World History - G146

 

 

     World History is one of two entry- level courses offered by the Social Studies department. Although the course is open to all students, the vast majority are freshmen and sophomores. We begin the year by discussing the development of civilization and the four places around the world where this development first occurred. We use this unit to  introduce students to the most important question they

will answer in the course -Why? Why did civilization develop in each of these locations? Why were there differences between these civilizations? We also introduce the basics of maps and how to use them. These skills are reviewed and developed throughout the year. History is about understanding the past in order to explain the present and
 anticipate the future. We can't do that without answering the question why in addition to the traditional fact-based questions who, what, where and when. This is the type of thinking we encourage our students to do. As the year progresses we introduce students to various cultures around the world. Our goal is to help students understand these cultures so that they will be better equipped to deal 

with all the people that they meet.  From there we discuss how these cultures slowly but surely became connected to one another. This is the story of historical development that we trace in the course of the year. 

     World History is also a skills-based course. This means that we use this course to help students develop their academic skills. Our department has created a set of academic standards for courses at each level of our curriculum. In our 100 level courses, we begin the process of helping our students meet these standards. The standards exist in three areas - Reading, Writing and Research.
We begin by helping students make effective use of a textbook. This is a specialized kind of reading that needs to be approached differently from reading for enjoyment. Next, we branch out into reading a variety of other types writing. We read everything from young adult fiction to current, scholarly non-fiction. This culminates in the reading of a novel during the fourth quarter. In writing we begin with

paragraph development. We go over topic sentence construction and supporting an argument with appropriate evidence. As the year progresses we move on to thesis statement creation and multi-paragraph essay writing. In order to avoid conflicting messages, we have coordinated our work with the English department in regard to terminology and

format. Our research standards center around primary-source documents and evaluating the internet as a source of information. The skills our students develop in World History are immediately applicable in other courses and will remain valuable throughout their careers as students.
If you have any questions regarding this course, feel free to contact Bruce Hildabrand - bhildabrand@d211.org
Dave Moravek - dmoravek@d211.org
or Jeff Stewart - jstewart@d211.org
in the Social Studies department (847) 755-3826