This activity will give you a visual representation of how to reframe a topic you’ve already examined. It’s also an important way for you to understand globalization through the lens of the course frames of communities, production and distribution, and networks.

This is likely the third time you’ve seen a version of this activity, which will run in much the same way as the first one you completed earlier in the course. However, this time you’ll be asked to create your own yarn network using the same products you researched in the Follow the Product activity. Then, working in groups, you’ll write a brief narrative for your product and explain how your product relates to each of the course frames.

The first time this activity was used, we wanted to spark your curiosity and reward your ideas and observations. This time we’re asking you to dig a bit deeper by looking at our interconnected world through the lens of the course frames in order to analyze how our interconnected world relates to them.

Part 1

Arrange the class according to your teacher’s directions and follow along as the narratives for each product are read. Make sure you hold onto the yarn if it gets passed to you, and remember that it could come your way multiple times!

Part 2

After your class has made the webs for the three products, examine the yarn networks to see how interconnected the world is today, with products and parts moving back and forth around the world. Then, you’ll work in the small groups you were assigned to when you completed the Follow the Product activity. Each group will create a yarn network that represents the paths your chosen product followed. Next, your group will write a two- to three-paragraph narrative for your product that explains how it connects to each of the course frames. Your teacher will collect these paragraphs to assess how well you understand our interconnected world as seen through the lens of the course frames.

Globalization refers to how the world has become more connected economically, politically, socially, and culturally over time. Although this has been happening for a long time, the last fifty years or so have been an era of intense globalization. We communicate with each other rapidly. Some events or changes in one part of the world affect people everywhere. The results have both been very positive and, in some cases, caused major problems. This article asks how we can think about managing these interconnections moving forward.

This article introduces globalization and is intended to help you respond to the Era Problem by evaluating the positive and negative aspects of increasing global connections. This article will help you evaluate the impacts of globalization on human communities, networks, and production and distribution. This article provides important context for other readings and videos later in this unit, which will provide evidence for these impacts. Together, these materials will help guide you to consider globalization as the product of both a shared human context and many individual histories.

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 late twentieth-century trends, according to the author, led people to create the term “globalization”?
2. What are some historical trends that accelerated globalization before the late twentieth century?
3. What are some impacts of globalization in terms of migration and economics?
4. What are some positive impacts of globalization, according to the author?
5. What are some negative impacts of globalization, according to the author?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. What does globalization look like from your perspective? How does it affect your family and community? Do you think it has been a good thing for you? Why or why not?
2. Globalization looks very differently studied through each of the three course frames. Pick one of the three course frames and describe the effects of globalization on your home town or neighborhood using only that frame narrative. How would your results have been different if you had chosen a different frame?

In the devastating aftermath of WWII, many nations around the world came together to find ways to restore peace, economic stability, and public health not just in their own countries but also across the world. This led to the creation of several new global institutions that continue to exert influence on the world today. This article explores the political, economic, and non-governmental institutions that were formed after 1945. It then evaluates the extent to which these institutions have influenced people and affected change on a global scale.

This article will introduce you to how and why new international institutions formed after WWII. It will allow you to begin evaluating their impact on societies and human communities around the world. This in turn will help you respond to the Era Problem, which asks about the virtues of telling a single human history. International institutions represent ambitious attempts at cooperation across borders, of connecting human communities rather than dividing us into smaller ones.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

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

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

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

1. What is an “institution,” and why did leaders want to create them on a global scale after WWII?
2. Why was the United Nations created, and what does it do?
3. What were the two crucial economic institutions that formed after 1945, and what were their original goals?
4. What is “economic liberalization,” and how did it differ from the original goals of global economic institutions?
5. How do non-governmental institutions promote change on a global level?
6. What are some the positive and negative impacts global institutions have had on societies and human communities?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. According to the author, the distinction between political, economic, and non-governmental institutions “isn’t always very neat.” What are some of the ways in which these institutions overlap?
2. How have international institutions changed our world? Do you think these differences are the same everywhere, or do they vary across communities? Why might this be?

During the nineteenth century, Europe and the United States experienced rapid economic growth as global industrial powers. At the same time, other countries, like China, saw little economic improvement. While the United States and Europe continued to dominate the world’s economy through most of the twentieth century, since 1980, China’s economy has grown faster than any in the world. This article examines some of the economic, political, and global transformations that have contributed to China’s economic growth. It focuses on the shift toward economic liberalization policies that helped China integrate into the global economy.

This article will help you respond to the Era Problem and evaluate the impacts of globalization. In particular, this article introduces you to some of the recent shifts in economic power from the West (America) back to the East (China). It is also intended to help you think critically about the sorts of economic policies and global institutions that have enabled that shift. Together, this information will help you evaluate the positive and negative impacts of globalization on societies, human communities, and the environment at a more local level.

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 major political transformation took place in China after World War II, and how did it shape the nation’s approach to modernization and industrialization?
2. What was “The Great Leap Forward,” and why did it fail?
3. According to the author, Mao Zedong believed that the best way to improve China’s economy was to transform “the very cultural fabric of the country.” What does they mean by this? What were some of the cultural policies Mao implemented in his efforts to improve the nation’s economy?
4. How did Mao’s nationalist campaign, “the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” create new hostilities within Chinese society during the 1960s?
5. How did China’s economic policies change during the 1980s? How have these changes helped to integrate China into the global economy?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. How has globalization affected Chinese communities? How has China’s entry into the global economy affected communities outside of China?
2. According to the author, many scholars have described China’s economic rise as part of “a great ‘divergence’ between East and West.” What do you think this means? Based on what you have learned in this lesson and throughout this era, do you agree? Why or why not?

Humanity has faced many diseases throughout history. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people looked to history for lessons about how to end—and prevent—pandemics. There are few better lessons than those learned from the eradication of smallpox. The worst disease that has ever afflicted humanity, smallpox is also the only one we’ve ever eradicated. Dr. Larry Brilliant lived this history as part of the global campaign to end smallpox. In this video, he tells the long history of humanity’s battle against smallpox and how the world finally found the will to defeat its old foe at the end of the twentieth century.

This video will help you understand how diseases like smallpox spread as humans became more interconnected. But you will also learn that humanity spread knowledge about how to fight this disease through those same connections. The information in this video will provide you with evidence to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of globalization. It also provides evidence about how technology and innovations change and how those changes reshape the world.

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. According to Dr. Larry Brilliant, what made smallpox the worst disease in history?
2. What is variolation?
3. Who created the first smallpox vaccine? According to Dr. Larry, how did that person discover and test vaccines?
4. What was ring vaccination?
5. According to Dr. Larry, what was the most important factor in eradicating smallpox?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. After watching this video, what do you think is the single most important step that humanity could take to prevent another pandemic?

There is no doubt that China is a modern superpower and a hub of globalization, under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party. But what does that actually mean for the Chinese people? Do they celebrate their new economic wealth? Or do they suffer under the weight of state surveillance and tight control? In this video, with the help of Dr. Crystal Chang, we explore the successes, and costs, of China’s great social contract.

For the past century, globalization has come to connect us all to each other. Yet it looks different, and is experienced in different ways, in different regions. The Chinese experience is very important for understanding these different views. We can benefit from understanding the unique choices made by the Chinese state, and the costs and benefits it has brought to Chinese people. These choices are often quite different from our own society, and through this video and the expertise of Dr. Crystal Chang you can evaluate them for yourselves.

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. According to Francesca, about what proportion of the world’s population is Chinese?
2. What does the data suggest has happened to China’s economy over the past century? What has been the impact on Chinese people?
3. According to Dr. Crystal Chang, why do the Chinese people generally support or allow the Communist Party to continue to govern, despite being authoritarian?
4. According to Professor Chang, how has China benefited from globalization, and how has that changed over time?
5. Does the Chinese government allow and encourage dissent? How does it discourage negative opinion?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Consider Dr. Chang’s evaluation of both freedoms and economic change in China. Do you think it is worth giving up some freedoms, and allowing some oppression, if most people are benefiting economically? Compare these choices to the ones made in your own country.

In this article, historian Bridgette Byrd O’Connor introduces aspects of how items we use every day, from a cup of coffee to a smartphone, are connected to vast global networks of production and distribution. Using the examples of the iPhone and Starbucks coffee, she explains some of the controversies and criticisms that have been directed at these massive corporations and their global footprints. O’Connor also notes some of the efforts both companies have made to respond to these criticisms.

This introduction to two very visible branded products and their global networks should help you respond to the production and distribution frame narrative for the course. Consider how Starbucks and Apple fit in the frame narrative, and how this evidence can guide you to uncover bigger trends in global flows of goods, money, and labor. Consider the Era 7 Problem: In this course you’ve encountered multiple different scales at which human history is told, from the universal to the personal? What are the virtues and challenges of trying to tell one human history as opposed to human histories? How can this article help you imagine a person at either end of these production chains, from Chinese factories and Brazilian coffee farms, to the hands of the consumer, maybe yours?

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, according to the author, do cheap labor and unregulated workplaces influence global trade?
2. How has the American economy changed in recent years as manufacturing jobs are lost to automation or moved to countries with lower labor costs?
3. Besides the extremely high costs that would probably be required to manufacture iPhones in the United States, Apple CEO Tim Cook also notes the lack of skilled workers in the United States as a reason for moving manufacturing to China. Why does this lack exist, according to the article?
4. What are “conflict minerals” and what are some examples?
5. Why is it difficult to know what products have achieved what certification and met what ethical standard, such as being “ethically sourced” or “Fairtrade”?
6. What kind of complaints against Starbucks are mentioned in this essay, and what are some examples of the company’s responses?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. How does this essay help you extend the frame narrative of production and distribution, and what kind of details help you make this narrative more specific? What details for Apple and Starbucks are really new, and what aspects of these businesses are similar to older ways of doing business around the world?
2. Starbucks and Apple have both engaged in efforts to counter or reassure critics that their business practices are ethical. What do you think are some of the factors that might lead a company to violate clear ethical norms, or adhere to them? What do you think drives the efforts by Starbucks and Apple to act in an ethical way?

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 5.1.

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 economic changes that happened during the late twentieth century. Some of these changes have been described as neoliberal, which means that they encourage free trade, discourage government intervention in markets, and call for fewer regulations. In this collection, you will see how some of these changes cascaded across China, Chile, Western Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia. You will also hear voices critical of these changes.

The primary source excerpts in this collection will help you assess the continuities and changes that took place in the global economy from 1900 to the present. This will also help you understand global economic networks and interactions in our modern world. 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.

It’s easy to forget the role we each play in the global economy. As John Green demonstrates in this video, even something as seemingly simple as a t-shirt represents the ways in which the production and distribution of everyday goods connects us as consumers to global economic networks. While long-distance trade and economic interdependence are not new in human history, the scale of trade during the era of globalization has increased more dramatically than ever before. This video explores the “upside” of globalization.

The purpose of this video is to help you better understand the benefits of globalization for different people. In this way, it will help you respond to the unit problem, which asks you to think about the different scales at which history is told. By the end of this video, you should be able to identify some of the ways in which the large-scale production and distribution of goods has connected and positively impacted global trade networks, human communities, and individuals across the world.

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. Why has the scale of global trade increased so dramatically since the mid-twentieth century?
2. How has the nature of global trade changed since the 1960s?
3. What are some of the advantages of globalization?
4. According to the video, people are moving around more than ever before. Why has migration become easier during the era of globalization?
5. In addition to people, how has globalization caused an increase in the movement of ideas and cultures?
6. How has globalization changed the scale of human communities across the world?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. This video is subtitled “the Upside”. But John Green still seems to give a lot of downsides to globalization. Do you think the advantages of globalization are “worth it”? How might your answer change if you lived somewhere else or in different circumstances?
2. Some argue that globalization has “flatted” experiences around the world? What evidence from this video supports or challenges this narrative?

In this final activity in the comparison progression, you’ll compare rights documents from around the world. These documents all include references to a source of government or power, individual rights, accountability of leaders or government, and information about the structure of governments. Comparing these documents will get you to think about what makes national governments and their citizens similar on a global scale. However, it can also show you where people differ, and how different cultures may place value on certain things that other nations do not.

Contextualization
Analyzing the context in which these documents were created tells us a lot about why certain nations adopted these constitutional rights at specific times in history.

In this activity, you’ll read a collection of human rights documents from a variety of different nation-states, compare them, and then write an essay in response to a comparison prompt.

First, your teacher will break up the class into small groups and assign two articles to each group. Your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Comparison—Rights Documents worksheet along with the Comparison—Rights Documents excerpts. Read your assigned documents on your own and then answer the questions for your articles in Part 1: Identifying and Describing of the Comparison Tool (included in the worksheet). Discuss your answers to these questions with your group members and then work together to complete the similarities and differences column.

Once all groups have completed Part 1 of the tool for their assigned documents, each group will share their similarities and differences by writing them on the chart your teacher creates on the board. Take a few minutes to read what the other groups found and look for similarities and differences across all the documents.

Next, use these similarities and differences to write to thesis statements in response to the prompts:

• What is the most significant similarity between these rights documents?
• What is the most significant difference between these rights documents?

Remember to use the acronym ADE (amount, depth, and endurance) to help determine historical significance. Consider if all people were affected by these similarities and differences (amount); if people were deeply affected by these similarities and differences (depth); or if these similarities and differences were long lasting (endurance).

Finally, use your thesis statements to write a comparison essay in response to the prompt To what extent are these rights documents similar and why? The essay should be five- to six-paragraphs long, and you should use evidence from the rights documents and the Comparison Tool to support your thesis statement. To ensure you meet your writing goals, review the WHP Writing Rubric before turning in your paper to your teacher.

The twentieth century is often remembered as a period of destructive wars and violence, but it was also a period that witnessed the rise of several non-violent movements across the world. In this video, John Green examines some of those movements, focusing on the ways in which they were both informed by and had an impact on transnational and local communities.

The purpose of this video is to help you better understand the ways in which non-violent and peace movements changed local human communities and global politics in the twentieth century. By the end of this video, you should be able to explain some of the transnational ideas that influenced strategies of non-violence on the ground as well as some of the important historical leaders of non-violence movements around the world. Examining the linkages among these different movements will provide you with evidence to respond to the Era Problem, which asks you to evaluate the virtues of telling linked human stories.

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. What were some of the influences that shaped Gandhi’s non-violent approach to ending British imperialism in India? Please include one foreign and one local influence in your response.
2. How did Gandhi use non-violent ideas like Ahimsa and Satyagraha as tools to challenge European colonialism?
3. According to the video, Gandhi’s use of non-violence was not unique. What is another example of non-violence discussed in this video?
4. What were the main characteristics of the Rosenstrasse protest of 1943, and what made it unique?
5. How did Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. connect the success of the nonviolent independence movement in India to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States?
6. How did the Prague Spring movement begin and end?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Nonviolent movements developed in conversation with each other, influencing and inspiring each other around the world. How do you think the ability to communicate and share ideas across borders changed the identities and strategies of protestors? Were nonviolence movements in the twentieth century different from similar protests in the long nineteenth century? How?
2. Using the production and distribution frame, explain why Gandhi’s strategy was so effective. How would your answer be different if you used the communities or networks frames?

Make sure you have the EP Notebook worksheets that you partially filled out earlier in the era.

This is a continuation of the EP Notebook activity that you started in this era. As part of WHP, you are asked to revisit the Era 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 era’s problems, you are asked to explain how your understanding of the era’s core concepts has changed over the unit. Make sure you use evidence from this era and sound reasoning in your answers.

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

Human populations and the environment are connected in many complex ways. After growing relatively slowly for millennia, the human population exploded in the last two hundred years, beginning with the Industrial Revolution. Searching for jobs, people increasingly moved to cities. Life expectancy also grew, due to new medicine and advances in sanitation. Yet the growing population and our increased production also produced higher levels of pollution, a problem that affects us more than ever today.

Today, there are more human individuals than ever before, and yet our lives are more intertwined than ever. This article can guide you to consider the issues facing us in terms of population growth and environmental trends, including climate change. You can use this evidence to respond to the era problem, by thinking about these trends in terms of individual and collective histories, but also as a usable history to consider what actions we should take today.

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 have been the general trends in global population over the long span of human history?
2. What has been the trend in the past two hundred years in terms of the percentage of people living in cities?
3. How has industrialization changed atmospheric CO2 levels, and why does that matter?
4. What have been some health effects of fossil fuel use?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. The author ends this article by arguing that humanity must cooperate to reduce our impact on the global environment. Do you agree? Why or why not?
2. Given the environmental impact of the Industrial Revolution, do you think this was overall a positive transformation in production and distribution, or negative? Provide evidence for your position.

Globalization means that the world is increasingly interconnected, but what does that mean for people? Specifically, is globalization levelling the playing field, making it so that everyone around the world has roughly the same chance to become successful, live good lives, and escape poverty? Thomas L. Friedman has argued that is precisely the case. But a number of critics disagree. One, Richard Florida, has argued that the world is spiky, instead of flat, and globalization helps some while others suffer. Vandana Shiv, meanwhile, argues that Friedman sees only the positive effects of globalization, and not the negative impacts.

The world we live in is a direct result of recent trends of globalization, as well as longer-term history. This article presents the argument that globalization has led to a shared present that makes us all pretty much equal. But it also presents a different argument, that globalization is spiky and humans still have radically different opportunities and burdens. These two theories should help you to establish some ideas around the Era Problem—whether we should study world history as a single human story, or many different stories.

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 does Thomas L. Friedman mean when he says that globalization is “flattening” the world?
2. What are Friedman’s three eras of globalization, and what drove each one?
3. What does Richard Florida mean when he argues that the world is actually spiky?
4. What is Vandana Shiva’s critique of Friedman’s argument, and what evidence does she use?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Is a “flatter” world fundamentally a good thing? Is a “spikier” world fundamentally a bad thing? Defend your answer.
2. The idea of a “flat” and “spiky” world can be hard to understand. So, let’s make it more local. What are some ways that the distribution of power (or authority) in your school is flat or spiky?

Access to the Dollar Street website

Income can often tell you more about how people live than location can. Using the website Dollar Street, you are given a way to visualize how other people around the world live. This will help you determine whether the world is flat or spiky. In other words, has globalization leveled the economic playing field, or has it created more inequality? You will consider this question about today’s world, using pictures from around the world to help you draw conclusions.

Comparison
You will compare families around the world today to draw conclusions about economic equality—or inequality.

In this activity, you will use the Dollar Street website to think about the question, “Is the world flat or spiky?”

Dollar Street is a powerful way to visualize how other people live around the world. Dollar Street imagines a world where everyone lives on the same street and the houses are ordered by income: the poorest people live at one end, and the richest live at the other end. Dollar Street really comes alive when you start comparing objects. As Bill Gates says, “I found the photos of toothbrushes to be particularly interesting. The families at the poorest end of the street use their fingers or sticks to clean their teeth. But once you reach a certain income level, everyone starts using a plastic toothbrush with bristles.” The more time you spend on Dollar Street, the clearer it becomes that all of us have the same basic wants and needs but our means of addressing these wants and needs is often quite different.

You are going to fill out the Dollar Street Project worksheet using the website. You can pick whichever three families you want, but you should be able to explain your choice. You might choose to look at three families on different continents, or within the same continent; or perhaps, even within the same country.

Once you’re done filling out the organizer, use the information you’ve found to help you answer the following question: Based on the families you learned about, has globalization leveled the economic playing field, or has it created more inequality? You will write a two-paragraph response to this question using evidence from the organizer to support your claims. Be prepared to share your ideas with the class. It’s likely that you and your classmates came up with pretty different responses to the final question—why do you think that is?

In this final activity, you’ll put all your CCOT practice to use by writing an essay that asks you to identify the most significant changes and continuities across all eras. This will help you determine whether you’ve mastered this historical thinking practice, and will also demonstrate your ability to situate phenomena in the context of time, space, and sociocultural setting.

This is the final CCOT activity of the course. You will use all the skills you’ve acquired to write an essay about the continuities and changes that occurred in the world across multiple eras. If you completed the CCOT activities for Eras 3, 4, 5, and 6, you can reference your completed CCOT Tools to help write your era comparisons essay. But before you begin to write your essay, you’ll need to complete the CCOT Tool one last time.

Your teacher will either hand out or ask you to download the CCOT – Era Comparisons worksheet (which includes the CCOT Tool). Then, you’ll work on your own to complete the questions on the tool. Start by adding the timeframe you’re investigating (c. 250,00 years ago to the present), and then identifying the continuities and changes that took place across eras. Remember that you use can use any of the articles and videos from the course to help identify continuities and changes—the era overview articles are a good place to start.

Once you have 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, complete the remaining questions on the tool. 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).

Then, craft thesis statements in response to the following CCOT prompts:

• To what extent were the changes that occurred from c. 250,000 years ago to the present positive?
• To what extent were the continuities that occurred from c. 250,000 years ago to the present positive?

Finally, you’ll use your thesis statements to individually write a five- to six-paragraph essay that fully answers the following question: Describe and explain the most significant changes and continuities to communities, OR production and distribution, OR networks from c. 250,000 years ago to the present.

Your teacher will collect your worksheets and essays to assess your CCOT skills. Be sure to review the WHP Writing Rubric before you begin writing your essay, as this is what your teacher will use to evaluate your essay.