Syllabus

U.S. History Syllabus

 

Course Description:  U.S. History is a survey course covering American history. The course examines the nations’ political, diplomatic, intellectual, cultural, social, and economic history from 1491 to the present.  A variety of instructional approaches are employed and a college level textbook is supplemented by primary and secondary sources. 

The course is broken up into nine historical periods investigating seven themes in each, and developing nine historical thinking skills.    

Here is the break down of grades:

Class Assignments – 20%

Projects – 20%

Tests – 20%

Quizzes – 10%

Notes – 10%

Essays – 20%

 

Scale:

 

100- 93 = A

92.49- 90 = A-

89.49- 87 = B+

86.49-83.00 = B

82.49- 80.00 = B-

79.49-77.00 = C+

76.49- 73 = C

72.49-70.00 = C-

69.49-67.00 = D+

66.49- 63.00 = D

62.49- 60 = D-

Below 60 = F

 

Late Work: Mark down 10% per day.  You are expected to turn in work on the deadlines due. 

 

U.S. History is broken down into the following Units based on time periods:

Periodization:

Period 1 (1491-1607)

Period 2 (1607-1754)

Period 3 (1754-1800)

Period 4 (1800-1848)

Period 5 (1844-1877)

Period 6 (1865-1900)

Period 7 (1890-1945)

Period 8 (1945-1989)

Period 9 (1980-Present)

 

THEMES:

 

Identity: This theme focuses on the formation of both American national identity and group identities in U.S. History.  Students should be able to explain how various identities, cultures, and values have been preserved or changed in different contexts of U.S. History, with special attention given to the formation of gender, class, racial, and ethnic identities.   Students should also be able to explain how these sub identities have interacted with each other and with larger conceptions of American national identity. 

 

Work, Exchange, and Technology:  This theme focuses on the development of American economies based on agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing.  Students should be able to explain ways that different economic and labor systems, technological innovations, and government policies have shaped American society. Students should be able to explore the lives of working people and the relationships among social classes, racial and ethnic groups, and men and women, including the availability of land and labor, national and international economic developments, and the role of government support and regulation.

 

Peopling: This theme focuses on why and how the various people who moved to, from, and within the United States adapted to their new social and physical environments.  Students should be able to explain migration across borders and long distances, including the slave trade and internal migration and how both newcomers and indigenous inhabitants transformed North America.  The theme also illustrates how people responded when “borders crossed them.”  Students should be able to discuss the ideas, beliefs, technologies, religions, and gender roles that migrants/immigrants and annexed people brought with them and the impact these factors had on both these peoples and on U.S. society.

 

Politics and Power: This theme examines the ongoing debates over the role of the state in society and its potential as an active agent for change.  This includes mechanisms for creating, implementing, or limiting participation in the political process and the resulting social effects, as well as the changing relationship among branches of the federal government and among national, state, and local governments.  Students should be able to trace efforts to define or gain access to individual rights and citizenship and explain the evolutions of tensions between liberty and authority in different periods of U.S. history.

 

America in the World: In this theme, students focus on the global context in which the United States originated and developed as well as the influence of the United States on world affairs.  Students should be able to discuss how various world actors (such as people, states, organizations, and companies) have competed for the territory and resources of the North American continent, influencing the development of both American and world societies and economics.  Students should also be able to explain how American foreign policies and military actions have affected the rest of the world. 

 

Environment and Geography – Physical and Human: This theme examines the role of environment, geography, and climate in both constraining and shaping human actions.  Students should be able to analyze the interaction between the environment and Americans in their efforts to survive and thrive.  Students should also be able to explain the efforts to interpret, preserve, manage, or exploit natural and man-made environments, as well as the historical contexts within which interactions with the environment have taken place. 

 

Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture: This theme explores the roles that ideas, beliefs, social mores, and creative expression have played in shaping the United States.  Students should be able to explain the development of aesthetic, moral, religious, scientific, and philosophical principles and consider how these principles have affected individual and group actions.  Students should also be able to analyze the interactions between beliefs and communities, economic values, political movements, including attempts to change American society to align it with specific ideas.

 

Historical Thinking Skills:

Historical Causation

Patterns of Continuity and Change over Time

Periodization

Comparison

Contextualization

Historical Argumentation

Appropriate Use of Relevant Historical Evidence

Interpretation

Synthesis

 

 

Each Unit will contain the following:

 

1)   Lecture and discussion of topics: Students will participate in discussions based on course topics.  Reading quiz content is embedded in class discussions.

2)   Primary Source Analysis: Students will analyze primary sources in which they identify, analyze, and evaluate each of the sources.  Students will use SOAPStone and HAPP-Y to look at two or more of the following features: historical context, purpose and intended audience, the author’s point of view, type of source, argument and tone.  Visuals will also be analyzed using OPTICS.

3)   Viewpoints: Students will examine, analyze and compare opposing viewpoints expressed in either primary or secondary sources and determine which sources make the most convincing argument and why?

4)   Six Degrees of Separation: Students will be provided with two events spanning decades but related by their theme.  They will select six events in chronological order that link the first event in the series with the last. Students will write the name of each selected event, and use their research and knowledge of the time period to create an argument to support the events selected.  Students must emphasize both cause and effect and/or demonstrate continuity or change over time in their linking.

5)   2-Day Unit Test that will have two to four components: analytical multiple-choice questions (MC), analytical short answer questions (SA), a free response essay (FRQ) and a document-based question (DBQ).  Each component of the exam matches a portion (or a potential) AP test and will emphasize the application of historical thinking skills to the answer. 

6)   Reading quizzes based on chapter assignments.

7)   Note taking and History Logs (informal writing)

 

Essay Questions will be broken down using SPRITE.

 

In addition some units will have Formal Projects or extended Essay/Research assignments.  

 

GRADING:  All work will be graded on a point system.  

 

Grading Scale will follow Skagway School District’s normal grade scale.  

 

PRIMARY TEXTBOOK:

The American Pageant, David M. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A Bailey.

 

PRIMARY SOURCES:

 

Voices of A People's History of  the United States.

 

SECONDARY SOURCES:

 

A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 2010.

 

A Patriot’s History of the United States, Larry Schweikart, and Michael Allen, 2004.

 

Don’t Know Much About History, Kenneth Davis, 2003. 

 

UNIT 1: 1491-1607- The American Pageant, chapters 1-2; Don’t Know Much About History pages 1-32.

 

Content: Geography and environment; Native American diversity in the Americas; Spain in the Americas; conflict and exchange; English, French, and Dutch settlements; and the Atlantic economy.

 

U.S. History Period 1: 1491-1607

 

Topic 1 – Contextualization

 

Topic 2 – Native American Societies Before European Contact

Question: Explain how and why various native population in the period before European contact interacted with the natural environment in North America.

 

Historical Developments:

1)    The spread of maize from Mexico northward into present day American SW and beyond supported economic development, settlement, advance irrigation, and social diversification among societies.

2)    Societies responded to the aridity of the Great Basin and grasslands of the western Great Plains by developing mobile lifestyles.

3)     In the Northeast, the Mississippi River Valley, and along the Atlantic seaboard, some societies mixed agricultural and hunter-gather economies that favored the development of permanent villages.

4)    Societies in the Northwest and present-day California supported themselves by hunting and gathering, and in some areas developed settled communities supported by vast resources of the Ocean.

 

Topic 3 – European Exploration

Question: Explain the causes of exploration and conquest of the New World by various European nations.

 

Historical Developments: European nations’ efforts to explore and conquer the New World stemmed from a search for new sources of wealth, economic, and military competition, and a desire to spread Christianity.

 

Topic 4 – Columbian Exchange

Question: Explain the causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period after 1492.

 

Historical Developments:

1)    The Columbian Exchange brought new crops to Europe from the Americas, stimulating European population growth, and new sources of mineral wealth, which facilitated the European shift from feudalism to capitalism.

2)    Improvements in maritime technology and more organized methods for conducting international trade, such as joint-stock companies, helped drive changes to economies in Europe and the Americas.

3)    Spanish exploration and conquest of the Americas were accompanied and furthered by widespread deadly epidemics that devastated native populations and by the introduction of crops and animals not found in the Americans.

 

Topic 5 – Labor, Slavery, and the Caste in Spanish Colonial System

Question: Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time.

 

Historical Developments:

1)    Encomienda system

2)    African slavery

3)    Caste system

 

Topic 1.6: Cultural Interactions Between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans

 

Explain how and why European and Native American perspectives of others developed and changed in the period.

 

Topic 1.7: Causation

 

Question: Explain the effects of the development of transatlantic voyages from 1491 to 1607.

 

 

Activities:

 

History Logs – Record notes on blogs.  Write a 1-2 page summary of them.  Choose 1 idea or event that is the most important and discuss why.  Write a short essay: What have you learned?  What have you thought about?  What questions do you have?

 

Primary Source Analysis:  “Letter to Luis de Santangel”; “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” by Bartoleme de las Casas; Excepts from the journal of Christopher Columbus.

 

Viewpoints: Students will read an excerpt from “1491, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States chapter 1, A Patriot’s History of the United States and write an essay with a thesis statement in response to the question, “Were the conquistadores or Columbus immoral?”

 

Six Degrees of Separation: From 1491 to Jamestown.

 

Students will be given a different pre-contact native population to research developing an oral presentation/visual aid showing social, political, and economic structures and interaction with the environment and other groups.

UNIT I Test.

 

Students will discuss answers to the following essential questions:

 

Identity – How did the identities of colonizing and indigenous American societies change as a result of contact in the Americas?

 

Work, Exchange, and Technology – How did the Columbian Exchange – the mutual transfer of material goods, commodities, animals, and diseases – affect interaction between Europeans and natives and among indigenous peoples in North America?

 

Peopling – Where did different groups settle in the Americas (before contact) and how and why did they move to and within the Americas (after contact)?

 

Politics and Power – How did Spain’s early entry into colonization in the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America shape European and American developments in this period?

 

America in the World – How did European attempts to dominate the Americas shape relations between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans?

 

Environment and Geography – How did pre-contact populations of North America relate to their environments?  How did contact with Europeans and Africans change these relations in North America?

 

Ideas, Beliefs, and Cultures – How did cultural contact challenge the religious and other values systems of peoples from the Americas, Africa, and Europe?

 

 Join Edpuzzle:

https://edpuzzle.com/join/rijsono

Make sure you have joined both Edpuzzle and Flipgrid before you leave class.

You have homework in Edpuzzle that is due tomorrow.

https://edpuzzle.com/join/rijsono https://edpuzzle.com/join/rijsono