AP Human Geography: How to Improve FRQ Responses

This blog entry is designed to provide some hints to help your students improve their writing on the free-response section of the exam. The expectations, instruction, and instruction that teachers provide students related to FRQ writing is extremely important and will dramatically impact student...

AP® World History: Comparison, Continuity, and Causation

How to Approach the 2023 AP® World History Exam

Experienced AP World History teacher Dave Drzonek and AP World History Exam table leader Charlie Hart discuss what students did well and what they struggled with on the 2022 AP World History Exam, and offer tips on how to use this information to better prepare students for the upcoming 2023 exam.

Women's History Month: Gender and Disease in World History

In celebration of Women's History Month, explore this lesson with your students that gives them the opportunity to practice an important part of the AP^® Exam while learning about how pandemics and diseases throughout world history have affected women's rights.

Pole Vaulting Your Way Through the DBQ

Teaching a young, eager, and naive student how to write a sophisticated DBQ is like teaching a similarly inexperienced athlete how to successfully clear the bar in a pole vault competition. You wouldn’t set them on the runway with a 12-foot long stick and tell them to go jump....would you?

Genocide, Holocaust, Racism in World History: Case Study, the Rwanda Genocide Comparative

The following lesson plan uses the historical thinking skills of comparative and cause and effect to analyze two historians' perspectives on the Rwandan genocide. Helen Epstein and Philip Gourevitch relate their perspectives about that African genocide and students are asked to analyze those points...

AP® World History: Murder Mystery Party

The teaching of AP^® World History can be a daunting task at times. Teachers are asked to teach over 800 years of historical content and then develop very specific skills so that students can be successful in the class. It can leave teachers feeling like they are constantly on an escalator, moving...

AP® World: Cultural Diffusion Activity

Cultural diffusion and cultural syncretism are two important concepts in the AP® World History curriculum. Because of its importance, I’ve developed this activity as a fun and creative way to introduce or review the concept of cultural diffusion. It is best used at the beginning of the year as an...

AP® World History: How to DBQ

As we get closer to the AP^® World History Exam, students will begin to stress about the required essays they will write as part of the exam. The Document-Based Question essay is particularly challenging for students because they can struggle with reading and understanding the documents they are...