Victoria

1. Crafting Historical Arguments from Historical Evidence:
        
       During this course one thing we were required to learn was how to use appropriate historical evidence. This means, having the capability to read a historical document for example and support it using relevant inferences and drawing our own conclusions. For example, during this school year we were taught to write DBQ essays, for each essay I would have about 9-10 documents each having the voice of different types of people’s opinion referring to a topic. I would then have to read each document and interpret what the speaker’s opinion was and explain why they had this opinion. For instance, if there were to be given a DBQ on the Columbia Exchange and a document came form man in Europe who profited from the slave trade he would most likely say that the slave trade should not be abolished, were as if in a separate document a women from Africa whose husband was sent to the Caribbean would state the injustice being made and why slave trade should be abolished. Then, I would have to group various documents that have a similar opinion and explain why they have this opinion using historical evidence and write an essay concluding to the topic. I remember at the beginning of the course when I was first taught to write this type of essay it was very difficult, having to read and interpret each document, but the most difficult skill for me was learning how to group them. I found it be so complicated to figure out exactly what each person had in common, it would take me an hour just for that section, but now I know I have grown because I am able to analyze each document and group them in about 15 minutes.  Also, another way I learned to master this skill was by doing Soapstone (including pov). By having this assignment I learned how to read documents from each chapter and interpret the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, tone, and point of view from each document and explain why. This helped me think into more depth about what I was reading and understand the reading more. Since the beginning of the year this type of assignment has been one of my favorites, I would find it so helpful to be able to figure out the speaker’s position and would help me analyze and understand what was going on during that chapter better.
    Evidence:
For evidence to illustrate an example of what I have portrayed is in the following DBQ essay prompt of the Mexican and Russian Revolutions, as well as a Soapstone on The Common Wealth of Byzantium. The DBQ demonstrates the way I analyzed the theme and grouped each documents with a similar point of view, as where the Soapstone demonstrates the skill of analyzing a document given by categorizing them.

2. Chronological Reasoning
    Also, a skill I was required to learn was periodization, being able to describe and analyze historical events and put them into a chronological order. It has always been so helpful for me to be able to understand in what order events came in, it helps me focus, understand, and interpret events correctly. An assignment I did in class was the dates test, this was a test we had four chances to try and get 100% or you failed. This was by the end of the year and it helped me review and prepare for the AP test that was coming up, it made studying and categorizes important events so much easier to remember. I remember when I first heard my teacher saying we had to remember more than 60 major events and categorize them in chronological order I instantly thought “I can’t do that.” I procrastinated in studying the events for about the first week, I didn’t think I was capable, but then I turned my thought around and began thinking I could do it and began studying each night, little by little. Exactly the day before the exam, on my fourth try I passed it, I felt very accomplished. Another assignment that helped me master this skill was timelines. I don’t remember doing them as much individually but it would most likely be in class, either was a whole or in groups. Depending on the time period we were learning I found it helpful working together with other people and analyzing as well as describing important events happening and putting them in order. As I said before, learning this skill better made everything so much easier to understand. As of before I knew it helped me but I never actually took in consideration and actually used it was a tool like I learned to do in this course.
Evidence:
  For evidence to demonstrate an example of which I have portrayed is in the passing exam of my dates test and a timeline of some unit 4 events. This demonstrates my understanding, being able to get 100% on my dates test and also shows the timelines we discussed as a class relating to periodization.  

3. Comparison and Contextualization
     Another, skill we as students were required to learn was comparison, being able to compare and describe historical developments in a society either between a different society or just compare one society’s similarities and differences in a chorological order. An assignment that taught me well this skill was the comparison essay. In this essay we were given a topic for example, “Analyze similarities and differences in the effects of imperialism in two of the following regions during the period 1750-1900 (options: Africa, East Asia, and The Middle East).” Then, we would choose the regions we are most familiar with and asked to analyze and explain their similarities and differences during the time period given. For me this wasn’t a very difficult essay since in my point of view it was just you either undertand what happened in the society during that period or you don’t. But what I had most trouble was not knowing what the topic was going to be about, so at first I believed you had to know about all society’s , regions, everything which made it difficult for me at the beginning. However, as I began to do more of these essays and practice the skill more, and based on what my teacher explained it I realized you didn’t really have to know everything you just had to have an idea, connecting events that you know happened before or after and then know about what was going on in the society and explain it in an essay.
Evidence:
   For evidence to illustrate an example of which I have portrayed is in the following essay. The African and East Asian comparison essay prompt demonstrate the topics given, the scoring guide, and the way I interpreted each society by grouping their similarities and differences.

4. Historical Interpretation and Synthesis
     During this course, one thing that we as students were required to learn and master was interpretation. This means being capable of evaluating and analyzing interpretations of history and being able to reason and create a point of view. An assignment that helped me improve the skill was my debates character. For example, the debate character assigned to me was Kangxi, an emperor from the Qing dynasty. As we studied our character and found reasons why they were the best rulers, we also found some negative things they did. Then, we had to learn to interpret our character and give the best out of them, even though we knew some were bad rulers we had to do the best we could to make it seem like they were the very best ruler. Learning this skill made me look at things in another perspective, learning to analyze the good and the bad of my character and support him creating my own point of view. When it was time to debate with another character, we also learned to study the other character and analyze their life, seeming it to look negative. At first, I thought it would be complicated to interpret each character without us actually having had been there, but then I realized interpretation was about having to analyze and having a context that creates a separate point of view from others. And learning to support what you are interpreting and supporting it with evidence. This helped me understand what interpreting was and use it in a correct way.
Evidence:
   For evidence to illustrate an example of which I have portrayed this skill is in the following debate notes I took. This demonstrates how the debates took place and how we as a class had to decide which student interpreted best their leader and was best supported and explain why we believe it.