Hey guys
In today's video, I'm flipping through my notes from AP European history this past school year
So first, I'll be explaining what exactly all of these notes are and what's going on here
Then later on I'll be giving some advice about AP European history
It's specific to the AP euro class
But hopefully those of you who are taking history classes with a different focus can still find these helpful
This would be especially applicable to other AP history classes
So here is what is going on in these notes
These are organized in two folders called unit packs
And this is how we turn in work to my teacher at
the end of every unit
So in these unit packs, we have all of the notes and activities that we did for each unit
I'm just skipping through all of the activities to just to the notes
Which include lecture notes and textbook notes. So for lecture notes, our teacher requires us to take notes in
Alphanumerical format and the color code we use is green for anything related to the key concepts
Yellow for examples and blue for other important things
Textbook notes are different in that. They're kind of a Cornell note style format
We have a summary at the end and we use pretty much the same color code
except we also add in pink which is
For anything that we have questions about which we asked about in class discussion on the next day
If you'd like a more detailed explanation
Of how I take notes from my AP euro textbook. I'll link a video about that in the cards right now
And now on to the advice for AP euro
First of all, keep in mind that this is the only AP class I've ever taken
So this is not meant to be some sort of magical
Perfect method that will guarantee you a 5 on the AP exam
I'm just hoping that you guys can learn from my mistakes and my successes that way you guys can do better than I did
Since I feel that although I did fairly well in the class.
I definitely have learned a lot about how to take AP tests and how to learn history
My main tip would be to pay attention to the key concept outline
Which is a framework for the entire course that is publicly posted by the College Board every year
so this is basically the people who give you the test telling you exactly
What will be on the test?
so the way to best utilize this based on my experience is first of all after taking notes from the textbook or
taking lecture notes
Use a certain color. I
personally used green since that was what my teacher recommended us to use and use that color to highlight all the information that
corresponds to the key concepts
Then it also helps to memorize at least one specific example that corresponds with each key concept
This way you can use this example as evidence in short answer questions Ellie cues and dbqs
Basically any essay question where you have to bring in evidence?
Also the official colored Board document lists examples for each key concept in the right-hand margin
so it would be in your best interest to memorize those as
That's basically the College Board telling you that these examples are important and it's very possible that they'll appear on the AP test
My next tip would be to memorize the key figures and their major beliefs
I've noticed that there are a lot of questions about who would most agree with a certain statement or
event or
Who would most disagree who would most agree with each other just things like that about what major players in history?
Thought about events at the time their political views economic social all of those things
This also helps for multiple-choice questions
Because if you don't fully understand the passage, that's the stimuli for a certain set of questions
you can look at the author's name and
Pretty much. Guess what? The passage was saying based on what that person's major?
thoughts and beliefs were
next don't waste your time on memorizing the exact dates of most events or
Heck you don't even need to memorize any more than ten
The only things where you'll have to know the specific year are the really important things that you probably already know like the French Revolution
or the start of World War one the
only years that are important to know are
general time frame
periods of
Certain historical trends such as the Renaissance started in the 1400s and lasted to around the 1600s
The age of colonizing Africa was the late 19th century
things like that
you'll pretty much never be asked the exact date or year of anything a
Pierrot is far more focused on cause and effect change
And continuity a sort of deeper historical understanding of how things are connected
Rather than just memorizing names dates facts and figures. I
apologize for how vague this explanation is of what the focus and main point of AP History classes are
It's really hard exactly to
Qualify what?
Information and knowledge and thinking skills go into it
But rest assured you'll definitely figure out very quickly what exactly these classes entail once you actually take them
On a more concrete level here are a couple of note-taking tips
First of all, as you take notes from your textbook record anything you're confused about and highlight that with a certain color
I used pink since that was what my teacher asked us to use and then later you can google it
You can ask your teacher you can discuss with your classmates
because in a Pierrot you can't get away with just
Recognizing the name of an event you'll need to know causes effects more
detailed historical information in that vein
Another tip for taking notes
abbreviations are your best friend because a
Pierrot is very content heavy
So you'll have to take a lot of notes and to save
Time and space and the effort of you writing by hand. You want to abbreviate as much as possible?
So I recommend coming up with your own abbreviations for words that are really common like the names of countries
So for example, I made France into Fr
Germany was ger and other words that show up a lot are
social political economic and
in each unit certain words will show up a lot for example in unit 1 which spans from the late Middle Ages until
the end of the 30 Years War
Renaissance and Reformation
Were very common
Then the 19th century was unit 4 and that might be considered the age of isms one
especially common one was nationalism which became an 80
nlm and
For all of the other isms. I made a
Superscript M which kind of looks like an exponent into a shortened form of ism I would recommend you to make up your own
Abbreviations though not necessarily go with mine. That way you'll know them by heart and you won't have to have a key or anything
and
now switching gears
I feel like the only resources for test prep that I really needed were the textbook that I used for school
Which is the western heritage?
AP addition by Kagan and
Albert IO which is a website and I bought the premium subscription which gave me access to all of them all
choice questions
I feel like all of those other prep books like Barron's or crash course really weren't needed
Albert io is perfect for a multiple-choice by the way not sponsored by them or anything. I don't think they've ever heard of me
Basically Albert io offers practice questions and they also have practice exams. I
find these really helpful because they have a
Lot of practice questions and they're updated to fit with the standards that change with each year
Also, the questions have explanations for why the answer is a certain answer which really helps clarify
understanding of how to answer multiple choice questions and the historical knowledge that goes along with I
Think there are two main facets to succeeding in AP European history
First you need your actual knowledge of AP European history
And this can be achieved by, you know, learning the historical information
the AP euro class and exam are so in-depth that there are no secret test-taking tips or
flowery language in your essays that will allow you to BS your way to a good score if you don't actually
Know what you're talking about
then once you've got that base of historical knowledge down you can use that to
sharpen, your test-taking skills at the certain way that multiple-choice questions are asked how to
address the essay questions and
things like that
Again, this is really vague. I'm not sure how to explain it. These are really soft skills that you'll develop through practice and
for that reason
I think it's really important to do practice exams whether they be on Albert IO that I mentioned earlier or
The exams that are released by the College Board
I hope you found this video helpful. And if you took AP euro, and you have any tips
Be sure to leave them in the comments
I upload new videos every Monday and Friday and you could check out my tumblr and instagram which are linked in the description
See you next time
