The APUSH Exam will measure student proficiency in 9 historical thinking skills as well as 7 thematic learning objectives. Beginning with the May 2015 Exam, every question will require a student to apply one of the historical thinking skills to one of the thematic learning objectives.

Historical Thinking Skills

Historical Causation WHY did stuff happen? What was the impact? Think long and short-term. Historical Causation

Continuity and Change Over Time What stayed the same? What changed? Why did it change and how much did it change?

Why do historians start and end time periods when they do? Turning points! Periodization

Identify similarities and differences within a society or between societies—could be chronological, ideological, demographic, geographic, political, economic, social Comparison

Connecting events to their specific place and time in history Contextualization

Historical Argumentation Evaluating and synthesizing conflicting historical evidence to construct persuasive historical arguments Historical Argumentation

Appropriate Use of Relevant Historical Evidence Extracting useful information, making supportable inferences, and drawing appropriate conclusions from historical evidence

How do perspectives influence people’s interpretations of events, and how might these perspectives change over time? Interpretation

Synthesis Creating a persuasive understanding of the past and its relevance to the present by thinking across time periods and connecting disparate, relevant ideas, people and events What do these have in common, and what can one learn from them?