Unit 1 Study Guide – a guide to preparation for all parts of the Unit Exam

Tips: What Helps Learning? from the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

 

If you have questions about any of this webpage, please ask. I will add more detail on the date in the Course Schedule and I will also expand these answers based on your questions. Tip: the password is at the bottom.

 

Table of Contents:

Practical Issues That Students Frequently Want to Know

The two parts of the exam are:

All of the questions are done as sets:

Information that students frequently want to know about the two parts of the tests:

Practical Issues about Content That Students Frequently Want To Know

Test questions will be from:

Information that students frequently want to know about writing an answer:

Specific Tips for Each Chapter

In Chapter 16:

In Chapter 17:

In Chapter 18:

In Chapter 19:

The password

 

Practical Issues That Students Frequently Want to Know

The two parts of the exam are:

·         The objective part means methods that are machine gradable, such as multiple choice, true/false, ordering items, and matching items.

·         The written part means a good, competent factual explanation of something in the history covered from Chapter 16 to Chapter 19.

All of the questions are done as sets:

·         The objective part consists of 25 questions at 4 points each--but, for each question, fate (or Blackboard) could ask you any 1 of 4 or more questions.
In other words, there are a minimum of 100 questions in the test.

·         The written part displays 1 question worth 20 points for its contents. A separate grade of 20 f=is for whether you follow the 5 Good Habits for Evidence). Fate (or Blackboard) could ask you any of the other questions in the set.
In other words, there are a minimum of 8 possible written questions, but those questions give you a choice, but Caution: you must write on only 1 of the choices. Tip: Notice that word OR in the question and choose to answer the one that you know best.

Information that students frequently want to know about the two parts of the tests:

·         You have thirty minutes for the objective part of the test, and 45 minutes for the written part of the test.

·         You really won’t have time to look up much, but you may use your book and sources in the course.

·         The questions are meant to be ones that are useful understanding about history. They will not be trick questions.

 

Practical Issues about Content That Students Frequently Want To Know

Test questions will be from:

·         The Instructor’s quiz  Tip:  You must notice those discipline-specific  basics when you write and in this Exam

·         InQuizitive chapters for the Unit – but not in the exact words of the InQuizitive questions

·         The textbook – but not in the exact words of the textbook

·         The required primary sources

Information that students frequently want to know about writing an answer:

·         Typically, the best short questions ask you explain an event (or a region at a specific period of time), give specific examples, and explain its major traits.

·         Caution: You must be specific and answer the question asked and use evidence appropriate for the question asked.

·         Caution: You must only use facts from the textbook or sources in the course.

·         Caution:  You must place immediately after a fact in your own words or a fact in the author’s words (a quotation) the word PAGE and then a specific page number. Example: (PAGE: 350)

·         Caution: If you use the exact words (such as 3 words in a row) of the author, you must also use “" as covered in the Good Habits for Evidence.

·         Tip: The best qualities for writing about history are that the writing follows the 5 Good Habits for Evidence.

·         Tip: The goal of writing is to help you learn history and the best way to learn history is to try to teach it in a common sense but truthful and brief way.
Think of it as teaching your smart cousin something he or she must learn quickly but well. He or she would not want a lot of words or a lot of fluff.

 

Tip: I will tend to ask about things that are useful to your future. I will not ask “trick questions” like a T/F with a fake date. I will tend to ask you questions on both parts of the exam that will help you notice three big things:

1.    How (and why) were different from one period to another so you realize humans like you had consequences on what happened

2.    What vocabulary you need to understand the news

3.    How and when to confirm that something someone says is accurate

Specific Tips for Each Chapter

In Chapter 16:

1.    Look for the inventions that mark this era both with products and with the rise of urban life

2.    Examine the growth of railroads.

3.    Examine device, new inventions

4.    Examine the rise of corporations in what industries and how they gained power over competitors and state government (including how they used the law to stop state legislatures from regulating corporations that they created)
Tips:

·         Look for the words trust and holding company

·         What is written below is something that I am used to seeing in some form in most textbooks and these facts tend to help students understand. Favor: If you find this information in your textbook, please email me the page number(s).
At this time in history, the process was that state legislatures gave the authority for a business to have the rights of a corporation, including limited liability for their actions. New Jersey was one of the states most favorable to corporations. Here’s a simple example of liability:
- If you were the sole proprietor of a store and someone got hurt because of your actions and sued you, you could lose your business and your home and your other personal assets.
- If you were incorporated, you lost only your investment in the business.

·         Look at the terms horizontal and vertical integration and who did them

5.    Look at industrial capitalists and the famous financial capitalist

6.    Look at the relationship between government and robber barons. It will be no surprise that there is a growing movement during the Gilded Age (and notice that term) to clean up this mess.

7.    Examine the robber barons, the middle class, and varied poor in the working class—including injuries, death rate, and child labor

8.    Examine the attempts of working people to organize, including the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor

9.    Notice the famous strikes covered in this period, including businesses having their own private army (wow!) and what government did

 

In Chapter 17:

1.    Notice the term the New South

2.    Examine the South’s industries, poverty, and agriculture (especially the crop-lien system)

3.    Notice what happened to African Americans after 1890
Caution: notice the dates are in the 1890s and things change from what had happened in some areas of the South during Reconstruction and in the years after 1877 to 1890. For example, the information on Wilmington, North Carolina shows you that in some areas African Americans both voted and held office.
Notice: the Plessy case, voting, Jim Crow, the Wilmington mob attack, and what lynching was.
If you disbelieve any of those sections of the textbook, use the Videos I have added to Chapter 17 and the optional primaries in that chapter.

4.    Notice the 2 quite different African American leaders: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois

 

1.    Notice the new west that is between the Mississippi and the Rockies

2.    Notice the ways people make a living and how hard it is.

3.    Notice what happens to women, both negatively and positively.

4.    Notice what happens to Native Americans and how they are treated in the Dawes Severalty Act.
Tip: .Severalty means to own property as an individual. This is the opposite of how Native Americans owned property—they owned it as a tribe and they had the right to use the land but not cut it or destroy it. This is a move to destroy the tribal structure. Further, as your textbook adds, this policy resulted in the loss of 86 million of their prior 130 million acres.

5.    Notice the brief introduction to the Populists, the rise of the farmers in opposition to this destruction new world.
Tip: .Since the time of Jefferson, the farmers had been considered the foundation of the American republic where people could support themselves and therefore vote for themselves and the general welfare, not just vote as a boss might demand.
Reminder: we do not have the secret ballot yet. If you want confirmation, click on the Smithsonian’s link on the vote that failed and the rise of the secret ballot

 

In Chapter 18:

1.    Notice urbanization and how it spreads across the nation, including technologies, leisure, and the dangers such as the tenement.

2.    Notice the “new immigration” and their traits. Also notice the first federal law to block a immigrant group—the Chinese Exclusion Act.

3.    Notice Darwinism and—the creation of Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin—Social Darwinism. Also notice the counter voices of Lester Frank Ward—with more coming after 1900.

4.    Notice in general bossism, partisan politics and local and national levels, and corruption. Notice the Pendleton Act for reform of government jobs (civil service)
Tip: You will not have to recognize each of these presidencies in what has been called an era where the voters couldn’t tell the difference in their policies.

5.    Notice the railroads and the Interstate Commerce Commission—a federal version of a method the farmers had gotten passed at the state level.

Tip: The Constitution makes Congress the power when it comes to commerce between states and railroads—to be of use—would have to cross between states. This commission form of government will become the model for regulation after 1900.

6.    Notice the farmers’ problems and how they overlap with currency.

·         Debtors want inflation—whether it is with more paper money or by coining a cheaper metal than gold (in other words, silver).

·         Creditors want deflation—and they got what they wanted.

7.    Notice the Farmers Alliance and how it became a 3rd party as the Populists and notice both the election of 1892 and the one in 1896.

 

In Chapter 19:

1.    Notice Alfred Thayer Mahon and what he observes.

2.    Notice Alaska and Hawaii and why the imperialism in the Pacific.
Tip: Remember your U.S. History I course. Empire means gaining territory that is a colony, one whose people do not have the same rights as the mother country. The American Revolution was against being a colony of Great Britain.

3.    Notice the lead up the Spanish-American War, in brief the war itself, and what the United States gets as colonies.
Caution: With Cuba use your index to make sure you notice what both of these say:

·         The Teller Amendment to the war declaration

·         The Platt Amendment that eventually ends up as an amendment to the new Cuban Constitution and in a treaty (That section is not clearly written in the textbook but I can provide a copy of a specific source if anyone wants to see it.)  Tip: One of its issues is a place called Guantanamo Bay.

4.    Notice these basics of the war, including the Rough Riders and John Hay’s famous line.

5.    Notice the Filipino resistance and the final outcome.

6.    Notice the American Anti-Imperialist League.

7.    Notice the Open Door policy and what it is.

8.    After the assassination of William McKinley, notice the foreign policies of Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican)

9.    Notice the foreign policies of his successors: William Howard Taft (a Republican) and Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat).

The password

You may take exams only 1 time; therefore, the password is


onetimeonly – no spaces and no capital letters.

 

 

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2015

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2015

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