Compared to freshman and sophomore year history, the homework in this class is a joke. Last year, we used to get a worksheet or reading+questions that would take 45-60 minutes every night, and then be graded quite strictly for accuracy, and freshman history had a bunch of point-heavy, time-consuming projects. Now, the only homework we get is to read 30 or so pages from an assigned book and fill out the occasional DBQ. While this makes things easier in the short term, I’m concerned about how having such a low homework load will affect my performance on tests, especially in an AP class where tests will be markedly more difficult than previous years. How have you guys studied for this class? I’m considering just downloading and filling out some of last year’s homework when necessary, once we get to the industrialization of America and beyond, but that still leaves out the units until then, as well as material unique to this course.
This sounds fairly similar to the workload I had for APUSH. Our teacher assumed we were reading the textbook, though never assigned questions from it, so there was no direct penalty for not doing so. We had maybe four homework essays the entire year, one in-class DBQ, two/three non-essay written homeworks, two quizzes, and five or six tests (including the final in May). In other words, not too many graded assignments, just like what you’re going through. I also happened to get a 100 in the class, 5 on the AP exam, and an 800 on the SAT II in US History.
If your teacher is not new to teaching the course, then I would have faith that they know how much homework is necessary to get you where you need to be by May. I’m going to assume that the assigned book you’re referencing is an APUSH textbook. I had friends who took regular US History while I took AP, and they often had reading & questions from the textbook, while we just had reading, but there is no question that the AP materials you’ll be working with are much more difficult, detailed, and advanced texts than those you had in earlier history classes. Even if it seems like less reading, and you don’t have formally assigned work, keeping up with the reading is huge. Thirty pages a day doesn’t sound like too much, but if you fall behind because of work from other classes, it can become very overwhelming to catch up.
In terms of studying, Quizlet is very helpful if you have term-based quizzes or tests, but less so for an exam on an entire time period. I used Princeton Review quite heavily, and to study for tests, I would make study guides from the review book and textbook. (When AP time came around, I pretty much just made one big document with all of them in it, which I used to study for both the AP exam and the course final. I then used these same exact materials to study for the subject test.) Even if tests will be markedly more difficult, AP courses are often curved in various ways… my AP World class had a fairly large curve (~50% raw MC = 90%), my AP Calc class used a standard deviation curve, etc. You should be putting in a good amount of work for any AP class, but if your teacher assigns a certain amount of work, then I would rest assured that they know what they’re doing. Other than keeping up with the reading and making outlines for tests, I think you should be fine.
@writergirl0316 Thank you for your advice. One thing I would like to clarify is that the assigned book is an additional text related to the material we’re studying, and not the textbook, which is mostly there as review for what we cover in class.