GENERAL STRATEGIES

• Read each question and all the answer choices THOROUGHLY

• Choose the answer choice that FULLY answers the question

• Make educated guesses

  • Skip questions if you can’t make an educated guess (5-6 maximum)

• Process of elimination

• Watch the clock and pace yourself

  • Write down time frame (separate into three pieces)

• Be careful of changing answers (and trust your gut!)

• Underline key words

• Use 2-pass system - Answer all easy questions the first time and come back the second time to answer harder ones

• Era-based thinking

TEST-TAKING STEPS

1. Read the question & connect the era

2. Eliminate incorrect choices

3. Assess remaining choices & translate into simpler terms

4. Stop & reread the question

5. (Last resort) Guess & move on

TYPES OF QUESTIONS

• Quotes

  • Read the question FIRST

  • Read quickly to get a general idea

• Except/Not/Least

  • Answer true-or-false (eliminate correct answer choices)

  • Which answer choices sticks out from the others?

• Charts, tables, and graphs

  • Read the question FIRST

  • Don’t assume (use only information given)

• Maps

  • Read the question FIRST

  • Read the title

• Political cartoons

  • Connect to the correct era

• Random facts

  • Answer is probably…

    • Vaguely familiar (won’t be something you’ve never heard of)

    • Famous person

  • POE & guess

ERA-BASED THINKING

Exploration & Colonization (1492-1763)

• Vikings (Leif Eriksson)

• Columbus

  • King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella of Spain

  • Columbian Exchange

• Northwest Passage

• New England

  • Plymouth

    • Pilgrims (Separatists)

    • Mayflower Compact

• Massachusetts Bay Colony

  • John Winthrop

    • “City on a Hill”

  • Roger Williams & Anne Hutchinson

    • Rhode Island

• Subsistence farming

  • Indentured servants

• Middle Colonies

  • Pennsylvania

    • William Penn

    • Quakers

• South

  • Jamestown

    • Headright System

    • House of Burgesses

    • John Rolfe

      • Tobacco

• Plantation systems

  • Cash crops

  • Indentured servants

• Bacon’s Rebellion

• Great Awakening

  • Halfway Covenant

  • Jonathan Edwards

    • “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

  • George Whitefield
    

Revolutionary Era (1763-1783)

• Dominion of New England

  • Glorious Revolution

    • Salutary neglect

• Zenger Trial

• Albany Plan of Union

• French & Indian War

  • Treaty of Paris (1763)

• Taxes

  • Navigation Acts

    • Mercantilism

  • Proclamation of 1763

    • Ohio River Valley

  • Sugar Act

    • Vice-admiralty courts

  • Declaratory Act

  • Townshend Acts

  • Boston Massacre

  • Tea Act

    • Boston Tea Party

      • Sons of Liberty

      • Intolerable Acts

  • Quartering Act

• Committees of Correspondence

• First Continental Congress

• Common Sense (Thomas Paine)

• Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania (John Dickinson)

• Second Continental Congress

  • Olive Branch Petition

  • Continental Army

    • George Washington

  • Declaration of Independence

    • Thomas Jefferson

• Lexington & Concord

• Valley Forge

  • Baron Friedrich von Steuben

• Battle of Saratoga

  • France

• Battle of Yorktown

• Battle of Bunker Hill

• Battle of Brandywine Creek

• Forts Kaskia & Vincennes

  • George Rogers Clark

• Loyalists

• Treaty of Paris (1783)

A New Nation (1783-1816)

• George Washington

• John Adams

• Thomas Jefferson

• James Madison

• Articles of Confederation

  • Shays’ Rebellion

• US Constitution

  • Checks & balances

  • Great Compromise

    • Virginia Plan

    • New Jersey Plan

  • ⅗ Compromise

  • Bill of Rights

• Whiskey Rebellion

• Washington’s Farewell Address

• XYZ Affair

• Alien & Sedition Acts

  • Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions

• Revolution of 1800

• Louisiana Purchase

  • Lewis & Clark Expedition

• John Marshall

  • Marbury v. Madison

    • Judicial review

  • McCulloch v. Maryland

• War of 1812

  • Chesapeake Incident

    • Impressment

  • Embargo Act

  • Non-Intercourse Act

  • War Hawks

  • Treaty of Ghent

  • Battle of New Orleans

    • Andrew Jackson

  • Hartford Convention

• Reform Movements

  • Second Great Awakening

    • Charles Finney

    • Social Gospel

  • Transcendentalism

    • Henry David Thoreau

    • Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • Shakers

  • Mormons

    • Joseph Smith

    • Brigham Young

Pre-Civil War (1817-1859)

• James Monroe

• John Quincy Adams

• Andrew Jackson

• Martin Van Buren

• William Henry Harrison

• John Tyler

• James K. Polk

• Zachary Taylor

• Millard Fillmore

• Franklin Pierce

• James Buchanan

• Era of Good Feelings

• Adams-Onis Treaty (Florida)

• Monroe Doctrine

• Erie Canal

• Missouri Compromise

• Tallmadge Amendment

• Election of 1824

  • JQA, Clay, Jackson

  • “Corrupt bargain”

• Indian Removal Act

  • Trail of Tears

• Nullification Crisis

  • “Tariff of Abominations”

  • Force Bill

• Bank War

• Panic of 1837

  • “Pet banks”

• Gag Rule

• Industrial Revolution

  • Factories

  • Interchangeable parts (Eli Whitney)

  • Railroads

  • Telegraph

  • McCormick Reaper

• South

  • Plantations

  • Cotton gin (Eli Whitney)

• West

  • Manifest Destiny

    • Texas

    • Oregon

      • “54-40 or Fight!”

• Seneca Falls Convention

  • The Declaration of Sentiments

• Mexican-American War

  • Spot Resolutions

  • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

    • Mexican Cession

• California Gold Rush

• Compromise of 1850

• Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • Bleeding Kansas

• Harper’s Ferry

  • John Brown

• Dred Scott v. Sanford

• Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

• Underground Railroad

  • Harriet Tubman

Civil War & Reconstruction (1860-1877)

• Abraham Lincoln

• Andrew Johnson

• Ulysses S. Grant

• Rutherford B. Hayes

• Election of 1860

• Confederate States of America

  • Jefferson Davis

• Fort Sumter

• First Battle of Bull Run

• Second Battle of Bull Run

• Peninsula Campaign

• Battle of Antietam

  • Emancipation Proclamation

• Battle of Gettysburg

  • Gettysburg Address

• Battle of Shiloh

• Siege of Vicksburg

• Sherman’s March to the Sea

• Appomattox Courthouse

• 10 Percent Plan

• Wade-Davis Bill

• Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

• 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment

• KKK

• Sharecropping

• Jim Crow Laws

• Election of 1876

Gilded Age (1876-1900)

• James A. Garfield

• Chester A. Arthur

• Benjamin Harrison

• Grover Cleveland

• Theodore Roosevelt

• William Howard Taft

• Laissez-faire

• Captains of industry/robber barons

• Social Darwinism

• Gospel of Wealth

• Credit Mobilier Scandal

• Whiskey Ring Scandal

• Vertical & horizontal integration

Progressive Era (1890-1920)

• James A. Garfield

• Chester A. Arthur

• Benjamin Harrison

• Grover Cleveland

• Theodore Roosevelt

• William Howard Taft

• Muckrakers & Reformers

  • History of the Standard Oil Company (Ida Tarbell)

  • The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)

  • How the Other Half Lives (Jacob Riis)

  • Hull House (Jane Addams)

  • A Century of Dishonor (Helen Hunt Jackson)

    • Dawes Act

• Gov’t policies

  • Sherman Antitrust Act

  • Interstate Commerce Act

  • Pure Food & Drug Act

  • Meat Inspection Act

  • Federal Trade Commission

  • Clayton Antitrust Act

  • Federal Reserve Act

• Labor

  • Knights of Labor (Terence Powderly)

    • Haymarket Square Riot

  • American Federation of Labor (Samuel Gompers)

  • Industrial Workers of the World

• Temperance Movement

• Women’s Suffrage

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  • Susan B. Anthony

  • Carrie Chapman Catt

• Civil Rights

  • Plessy v. Ferguson

  • NAACP

  • Booker T. Washington

    • Tuskegee Institute

    • Atlanta Compromise Speech

  • WEB DuBois

    • Talented Tenth

    • Niagara Convention

  • Marcus Garvey

    • Back to Africa

American Imperialism (1890-1920)

• William McKinley

• Theodore Roosevelt

• William Howard Taft

• Spanish-American War

  • Yellow journalism

  • USS Maine

  • Rough Riders

  • Teller Amendment

  • Platt Amendment

• Open Door Policy

  • Boxer Rebellion

• Big Stick Diplomacy

• Panama Canal

• Roosevelt Corollary

• Dollar Diplomacy

• Seward’s Folly

• The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (Alfred Thayer Mahan)

• Annexation of Hawaii
  

World War I (1914-1918)

• Woodrow Wilson

• Allied Powers vs. Central Powers

• German U-Boats

  • Lusitania

• Sussex Pledge

• Zimmerman Note

• Fourteen Points

  • League of Nations

    • Irreconcilables

      • Henry Cabot Lodge

• Treaty of Versailles

Roaring 20’s (1920-1929)

• Warren G. Harding - “Return to Normalcy”

• Calvin Coolidge

• Teapot Dome Scandal

• Prohibition

  • 18th Amendment

  • Volstead Act

• Flappers

• 19th Amendment (women’s suffrage)

• Red Scare

  • Palmer Raids

  • Sacco & Vanzetti

• Immigration Act

• Scopes Monkey Trial

• Lost Generation

Great Depression (1929-1941)

• Herbert Hoover

• Franklin D. Roosevelt

• Black Tuesday (stock market crash)

• Reconstruction Finance Corporation

• Hoovervilles

• Bonus Army

• New Deal

  • Hundred Days

  • Keynesian Economics

  • Alphabet soup agencies

    • Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

    • National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA/NRA)

    • Works Project Administration (WPA)

    • Public Works Administration (PWA)

    • Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

    • Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

    • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

    • Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

    • Social Security

• Dust Bowl

  • The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

World War II (1939-1945)

• Franklin D. Roosevelt

• Harry S. Truman

• Allied Powers vs. Axis Powers

• Munich Conference

  • Appeasement

• Holocaust

• “Cash and carry”

• Lend-lease

• Atlantic Charter

• Pearl Harbor

• War Production Board

• Rosie the Riveter

• D-Day

• Manhattan Project

  • Hiroshima & Nagasaki

• Japanese Internment (Executive Order 9066)

• Executive Order 9981

• Nuremberg Trials

• Potsdam Conference

Cold War (1945-1989)

• Harry S. Truman

• Dwight D. Eisenhower

• John F. Kennedy

• Lyndon B. Johnson

• Richard Nixon

• Gerald Ford

• Jimmy Carter

• Ronald Reagan

• George H.W. Bush

• Yalta Conference

• Iron Curtain

• Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

• Truman Doctrine

  • Containment

• Marshall Plan

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

• Warsaw Pact

• Berlin Airlift

• Korean War

  • 38th Parallel (split Korea)

  • Douglas MacArthur

• Suez Crisis

• Eisenhower Doctrine

• U-2 Incident

• Space Race

  • Sputnik

    • National Defense Education Act

• Second Red Scare

  • Julius & Ethel Rosenberg

  • McCarthyism

• Taft-Hartley Act

• Cuban Missile Crisis

• Bay of Pigs

• Brinkmanship

• Détente

• SALT I

• SALT II

Postwar Boom (1946-1959)

• Harry S. Truman

• Dwight D. Eisenhower

• Fair Deal

• Baby boom

• “White flight”

Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968)

• Dwight D. Eisenhower

• John F. Kennedy

• Lyndon B. Johnson

• Warren Court

  • Brown v. Board of Education

• 24th Amendment

• Voting Rights Act

• Montgomery Bus Boycott

  • Rosa Parks

• Little Rock 9

• Martin Luther King

• Malcolm X

• Sit-ins

• Freedom Rides

• March on Washington

  • I Have a Dream Speech

• Civil Rights Act

• SCLC

  • Selma March

  • Bloody Sunday

• CORE

• SNCC

• Black Panthers

  • Black Power

Vietnam War (1954-1975)

• Dwight D. Eisenhower

• John F. Kennedy

• Lyndon B. Johnson

• Richard Nixon

• Dien Bien Phu

• Geneva Accords

• Domino Theory

• Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

• Tet Offensive

• Pentagon Papers

• Vietnamization

• My Lai Massacre

• Invasion of Cambodia

• Paris Peace Accords

Era of Social Change (1960-1975)

• John F. Kennedy

• Lyndon B. Johnson

• Richard Nixon

• Peace Corps

• Great Society

  • War on Poverty

  • Medicare/Medicaid

• Counterculture

  • Hippies

• “Silent Majority”

• Anti-war protests

  • Kent State Massacre

  • SDS (Weathermen)

• Women’s rights

  • The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan)

  • NOW

• Environment

  • Silent Spring (Rachel Carson)

  • Environmental Protection Agency

End of the 20th Century (1970s-Present)

• Richard Nixon

• Gerald Ford

• Jimmy Carter

• George H.W. Bush

• Bill Clinton

• George W. Bush

• Barack Obama

• Donald Trump

• Watergate Scandal

• OPEC oil embargo

  • Stagflation

• Camp David Accords

• Iran Hostage Crisis

• Reaganomics (trickle-down)

• Iran-Contra Affair

• Persian Gulf War

  • Saddam Hussein

• Contract with America

• NAFTA

• Lewinsky Scandal

  • Impeachment of Bill Clinton

• Election of 2000

• 9/11 attacks

  • al-Qaeda

    • Osama bin Laden

• “War on Terror”

  • Afghanistan War

  • Iraq War

• “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

• Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”)

American Legacy

• Literature

  • Early American Writing

    • Cotton Mather - God’s shaping of events in MBC

    • John Winthrop - City Upon a Hill (MBC is role model)

    • Roger Winthrop - Separation of church & state

    • Jonathan Edwards - Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Great Awakening)

    • George Whitfield - Great Awakening

    • Phillis Wheatley - AA poetry

  • Revolutionary Era

    • Benjamin Franklin - Poor Richard’s Almanac (American identity)

    • Thomas Paine - Common Sense (Support for independence)

    • John Dickinson - Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (Support for independence)

  • 19th Century

    • Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Slavery & abolition)

    • Washington Irving - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (American short stories)

    • James Fenimore Cooper - Leatherstocking Tales (Frontier life)

    • Edgar Allen Poe - The Pit and the Pendulum (Dark side of US society)

    • Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self Reliance (Transcendentalism)

    • Henry David Thoreau - Walden (Transcendentalism)

    • Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass (Celebration of life & humanity)

    • Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mississippi life)

    • Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady (Old World vs. New World)

  • Early 20th Century

    • Stephen Crane - The Red Badge of Courage (Civil War)

    • Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence (Northeastern elite)

    • Upton Sinclair - The Jungle (Corruption in meat-packing industry)

    • Ida Tarbell - The History of the Standard Oil Company (Corruption in S. Oil)

    • William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury (Complexities of Southern life)

    • Robert Frost - Poetry about nature

  • Lost Generation

    • Gertrude Stein - Lesbian sexuality

    • F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (Indulgence of Jazz Age)

    • Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea (Strong male characters)

  • Harlem Renaissance

    • Langston Hughes - Experiences of blacks

  • Great Depression

    • John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath (Dust Bowl farmers)

  • Beat Generation

    • Jack Kerouac - On The Road (Counterculture)

    • Allen Ginsburg - Counterculture

  • Cold War

    • J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye (Youth rebellion)

    • Joseph Heller - Catch-22 (Satirized Cold War)