1. 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.

3. Historical Thinking Skills

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

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

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

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

8. Connecting events to their specific place and time in history
Contextualization

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

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

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

12. 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?