Essential Understandings: AP US History
AP United States History
Semester 1
- Learn how to write academically
- Understand the similarities and differences between pre-Columbian societies
- Compare and contrast the settlement of the Chesapeake and Massachusetts Bays
- Know the evolution of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and how they function
- Understand how the major political parties evolved and their characteristics
- Learn the impact of reform movements, including religions, on United States History
- Know how slavery became the paramount issue in the Antebellum Era
Semester 2
- Continue to focus on academic writing
- Learn the basic events of contiguous expansion in United States History
- Describe the origins and effects of the Gilded Age
- Compare and contrast major wars involving the United States
- Understand the nature of the Cold War
- Understand and recognize the changing role of women in United States History
- Describe the impact of the Vietnam War Era on subsequent history
- Learn how foreign policy decisions have led to the present world situation
- Know the basic elements of Historiography as it applies to United States History