How to Understand ANY DBQ Prompt 

• Translate the prompt

  • “Evaluate the extent to which…” 

    • Determine how much…

  • “Evaluate the relative importance of causes…”

    • Rank the causes… 

      • Argue which cause was more important than the other

• Identify the skill the prompt is asking you to perform

  • Compare - explain what is similar and what is different about the two or more things

    • Comparison prompts will often use words like compare, similarities and differences

  • Causation - Take the event that they give you and show you what caused it or what it caused

    • Causation prompts often use words like cause, led to and effect

  • Continuity and change - compare events in two different time periods and show what changed and/or what stayed the same

    • Continuity and change prompts will often use the word change

• Categories and the dates 

  • Categories are often political (states, power, laws, treaties, foreign and domestic policies), economic (trade, spending, accumulation of wealth), environmental (how people interacted with their environments) social (hierarchies, gender roles, systems of labor), cultural (religion, language, belief systems) etc

  • Make sure to write your essay about events during the dates stated in the prompt

    • ALWAYS WRITE ABOUT THE RIGHT TIME PERIOD/EVENT 

The DBQ just got easier - Rubric Change

• Document Based Question

  • 25% of AP exam 

    • 60 minutes

    • 7 documents and a prompt

    • Scored on a 7 point rubric

• What hasn't changed 

  • 1 point each for context, thesis and outside evidence 

• What has changed

  • 1 point for correctly describin 3 documents in relation to the prompt 

  • Can earn another point for supporting your thesis with a mere 4 document (instead of 6) 

  • 1 point for correctly sourcing 2 documents (instead of 3) 

  • Can now earn complexity by 

    • Using all 7 documents 

    • By sourcing 4 documents 

    • By doing a really good job using the documents and outside evidence 

    • Now a complexity paragraph and not complexity essay 

3 Steps to a Perfect DBQ score 

• Read the prompt carefully - always mark

  • Always mark up the prompt

    • Mark up time period - make sure you write about the right event/time period

      • Write actual numbers if given

        • 16th century - 1500s

        • 17th century - 1600s

        • Etc. 

  • Mark up the categories 

    • Ex. political, religious, economic, socially etc

  • Notice/decide the historical thinking skill needed

    • Ex. comparison, causation and/or continuity and change 

• Using the DBQ documents

  • Read quickly each doc one at a time

    • Need to start at the citation - mark who wrote it and when it was written

  • Then summarize it in your own words on the side

  • Group your documents

    • Write what kind (category) of document it is

• Get that 7

  • 1pt - Thesis/claim - one of the most important things to write

    • Your thesis should be your entire argument in miniature

      • Must be historically defensible - have to take a position

      • Has to establish a line of reasoning - demonstrate how you're going to argue your thesis

        • Acknowledge the counter argument

        • Use the language of the prompt

        • Establish line of reasoning by using specific historical evidence 

      • “[Restate prompt]” because A and B 

        • A and B are evidence

  • 1pt - Contextualization - best to explain events that happen before the given time period

    • 3-4 content-rich sentences

      • Also talk about related events and drop vocabulary 

    • Use immediate context - 50-100 years back

  • 3pt - Evidence

    • 1pt - describe at least 3 documents 

    • 1pt - support argument using at least 4 documents

      • Describe document

        • “Doc 1 says…”

        • Summarize in your own words

      • Start the next sentence

        • “This shows..” or “This demonstrates…” 

        • And then write how it proves your thesis statement

    • 1pt - evidence beyond the documents

      • Connect a specific evidence to the argument

        • Cannot be mentioned in document

        • Needs to come from the same time period given in the prompt

      • Name, Explain, Connect

  • 2pt - Analysis and reasoning 

    • 1pt - for sourcing at least 2 documents - HAPPY

      • Historical situation - Place document in its larger historical context

      • Audience - Why it's important for us to know to whom this was written 

      • Purpose - What document was intended to do 

      • Point of View - Answer “why does he/she say what he/she says in the was that he/she says it”

      • Why? - Why does you sourcing analysis matter to the interpretation of the document and your overall argument 

    • 1pt - Complexity - by demonstrating a complex understanding

      • Effectively using all 7 documents to support an argument

      • Source 4 documents (instead of 2)

      • Can be awarded for PART of the essay

        • Can have complexity paragraph instead of complexity essay