AP U1 Guide
Unit 1 Guide
2Unit 1: The Global Tapestry c. 1200 to 1450 CEWhy start a world history course in 1200 CE? Sure, it’s a nice, round number, but there’s nothing special about that year. Why not start in 1492, when the two hemispheres connected, creating the first global system? Well, 1492 may have been an important year for the global system, but there was plenty happening before Columbus stumbled into the Caribbean. By beginning our story in 1200, we’re able to do something important: We provide students with a glimpse of the world before everyone began to be tied into one global system. We show them the stunning diversity of communities and the surprising connections that existed, even across vast distances. We’ll begin with a tour across Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Europe, and in doing so provide an overview of the ways in which states organized themselves. In Unit 2, we’ll explore how these diverse societies were connected to one another, and how these connections forever reshaped the communities they linked.
Unit 1 Learning Objectives and Unit Problem1.Examine how historians have framed history by creating narratives of different scales of time and space. 2.Explain how intellectual, cultural, and religious transformations affected state formation and changes in states.3.Assess how states developed and changed over time in different regions of the world.4.Explain the causes and effects of economic and technological innovation on states during this period.5.Analyze and evaluate historical thinking skills and reasoning processes such as sourcing and comparison.For individual lesson learning objectives, please review the lesson teaching guides.In this unit, students will consider this Unit Problem: How was the process of state formation similar and different in various regions of the world from c. 1200 to 1450 CE?
Lessons OverviewLesson 1.0 History ThemesLesson 1.1 Developments in East AsiaLesson 1.2 Developments in Dar al-IslamLesson 1.3 Developments in South and Southeast AsiaLesson 1.4 State Building in the Americas Lesson 1.5 State Building in Africa Lesson 1.6 Developments in EuropeLesson 1.7 Comparison in the Period from c. 1200 to c. 1450 Follow the links above to explore each lesson in this unit. Look for this symbol to findthe lesson guides, which provide teacher guidance, including sample answers.
About OER Project: World History AP®World History AP (WH AP) is a free, College-Board-approved world-history course. Precisely aligned to the AP®World History: Modern Course and Exam Description (CED), WH AP can serve as a textbook for AP®World History: Modern classrooms.College Board has approved the WH AP course materials as a college textbook, and has approved the WH AP syllabus as well. Teachers can submit the WH AP syllabus to College Board during the audit process. The OER Project team conducted a materials assessment to ensure that WH AP course materials align with the AP®World History: Modern CED. The CED identifies historical developments within each unit. WH AP has content material to address each of these topics. As a result, each article, video, and activity in the course aligns with specific historical developments, themes, and illustrative examples in the CED.
6Teaching Tips
Historical Thinking Skills and ReasoningProcesses The integration of skills and content is foundational to OER Project courses. Skills development is just as important—if not more—than content knowledge for student thinking and learning in social studies classes. Throughout this course, students encounter numerous scaffolded opportunities to practice causation, comparison, continuity and change over time, contextualization, sourcing, and making and testing claims. Practice progressions are made up of three categories: progression activities, thinking tools, and feedback forms. Each step in a progression is more sophisticated than the one before, challenging students along the way but also supporting them as they do this work. In Unit 1, you’ll find the following introductory progression activities:•Comparison: States 1200–1450 •Sourcing: IntroductionLearn more in our Historical Thinking Skills Guideand see where all the progression activities live in the World History AP Practice Progressions Placement document.
AP®Themes in Unit 1In WH AP, your students examine world history through six AP®themes: humans and the environment; cultural developments and interactions; governance; economic systems; social interactions and organization; and technology and innovation. These themes are intended to help structure students’ experiences with course content. This approach helps students group information and sort it so that they can see how human experiences changed or stayed the same over time. The themes also help students make comparisons and connections between different regions and time periods. Each WH AP unit focuses on a particular set of themes as outlined in the AP® World History: Modern Course and Exam Description (CED). In Unit 1, students will be introduced to the themes in an activity, article, and video. These assets willset the stage for deeper exploration of the themes using the Themes Notebook activities. In addition, all WH AP articles and videos have Guiding Questions that relate to either the topic, learning objective, theme, or suggested skill in the CED.While the introductory themes activities ask students to identify all six AP themes, the CED focuses on five of these themes forUnit 1: cultural developments and interactions (CDI); governance (GOV); economic systems (ECN); social interaction and organization (SIO); and technology and innovation (TEC). The Themes Notebook activities that students will complete in the first and last lessons in this unit concentrate on four of these themes (CDI, GOV, SIO, and TEC). Note that while economic systems are not included in the Themes Notebook activities, students will be asked Guiding and Key Ideas Questions regarding the ways in which different states participated in trade and applied systems of taxation. The economic systems theme will be central to understanding the networks of exchange that existed between societies and states during this same era, which will be discussed in more detail in Unit 2.
Themes NotebookThemes Notebooks are found throughout this course and offer a great opportunity for informal writing and assessing understanding. The aim of these activities is to keep students and teachers connected to the core AP themes of the unit. In Part 1 of the Themes Notebook, which appears early in each unit, students evaluate a set of statements based on what they currently know. In Part 2, which comes later in each unit, the statements appear as questions. Students will respond to these questions as they revise, and by doing so will refine their initial understanding of the unit’s core themes. The emphasis here is for students to focus on concepts rather than formal writing. Additionally, the Themes Notebook helps both you and your students assess how their thinking is progressing, where they’re gaining mastery, and where they might need additional instruction.Check out the Unit 1 Themes Notebook.
VideosWe use videos as a visually engaging approach to course material. While students are often excited to learn that they’ll be watching a video in class, video-watching is a skill, just like reading an article. Here are a couple of quick strategies to get you started:•We suggest students first read the video description and Guiding Questions, or even skim the video transcript. We’ve provided you with time stamps and sample answers, which students will not see. •We recommend chunking the videos using the Key Ideas feature, which pauses the video at the specific times of the corresponding Guiding Questions and provides an opportunity for discussion or note-taking.•You can also play the video twice: once straight through and once with pauses at key ideas.•Check out How to Watch Videos as a great way to introduce instructional videos in your classroom. For more information, see our Video Guide.
ActivitiesActivities are an important part of OER Project lessons and serve to build student understanding and engagement. Activities provide an opportunity to get students moving and “doing” history through exercises like informal writing, group work, simulations, and debates.Progression activities appear in multiple units and are based on historical thinking skills like sourcing and contextualization. Each activity in a progression is meant to be more sophisticated than the one before, challenging students but also supporting them as they do this work.For all activities in OER Project—except for some openers and closers—teachers can find directions and sample answers in the accompanying lesson guides.Click here to learn more about activities.Click here to learn more about historical thinking skills.
ReadingsOER Project includes primary sources and articles written by a diverse group of scholars and OER Project staff. Some of the reading involved in OER Project courses can be challenging, but it is vital for engaging with the course content. OER Project provides Guiding Questions alongside each reading. These questions encourage students to approach the text at three levels—first by skimming the text, next by reading to answer Key Idea questions (“While You Read”), and finally by evaluating the text through “After You Read” questions that encourage connection and synthesis. The “After You Read” questions have been aligned to those found in the AP World History Modern CED. In Unit 1, make sure to use Introduction to Three-Step Reading. For more information, see our Reading Guide.
Graphic BiographiesOER Project’s graphic biographies are one-page histories of people. Whether they’re “important” or “everyday,” each of these individuals has their own story, their own history, and those stories weave in and out of the global themes of their era. Their experiences highlight, and sometimes bring into question, developments on a global scale that students are studying as part of the frame narratives presented in the course. These biographies are one of the best ways for students to zoom in, and doing so helps bring nuance to their understanding of history. In some cases, the biographies will complicate the frame narratives—the experience of an individual will not necessarily fit with the global experience—but they don’t invalidate the frames; they just deepen and enrich them.Check out How to Read Comics for an introduction to reading graphic biographies. Click here to learn more about our Graphic Biographies.
WritingAt OER Project, we encourage students to write. A lot. At times, we want them to write informally, in order to express their initial understandings. Other times, we have them write formally, to solidify their thinking and refine their arguments. They will write, review, and refine their work multiple times. This isn’t easy for most students. However, our research has shown that this hard work makes a real difference in the quality of their writing—a terribly unsurprising conclusion. Clear, consistent expectations, frequently revisited, is not a magic formula; it’s just good teaching.In each unit of this course, there are opportunities for students to participate in a formal writing activity that results in an essay. Unit 1 offers an LEQ writing opportunity in which students respond to this prompt: Develop an argument that evaluates the similarities and differences in the ways states were organized in different parts of the world from c. 1200 to 1450 CE.Click here to learn more about our writing approach.Click here for informal writing routines.
SAQsThe WH AP course offers students practice in constructing concise and detailed responses to prompts that are similar to those they’ll experience on the AP®World History exam. These practice SAQs guide students to analyze the prompts, gather evidence from the primary or secondary sources or their background knowledge, and then write a two-or three-sentence response to the prompt. These practice SAQs target students’ mastery of the historical content for each WH AP unit. Some of the SAQ prompts involve historical content across several units, however. Those prompts take more of a continuity-and-change-over-time approach to world history, which is a historical-reasoning skill students will need to employ on the exam. Please note that the SAQs used in the SAQ Practice series may have been taken from previously released AP exams, meaning students can find answers online. Since the purpose of these activities is to provide practice in preparation for the exam, we suggest that you NOT use these assessments for grades in your gradebook. If you’re looking to assess students using SAQs, we recommend using the unreleased SAQs available in AP®Classroom.