson, a concept, the unit driving question, or even one of the practices. This one can be hard!
  • You choose!
    • You can do any of the above.
• You and the rest of the people in your group determine if the student whose turn it was gave a correct answer. If your group can’t decide, ask your teacher to help.
• Each time a student gets a correct answer, they get a point.
• Then, the teacher spins the wheel again and it’s the next person’s turn to go.

Once all of the word in the group have been explained (after two or three rounds), your teacher will collect the cards, shuffle them, and redistribute them. Repeat the process as many times as your teacher says!

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 2 Problem: How were ideas about political identity and political experience transformed by the liberal and democratic revolutions that created nationalism and nation-states? What were the limits of these transformations? 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?

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?

This article takes a slightly different approach. It tells the story of a fictional woman who lived through the long history of Italian nationalism. Italian nationalism got its start with Napoleon, whose invasion helped the disunified city-states of the Italian peninsula start to think of themselves as part of the same community. Several revolutions against Austrian domination of the peninsula failed in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1848. The article addresses several prominent Italian nationalists and the kingdom they finally helped create in 1861. But the reality of an Italian nation-state was far from the ideals of many Italian nationalists.

This article provides evidence to help you to respond to the Unit 2 Problem: How were ideas about political identity and political experience transformed by the liberal and democratic revolutions that created nationalism and nation-states? This article, alongside a video on Japanese nationalism and an article on German nationalism, will allow you to compare and connect a second wave of nationalist movements. What was unique about Italian nationalism? How was it similar to German and Japanese nationalism? This article will help you connect Italian nationalism to ideas of political sovereignty that you encountered in the previous unit, and to evaluate nationalism as a long-term trend.

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. Describe the Italian peninsula before 1800. How were political communities organized?
2. How did Napoleon help start Italian nationalism?
3. Why did the revolutions of 1848 fail to create a unified Italy?
4. What helped Count Cavour succeed in defeating the Austrians and establishing the Kingdom of Italy in 1861?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Most nationalist histories are told from the perspective of great men. How do you think the story is different when told from the perspective of a common woman?
2. The woman in this narrative experienced a lot in her lifetime. Using the communities frame, make a list of the different identities she might have had and the different communities of which she was a part.

Today, we’re all used the idea of “Germany”. But before 1800, there was no country called Germany. Hundreds of small states and provinces made up the Holy Roman Empire, and they were far from a unified nation-state. Napoleon’s invasions changed that. By destroying the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon made it possible for Germany to eventually unite. In the nineteenth century, writers and politicians started promoting the idea of a German nation. One politician and masterful diplomat, Otto von Bismarck, engineered two wars where the German state of Prussia defeated Austria and France. Finally, the nation-state of Germany was united.

This article provides evidence to respond to the Unit 2 Problem: How were ideas about political identity and political experience transformed by the liberal and democratic revolutions that created nationalism and nation-states? The article will allow you to use the communities frame to understand why nationalism spread so quickly in Germany and became such a powerful political force. Alongside the other material in this unit, it offers an example for comparison with other types of nationalism around the world while highlighting elements of German nationalism that were unique.

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. Describe Germany before 1800. How were political communities organized?
2. What does Snow White have to do with German nationalism?
3. What role does the author say violence played in creating the German state?
4. Why did Bismarck succeed against internal and external opposition?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Bismarck seems to be the stereotypical ‘big man’ who creates historical change through his will and his actions. But historians have criticized ‘big man’ history, arguing that wider forces are more important than individuals in creating historical change. Given the evidence you have read so far, do you think nationalism was more a result of the actions of a few big men, or more the result of wider historical forces? Is Bismarck an exception?
2. Many of the political revolutions you encountered in previous lessons and the nationalist movements you’ve encountered in this lesson have ended up being controlled by men, despite the role many women played in these revolutions. Why do you think this is, and why do you think the role of women in these movements is often minimized after independence or unification is achieved?

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 2 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!

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 1.2.

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.

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.

Nationalism wasn’t just something that happened in Europe. All over the world, old empires fell, and new nations arose. (And they often then turned to conquering their own empires). John Green describes some different understandings of how and why nationalism developed before turning toward Japan. In mid-nineteenth century Japan, the arrival of Matthew Perry and shock at the British defeat of China sparked a transformation. Japan transformed from an isolated, feudal state into a modern, empire-building nation-state in a few short decades.

This video provides an overview and evidence at the national level for responding to the Unit 2 Problem: How were ideas about political identity and political experience transformed by the liberal and democratic revolutions that created nationalism and nation-states? It will help you compare the narratives of European nationalism you will read later in this lesson with transformations in Asia, especially Japan. As you watch, you should think about how nationalism in Japan differed from other parts of the world. Look for examples of how Japan learned from Western political revolutions and applied the lessons to its local context.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. How does John Green define nationalism?
2. John Green gives two different theories for how people become a nation: organic process and government construction. What is some evidence he offers for each?
3. What were some internal and external factors that made the Shogunate government of Japan unstable by the mid-nineteenth century?
4. What changes did the Japanese nationalist rebels bring to Japan once they removed the shogunate?
5. What connection does John Green make between Japanese nationalism, modernization, and empire?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. You’ve watched videos and read articles about the political revolutions of the eighteenth century. How do you think those political revolutions affected the types of nationalism that emerged in the nineteenth century?
2. John Green says that nationalism was a “global phenomenon”. How do you think it became global? What are some ways that ideas about nationalism might have spread so quickly to the Ottoman Empire, India, China, and Japan?

This activity will help you to pull together some of your ideas for responding to the Unit Problem: How were ideas about political identity and experience transformed by revolutions and nationalism, and what were the limits of these transformations? 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?

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!

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 “The Rise of the West,” 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: 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 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

Causation, 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 causes of the political revolutions of the long nineteenth century.

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: Analyze the most significant causes of the political revolutions of the long nineteenth century (c. 1750 to 1914 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!