Killed in action, and yet one day at williamsburg 80 years later, volunteer soldiers will do that. That is morbidly impressive. The first confederate battle flag of the war is captured here. Seven medals of honor are issued for meritorious actions, including robert brody, 26 years old, from the 40th North Carolina. Other men carry their wounds with them. Powhatan bowling little on the righthand side will be wounded in the right leg and return to action in malvern hill, where he would lose an arm, and he argued to go back into the fight. Mcclellan would telegraph lincoln, hancock was superb today. So this brings us to kerfuffles. And i have five minutes left to do it. Four. [laughter] mr. Gruber why is the battle of williamsburg forgotten . We already addressed memory. You go to Colonial Williamsburg because of the rockefellers. Williamsburgs memory is a tough one. When the president of the u. S. Drives down the duke of gloucester street to open Colonial Williamsburg in the 1930s, one, one woman stands on her porch wrapped in a confederate battle flag saying there will be no yankee president in my town. [laughter] mr. Gruber we have no maps so i cant take you to the battlefield and say, you are standing on the excelsior line. This battle sets into motion several weeks if not several months of continued combat, so when you flip open official records, you only find a few. We have no maps. We have no impact landscape. We have no photographs to argue about. Although we know civil war photographers come through town and take pictures, but they dont survive. This battle for the combatants is one of the most confusing but will set the pace for them to understand what the rest of the war is about. Today the biggest reason we have not preserved the Williamsburg Battlefield is because the physical evidence is gone. No physical evidence, good maps, or photographs. So you must rely on one thing, and that is archaeology. In the williamsburg region, archaeology is mandated. When i go before a Zoning Commission and start screaming that is my battlefield, dont put in a hotel, they say never fear, we will send archaeologists. And they find nothing. So the 21,000 rounds of ammunition expended by one brigade in one hour has been picked up by other people. And there is one more reason why williamsburg is forgotten, and that is because all of you have not asked for it. You have not called williamsburg and said, tell me your civil war stories. You have not written and said, please preserve the battlefield at williamsburg. Get involved. The one thing i have seen today and yesterday about forgotten battles is that there has yet to be a call for action. So i put you on notice. Lets make sure they are no longer forgotten. Thank you. [applause] we have time for a couple questions. Stand and introduce yourself. Im dave from stafford. Quick question. You made a brief reference to a machine gun. Mr. Gruber yes. Could you explain that . Mr. Gruber no. Thank you. [laughter] mr. Gruber all we know is that there were one or two guns possibly deployed with the excelsior line. Thats all i got for you. Apparently, they were not effective. It is suggested they jammed halfway in the battle. That is what i got, man. For full swat at home, im going to recreate his answer. No, and that is all i have for you. Others . In the back. I have warned ted i am going to stop giving him the microphone if he doesnt remember to stand and introduce himself. Ted williams, williamsburg. You mentioned also briefly in your presentation free negroes. How many of them were they, and were they loyal to the southern cause . Mr. Gruber loyal as they would have to go back to the institution of slavery. They dont have a choice. They are either going to be paid for their work as free men, or if they dont show up, severe penalty, i. E. Sold, because the local plantation owners, good southern citizens and supporters of the confederacy, will not give up their own property to build earthworks to defend their new countries. That is why lee is put in a situation where he has to impress free men. Did i answer your question . Were there many of them . Was this a Large Community . Mr. Gruber great question that i cant directly answer. By about 1860, there are one or two pockets of free communities in and around williamsburg. Those are going to grow in coming years when the union army shows up, but documentation on them is scant. The census taker for that area is not thorough when it comes to freed communities, but you said you are from williamsburg . Baltimore. I was down there six weeks ago. Mr. Gruber lets dig into the archives together and see what we can find. [laughter] mr. Gruber and if you dont show up. [laughter] mr. Gruber severe consequences. We have time for one more question. Dr. Drew, if i were to show up at williamsburg and want to see trenches, you said for the most part, things have vanished, but there are couple of places i can go into the remnants down there, correct . Mr. Gruber new quarter park, you can play frisbee golf around the earthwork. No fighting took place there because they dont like to charge earthworks. You have quarter path road, which are two earthworks that were not fought over. Because nobody wanted to charge earthworks. You can visit those, a great example of the topography. The excelsior line was documented by archaeology up until about three weeks ago, when it was paved over. So that is gone. There is one core area of the battlefield left, and it went up for public sale about three months ago. So time is of the essence, friends. To answer your question directly, there are a couple areas with earthworks, but not within the core battlefield boundaries because the guys, even though this is early in the war, are not fond of charging entrenchments, nor will the Confederate Army use them. Of course, they go down in the ravine to try to fight that day. Fort mcgruder, the central earthwork, is preserved, but it is gated and access is limited. Please bring your friends and fellow nerds who come to williamsburg. Im happy to show you around what little is left, but there are only a few acres left on time is ticking. If any of you were at the American Battlefield trust conference in newport news, i stood you on the excelsior line, and that is no longer. So every day, it happens. Sorry to be a debbie downer. Wow. That is a really uplifting note to end on. Ladies and gentlemen, drew gruber. Mr. Gruber thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv covering history cspanstyle with event coverage, archival films, lectures and college classrooms. And visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend on 3. Span happy earth day. This song was written 20 years ago. But spring has already broken and he doesnt really care fast, it doesnt last for long but the colorado Rocky Mountains hi i have seen it raining fire in the sky the starlightrom is softer than a lullaby Rocky Mountains hi, colorado high, coloradons he climbed the mountain and saw silver clouds below saw everything as far as you can see and they say he got crazy once and tried to touch the son friend of melody solitudelost in quiet the serenity of a clear Blue Mountain lake in the colorado Rocky Mountain high ive seen it raining fire in the sky to can talk to god, listen the casual reply high colorado colorado in high now life is full of wonder, but his heart still knows fear of the triple pain he cannot comprehend people or stars upon the land highado Rocky Mountains ive seen it raining fire in the sky if they never saw an eagle fly Rocky Mountains high its a colorado Rocky Mountain high ive seen it raining fire in the sky campfire andd the everybodys high coloradontain high coloradontain high coloradontains high [applause] cspan covered over seven hours of this rally on the 20th anniversary of the first birthday. You can watch more on our website including appearances by richard gere, the indigo girls, and ll cool j by going to 1990 earthand type day rally in the search bar. The president , from public affairs. Available now in paperback and ebook. Presents biographies of every president , organized by their ranking by noted historians from best to worst stop and features perspectives into the lives of our nations chief executive and leadership styles. Visit our website, cspan. Org the president s to learn more about each president and historians featured. Order your copy today wherever books and ebooks are sold stop are sold. American history tv is on social media. Follow us at cspan history. Next, jason stacy and matthew ellington, coauthors of fabric of a nation a brief history with skills and sources, for the ap course. They host a study session for the advanced placement u. S. History exam. They explain how this years exam is structured differently, provide strategies for response answers, and demonstrate how to analyze historic documents. They also take student questions. Jesse once again, we are back. We are helping Highschool Students around the country prepare for the ap u. S. History placement exam. We are here with jason stacy and matthew ellington, who are going to help our students prepare for the test. Good morning, gentlemen. Guest good morning. Guest good morning. Jesse this is the first year we have done the u. S. History cram for the exam for advanced placement test here on cspan. The first question everybody wants to know, what is changing this year for this test, because of the coronavirus pandemic . Guest there is quite a bit that is changing this year. Probably the biggest change is that it is a shorter test. This test will only be about 45minutes long. It is going to be an online test for students. In addition, it is just one documentbased essay question with five documents. And finally, it is an exam that students can take at home from their computers. So in this era of distance learning, colleges have modified the test while keeping the same skills students need to be successful. And finally, this test is an opennote test. The College Board is not going to try to prohibit students from using the notes, so students may refer to the notes as they take the exam. Guest and i think it is really exciting the changes they have made. They have kept the documentbased questions. The dbq in a lot of ways is the crown jewel of the test. It allows you to show off your writing skills, your ability to make arguments, to interpret documents and bring in all the good information you have learned this year. It is important also to remember that this year is a modified time period that will be covered, concentrating on period three, which starts in 1754, and ending in period seven, which ends in 1945. Jesse we will open up our phone lines for Highschool Students only. We want High School Students students to call in with questions about u. S. History for our distinguished teachers. So if you have questions about the test, or if you want to attempt one of our practice questions on air this morning, we want to hear from you as well. So High School Students only. We are going to open up regional phone lines. That means if you are a highschool student in the eastern or central time zones, we want to hear from you at 2027488000. If you are a highschool student in the mountain and pacific time zones and you have a question about the test, about u. S. History, or a question about how you should answer this question, we want to hear from you at 2027488001. Once again, eastern and central time zone, 2027488000. Mountain and pacific time zones, 2027488001. Now, gentlemen, i was looking at some of the questions. And the first question that immediately popped to mind is, since this is an essay test, how much are you expected to write . Guest that is a great question, jesse. The amount you are expected to write is enough to answer the question. There is no number of words required. You should expect to write an essay that is multiparagraph and has a clear argument and the argument is probably going to be proven through a number of paragraphs. You should plan on having an introduction, and if you have time for it, a conclusion. Guest thats right. All essays are graded on a rubric. So students need to make sure they are familiar with the rubric, and that they are writing in a way that they can accomplish the various tasks and demonstrate that they have the skills being asked of them on the ap advance history exam. But nobody is counting words or pages, nobody is counting characters. Jesse you said this test will be taken by students at home. Tell me, can you take this at any time at home, or is there only at certain time periods let the test will be open to students at home . Will everyone be taking it at the same time or at different times . Guest goahead, matt. Guest this test will be taken by everyone across the world at the same exact time. It is going to be given on friday, may 15 at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, 11 00 a. M. Pacific time, and whatever local time people are. So for folks in the u. S. , it will not be bad. For folks overseas, they could be testing at odd hours. The College Board is doing this to ensure the test can be as secure as possible. Guest thats right. And as i understand it, there is a number of ways students can record their answer. They can write it in a word file or some sort of text file, and turn it in as a file that they upload. They can handwrite it and take a picture of their responses and upload those with a phone, or they can even, i believe, right into a text box College Board will provide. They can type it right into a text box that College Board will provide. Jesse how long will students have to write this essay and get it submitted . Guest students will click on their exam ticket, it will open up their exam. The College Board strongly recommends students log in 30 minutes prior to the exam, because there will be some security screens and questions they have to verify their identity. When the exam begins, students will see the full question. So they will see the direction, they will see the five primary source documents that go with the question, and then there will also be the submission window that students can use to either cut and paste, as jason was mentioning, or they can attach their document to that. Jesse well, we have some students waiting on the line to talk to you gentlemen, or perhaps to ask some questions. We start with julia, from montclair, new jersey. Good morning. Julia, are you there . We seem to have lost julia. Lets move to sarah calling from bay city, michigan. Good morning. Caller good morning. Guest hi, sarah. Caller hi. Jesse sarah, do you want to try one of our sample questions and see how you would write your essay . Caller i have a question. How long is the exam this year, and what is the format for it . Guest sarah, it is 45 minutes you will have to write. And it is just one dbq that you are going to answer, and that dbq is going to have five documents. Guest thats right. So this exam is basically a shorter, more condensed version of the traditional ap exam. Its the same skills, its everything you would have learned in your class, but you are only going to have one dbq to show what you know on the exam. Jesse a question for both of you gentlemen. Are only High School Seniors taking the ap test this year, or can juniors take it as well . Who is taking the test . Guest actually. Guest goahead. [laughter] jesse lets start with you, jason. Guest teachers, we love to talk. [laughter] anyone who has signed up for a test in high school. It is usually High School Seniors who take the test. But juniors can take it, and i assume this will can also have sophomores who have signed up. I dont believe there is a designated age as long as students are in high school. Usually, it is juniors who take this exam. Guest that is correct. My classes are all junior classes. Most high schools i know test juniors. Jesse now, here is a question for you. Are either one of you suggesting that any of your students wait until next year to take it, or are you saying, go ahead and do this . Lets start with you, matthew. Guest absolutely not. I dont recommend waiting, because there is a lot of content student need to remember, and that is a long time to go, because of those students will not be enrolled in ap u. S. History next year, so i definitely recommend students take the exam this year. As i said, it is the same skills as on the regular exam, it is just shorter and in an online format. Guest thats right, matt. I agree. If youve prepared for it, if youve spent all this time in your classes, reading your textbooks, practicing your essays, learning the information over the course of the academic year, the real reward is to take the test. And the College Board made a great choice in choosing the dbq as the feature they will keep in this unusual year, because it allows you to show off all the skills, your knowledge, your ability to make arguments, your ability to interpret documents. That dbq is going to allow you to show off all the work you have done. Host lets talk to another student, thelma, calling from cambridge, massachusetts. Guest good morning, thelma. Jesse thelma, are you there . Good morning. Caller good morning. My question is, what is meant by the revolution of reconstruction . And what are the points to get the extra complexity point on the essay, if we are asked about radical reconstruction or the revolution of reconstruction . Jesse lets start with jason. Guest i will start with the first part of the question and i will go to matt for the complexity point, because he has a lot of good stuff to say about it. The revolution of reconstruction is in reference primarily to the primarily to the amendments that come after the civil war, the 13th, 14th, and 15 amendments. The 13th amendment abolishing slavery in the united states. 14th amendment, establishing civil rights that will be protected by the federal government against state powers, specifically those in the former confederacy that are oppressing africanamerican populations in the south. And the 15th amendment that grants Voting Rights to africanamericans, ideally throughout the united states. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is a lot going on on the ground during reconstruction after the civil war, between 18651877. And a lot of what is going on on the ground, especially in the south during that period is running contrary to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. So it is important to keep in mind that the socalled revolution of reconstruction has a very mixed legacy. By the end of that time frame, africanamericans, former slaves in the south, former enslaved africanamericans in the south are finding it very difficult to acquire their own land. Many of them are in sharecropping contracts that reduce them to a situation where they are permanently in debt to landholders, many of whom are former slaveholders themselves. And also, especially by the end of reconstruction and even into the 1880s, Voting Rights are being curtailed in the south for africanamericans through terrorism, organizations like the ku klux klan, and also through local legislation like grandfather clauses and literacy tests that prevent africanamericans from fulfilling those rights that they helped acquire in fighting the civil war on the side of the union, and that the Republican Congress sought to instill in place in the constitution in that 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. Guest jason is right. If you remember even a fraction of what he just said, you are going to earn the complexity point. Complexity is College Boards attempt to award a more sophisticated essay. If you look at the rubric, the complexity point is given for qualifying or modifying an argument. Now, there are some tips we can give you to maximize your chances at earning the complexity point. In the textbook jason and i wrote called fabric of the nation, we outlined a threestep strategy called gem. Because you want to write a gem of an essay. The acronym stands for generate nuance. You want to use more sophisticated language like jason used in talking about not just the successes, but also talking about the limitations of reconstruction. How it applied differently to different groups, what did and did not work. The second part of the strategy is to explain both sides of the reasoning skill. College board frames their essay questions around one of three reasoning skills causation, comparison, or continuity and change over time. All three of those reasoning skills actually have two sides to them. Causation is cause and effect. Comparison is similarity and difference. And continuity and change is obviously, continuity and change. One of the tips on the complexity point is to make sure that if the prompt only calls for one side. For example, if it said, evaluate the extent of change in terms of reconstruction, you would also want to talk about some of the continuities. Some of the things that dont change. The third part of the strategy, the m, is to make connections across time. So for example, you could connect reconstruction and the unfulfilled legacy of the 15th amendment to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and your concluding paragraph is often times a great place to do that. Readers are looking for evidence that you have done this. So if you take a multipronged approach, where you are making several attempts to earn the complexity point, you will greatly increase your chance of getting that point on the rubric. Jesse what is the grading scale on this test . When you get your results, what can you tell from the score that is on the test . Guest ok. The grading scale is similar but a little bit different than it has been in years past. Traditionally, the rubric has been a sevenpoint rubric for the documentbased as a question. This year, because that is the only part of the exam, College Board has extended that to 10rubric points. All the skills and tasks, however, are still the same. College board will take your essay score, and they will translate that into an overall a peace corps. So what colleges will see will be an essay score on a scale of one to five. Generally, colleges will accept a score of three and above. Others are more strict, and there are some that accept scores of two and above. Usually on an ap exam, a slim majority will earn a three and above in any given year to make them eligible for college credit. Jesse lets go back to another student who is waiting to calm in. Lets talk to miles calling from fayetteville, North Carolina. Good morning. Caller good morning. Guest good morning, miles. Jesse miles, do you have a question, or do you want to try one of the questions we have prepared here . Caller i have a question that is more about the testing. Jesse go ahead, then. Caller so i was just wondering, of all the people taking the test at the same time, there shouldnt be a chance that the server or website should go down, is there . Guest [laughter] oh boy, miles, i hope not. Guest there is no chance, miles. Caller ok. Guest but make sure if you have siblings or family members that are heavy streamers or gamers, and your internet is a little more limited, you will want to ask them to pause what they are doing, so that youve got the bandwidth to be able to upload when you are done writing your essay. Guest miles, are you still on the line . Jesse i think he has already dropped off. Now i want to look at one of the documents that may show up in some form, maybe not on this test, or maybe showed up before. Tell us what the student is supposed to do once they see this. So here is something a student could see, as an example for one of these tests. This is in North Carolina contract from 1882 that says, to everyone applying to rent land upon shares, the following conditions must be agreed to. The sale of the croppers part of the cotton, to be made by me when and where i choose to sell, and after deducting all that they owe me, and all the sums that i may be responsible for on their accounts, to pay them their half of the net proceeds. Now matthew, tell us what you should do after you read that document. Guest this is a great document, very much to the kind of document students may see on the ap u. S. History exam. So there are several tasks students should complete when they see a document like this. The first task is to ask themselves, what is this document about . Sometimes the title will tell you. In this case, it is a sharecroppers contract. So ask themselves, what do they remember about sharecropping, where does that fit in the historical timeline, and most importantly, how does it relate to the exam . There is one point on the rubric for using two of the five documents in a simple, descriptive manner, essentially being able to summarize that. So even if the student is somewhat limited, most students can read and summarize. That is the first task students want to do. But ideally, students want to connect that document to an argument. So depending on what the question is, students want to use the document to move their essay forward, to support whatever point or points they are making. And then finally, students also want to complete the task of sourcing. There are up to two points possible on the ap exam for the dbq for sourcing a document. Sourcing is College Boards way of asking students to think like an apprentice historian. Can they examine and analyze the document in one of four ways, by looking at and discussing the documents historical situation . In other words, the context around the document, by identifying the intended audience. What was the document for . And how does it help us understand the document, by looking at the authors purpose . What is the goal . What is the author trying to accomplish in this document . Or, by looking at the point of view being expressed in the document. Guest thats right. There are a few strategies to approaching these documents, that i think are important. I imagine you have talked about this in class with your teacher. But jesse, one more time, could you read the first line after the word source in the document . Host after the word source . Guest it should say source, or what is the title of it they put there . Jesse North Carolina contract, 1882. Guest sometimes when we have a document in front of us, and it is written in the language that is over 100 years old and we start reading it, it gets very intimidating. The language it is written is not the way we normally speak today. And also, it is talking about something that happened a long time ago. So it is often important not to go looking for the answers in the document at first. It is often important to look at the source line that jesse just read. Notice here, you have got the word contract, and you have the date 1882. This provides you some clues as to what the document is likely going to be about. So you probably remember a few key dates from the class. You dont remember all of the dates you have heard this entitled there, and that is ok. But some of the key dates, for example, the years of the civil war. The question about the revolution of the reconstruction 18651877. And if you have 1865 in mind, you know this is a postcivil war document. And with that in mind, you can begin to recall some of the important pieces of information and the broad context of the time period in the generation after the civil war. And if you look at the word contract, it may trigger in your mind the sharecropping contracts that you recall from class and that i talked about briefly at the beginning of today, where former enslaved africanamericans who were newly freed found it very difficult to acquire land, primarily because, except for a very short period after the civil war, many of the governments in the former confederacy are controlled by those who want to prevent formerly enslaved africanamericans from acquiring property and civil rights. And many former africanamerican slaves found themselves in these sharecropping contracts, where they were forced to rent land and pay for the rent with a portion of their crops, which send them into a cycle of debt and made it impossible for them to ever acquire land, and often even leave the places where they were currently working the land. So in the first line, you can begin to have a sense of what this document might be talking about. And then when you begin to read the document, you can begin to think, who is actually talking in this document . Could it be a formerly enslaved African American . Could it be a white landholder . And there is a portion in there where the writer or speaker is talking about what is owed to me. This should clue you in that this is probably a white landholder who is creating a contract for formerly enslaved africanamericans. And that contract is probably not going to be in those peoples benefit. This begins to bring in all the information to help you get those extra points on the dbq the point of view of the speaker, the context in which it is being written, all that good historical apprenticeship that you have been trained over the last year, to begin to make this document work for a argument. Jesse lets go back to the phone lines and talk to another student. This will be julia, who is calling from montclair, new jersey. Good morning. Caller hi. I know theres a lot of information and time periods covered on the test. Any online resources, and what specifically should be focused on when studying . Jesse we will let you take that one, matthew. Guest sure. It is a great question, julia. As jason mentioned, College Board narrowed the focus of the test a little bit this year. It will be somewhere between 1754, the beginning of the french and indian war, and 1945, which is the end of world war ii. There are a lot of resources online to help ap students, both from the College Board and other resources, both commercial and that teachers have put out there as well. But let me give a plug to ap teachers around the country. Because rather than simply going out and buying a review book or finding additional resources, i think that many ap students already have everything they need from what they have done in the course of during the year. Guest thats right. Guest so i would encourage you to continue using some of those resources, some of those lecture notes, the homework, or the outlines that youve done in your class, and then strategically supplement them with resources that you find online that are helpful. One resource in particular i want to call out is the concept outline from the College Board. If your teacher hasnt shared this with you, you can find this at the College Boards website, simply google concept outline ap u. S. History. It will come up. For periods three through seven, that is about 15 pages of content that the College Board says, here are the essential concepts. These are the enduring understandings, the big picture ideas sprinkled with a few specific terms and events we believe you need to know. So a good strategy is to go through the concept outline and make sure that you understand the concepts. Make sure that you can explain those concepts, make sure you can provide a couple of examples for each of those. And really make sure there are not any terms or any Vocabulary Words in those 15 pages that are unfamiliar to you, because if they are, you have time between now and the exam to familiarize yourself with that. That is, in my opinion, the ultimate study guide for ap u. S. History exam. Guest and the great thing about the concept outline is that it also includes in each section, broken down by subsections, very clear tasks that and as a question could ask you to do. To analyze things, to describe things, to explain things, so that not only is it just information for you to try to memorize, which is never a great way to study for this test, mems never necessarily a great way to study for this test because you have to do so much analysis and argumentation, but to have a series of tasks but it asks you to think about. So when one of those sub questions asks you to describe, can even take out a sheet of paper, take that question, and test yourself and how much you remember from that particular section. After youve done that, you can go back to the concept outline and see some of the information they have their to support that question that they have embedded. Host lets talk about time management for this test. I teach a graduatelevel writing class, in one of the things that i always insist before i get any essay from anybody is an outline. Do you suggest that the students taking the ap test spend time writing an outline of their essay . For do you suggest they get right into it . How long should they study the photo or study the contract or the paragraph before getting into the writing portion . Matthew, we will start with you without one again. Guest absolutely. Time is of the essence on this years ap exam. Students have less time than they ever have ever had before. To read, think, outline, and a most importantly, write the essay. And then a five minute submission window. College board has actually said youve got 50 minutes total, not a second more than that. As much as i would love for students to be able to fully outline, theres not time for that. May be a brief, quick outline, jot down your main points, plug in the documents, plug in your outside information, but then you have got to go. You want a multiparagraph, 3, 4, five paragraph essay. And you need the time to submit this essay electronically to College Board within 50 minutes. Time is of the effort of the essence. Students need to move quickly. It is only the written essay that will be graded, nothing outline. Guest i used to instruct my students to read the dbq question first. So maybe take a minute or two to think about how they would answer that question. If it were just an essay documents. Thout im interested in matts opinion on this, if he would support that as well. I found that sometimes my students would read the question, they would not really think about what the question is asking or how they could answer it, and then they would immediately go to the documents to try to find the answer and oftentimes, in that panic, the documents would confuse them more than guide them. I actually think some of the answers to a question will already be in your head before you go to the documents. I would encourage you, instead of doing an extensive outline as matt suggested, very difficult to do in the amount of time you will have to write it, take many take maybe a minute or two to think about the question itself, and think about how you would answer it without the document. I think you will find that many of the documents will fit into an argument you have already generated just by looking at the question at first. What do you think about that idea . Guest absolutely. Thats the same advice i give my students. The fear is if you jump into the documents without doing any thought whatsoever, you will forget some of the outside information that you know and you are liable to write an essay about the documents. This essay needs to be about the essay prompt. There is an old joke that goes around ap teachers that ap should stand for answer the prompt. But is more than just summarizing and writing about the documents. Thats excellent advice. Do a quick brainstorm, think about how you might organize try to develop two or three categories, and go ahead, if they have given you the categories, even if they havent, remember that the prompts are based on the reasoning skills. If it is a causation essay, ask yourself, what are two or three causes or two or three effects, and make sure it is the same if it is comparison or continuity. Something else of jesses question brings to mind is after you take the step where you have looked at the question, and you thought about possible answers and you may be even generated the beginning of an argument, may be jotted down a word or two to help you remember it, when you go to the documents, keep in mind that when you are looking at the documents, they will help trigger outside information. For example, if we look at the first document we talked about, the sharecropping contract from 1882, once you have thought about that source line where you see the word contract, you see 1882, you start thinking about the time period, then you have gone into the document itself, looked it over, read it and concluded ok, this is a white landholder who has created a document for formerly enslaved African Americans, you then begin to realize some of the information you already know that is not in the document itself. You may want to jot that down next to the document. You may want to write down sharecropping which is not in itself. Ment and i think would qualify as an example of outside information especially if you explain that system as part of your argument. If the world word reconstruction is not in the question and not in the document, to, bring in, reconstruction or the 13th, 14th amendment, all of these are examples of outside information that you will recall by taking a look at the documents themselves. Instead of thinking about putting together a complex outline before you begin to write, do that Quick Response to the question that you think might be appropriate and then when you go to the document, jot down next to the documents some of the outside information that comes to mind. Looking at that source line and reading the document itself. Guest if i can piggyback on that and extend that thought even farther when jason is talking about writing outside information next to the documents, on the rubric, there are two points possible that students can earn for outside information. Two out of 10, 20 . There is another category on the rubric as well, the sourcing category. Category, one of the ways students can get credit is by explaining the historical situation where the Historical Context of a document. Sometimes students wonder how can we do that . That sounds hard. It is actually one of the easier skills in that sourcing category. In the way students can do that is exactly how jason explained. It is connecting the document to a specific piece of outside information in the time period that helps explain what is document. In the outside information if students are generating it or even if they are looking at their notes and reminding themselves of a little bit of it, that can help them in multiple ways to improve their score on this years dbq. Host another student jumped in here and this will be maroon who was calling from minneapolis, minnesota. Good morning. Hi, good morning, sir. Host go ahead. Good morning. As he said, we have a time limit. I took i recently took a timed dbq. Limit. Ng over the time what would your advice be if i have 10, 15 minutes left and i cant remember a concept, i dont know what to write down, and what do i do . Host go right ahead. Guest that is a great question. And a lot of students, including students, are struggling because this year even though they have reduce the number of documents, they have also reduced the amount of time. Its not easy to write a full dbq in simply 45 minutes. I would be stressed and struggling under those constraints. So heres my advice to you. Look at the rubric. And also look at yourself and look at what you have accomplished. When i say look at the rubric, the rubric tells you how the essay is going to be graded. So one of the strategies that you can do is to ask yourself, how many points and my on track for and what can i let go of . There are five documents on this years exam, but in theory, you can earn nine of the 10 points by only talking about two documents if you do them well and meet all of the other criteria. One strategy might be that you shorten the number of documents that you talk about. They be only discuss three documents more indepth instead of trying to cover all five documents. Youher strategy, if struggle with the sourcing component but you feel like you know how to integrate these documents well into your essay, then you could do that. You could go for all of the documents, but then let go of the sourcing. You will have to look at what you have done and what you are able to accomplish and then make some strategic choices as the test is going, which is why it is so important to practice this ahead of time. That point, about running out of time, this year in particular, there will be a great temptation, because it is open note, to go to the internet, to try to find something you cant remember, to go to your notes and flip through them and try to find that one date that you know is in there somewhere, to go through the index of your textbook. I want to stress, just because it is open note, dont get pulled into trying to find a particular fact or a name or an argument that you know might be somewhere in the sources that you have. That will eat up more time that can be better spent on using the strategies that matt just mentioned, sticking to note to what you know and what you remember, using the documents you can apply to the fullest. Dont be tempted by the fact that it is open note because it is also a very limited amount of time. You can spend time five or 10 minutes trying to research one small thing and then you will find even if you find that thing, you will have used time that could have been better spent making a broader argument, finishing that paragraph, establishing some context or interpreting a few more documents. Host lets go to another student. This is going to be tom calling from buffalo, new york. Tom, good morning. Guest good morning, tom. Caller good morning. Guest hey, tom. Caller my question is what would you say that the most challenging aspect of this format of the exam is compared to the previous format . Matthew. E that one, guest sure. I will take that one. I think the answer will depend a little bit on each student. For a lot of students, it will be the fact that it is timed that also that it is online. My students have been practicing handwritten timed rights throughout the year, and then all of a sudden, with the move to distancelearning and with the new exam this year, it is an online format. Again, i think it is critical for students to practice. Practice their typing, practice submitting the essay, and of course, practice the actual writing of the essay as well. Fortunately, College Board has actually opened up an exam demo, if you google ap demo exam 2020, i think it is the first one that will,. It is linked directly on the College Board website. I strongly encourage all students to practice the online process. Because while many of us might feel it is easy, if you havent submitted an online exam before, you dont want may 15 to be the first time you do that without the familiarity of having already worked through the College Board system. Guest tom, i would just turn it around too. This year, there is a certain advantage to this format. In years previous, by the time students get to the dbq, they have taken the multiplechoice section and answered the short answer questions. Theyve spent a lot of energy to do that in then they have to come to the dbq. You are coming to the dbq fresh. One thing to keep in mind, the good thing about this years format, is that they dbq is challenging every year, it requires you to use all of the skills youve acquired over the course of the year and now you will be able to hit the ground running because he will be able to come to that dbq fresh. Host let me ask this question so we are all on the same page. We are going to look at an image here which could be one of those source documents, an image called the first vote from harvards weekly 1867. Of ankandwhite drawing elderly africanamerican man casting a ballot. Dbq,would be the possible what would be the question that this document would be relating to for our students . Jason, lets start with you. Guest thanks, jesse. That is a great document. Again, notice how important the source line is here. Both the title, where it is published and when it was published. It is important to keep in mind that in the last three years, 2017, 2018, 2019, the dbq questions have started with the word evaluate. Looking at the last three years, i believe that is correct. So when a dbq asks you to evaluate something, it is asking you to judge it. You are usually going to be asked to judge something to the extent it is or is not. So this is just one document, so that there would be four more. But a question could be something like, evaluate the extent to which the political and Economic Reforms of record reconstruction ultimately help those they sought to assist, or something along those lines. Then a student looking at this document could note that it was in 1867, so we are two years end of the civil war, we are really at the beginning of the reconstruction period. At the very beginning of that period, there was widespread voting available to formerly enslaved africanamericans. And here is harpers magazine, which, students wouldnt necessarily have to know this, but this is a northern magazine published out of boston. Here is this northern magazine showing or at least proclaiming that there is progress on the part of civil rights for African Americans. But of course, students will also keep in mind that if the question is an evaluate question, evaluate the extent to which there was progress, this will end up being a very mixed legacy. So that within 10 years of the publication of this cartoon celebrating an africanamerican man voting for the first time, in fact, many africanamericans are going to find those rights curtailed. Guest yeah. And i would simply add that the College Board is in the habit of framing their questions around the historical reasoning skills causation, cause and effect, comparison, which is similarity and difference, and continuity and change. Thing students can do is ask them selves, what does this document site about the effect of reconstruction perhaps on the lives of African Americans or the political system in the south . Or how does this document illustrate one of the kinds of changes that are taking place . Or how is this similar or different to the experiences africanamericans faced before reconstruction and the civil war. Ts go to another student, this next question is megan, calling from winchester, virginia. Good morning. Guest good morning. Guest morning, megan. Caller i have a few questions, but i can pick one if that is all you can take. My first question is, how is making connections across time periods for the complexity point different from contextualization . Guest that is a good question. The way i tried to explain that to my students is, contextualization is connected to a broader process or topic. Often times i encourage students to do that at the beginning of their essay to connect it, to something prior. Although it can be done at the
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