Praxis 5004 cheat sheet

Primary sources are created during the period studied by participants or witnesses; secondary sources interpret or synthesize primary evidence after the fact.

The historical-thinking standards are chronological thinking, historical comprehension, historical analysis and interpretation, historical research, and historical issues-analysis and decision-making.

Social studies draws on history, geography, civics and government, economics, and the behavioral sciences (anthropology, psychology, sociology).

Sourcing heuristic: identify author, date, audience, purpose, and point of view before accepting a document's claim.

Corroboration requires agreement across independent sources; a single source, however vivid, cannot by itself establish a fact.

Contextualization judges a source by the norms and conditions of its own era; judging the past by present standards is presentism.

Cause-and-effect analysis separates immediate triggers from underlying long-term conditions, and correlation is not causation.

The five themes of geography are location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and region.

Large-scale maps show small areas in high detail; small-scale maps show large areas with less detail.

The Declaration of Independence was adopted July 4, 1776; the Constitution was drafted in 1787, ratified in 1788, and the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791.

The Civil War lasted 1861-1865; the Emancipation Proclamation (effective January 1, 1863) applied to Confederate-held territory, and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery nationwide.

Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877; Jim Crow segregation was later upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

The Progressive Era (about 1890-1920) produced the initiative, referendum, and recall, direct election of senators (17th Amendment, 1913), and women's suffrage (19th Amendment, 1920).

The Great Depression began with the 1929 stock market crash; the New Deal (1933-1939) created Social Security, the FDIC, the SEC, and large public works programs.

The United States entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; the war ended in 1945 with V-E Day in May and V-J Day in September.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned Plessy; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in public accommodations and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enforced Black suffrage.

Cold War containment shaped the Truman Doctrine (1947), Marshall Plan (1948), NATO (1949), Korean War (1950-1953), and Vietnam escalation after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

The Neolithic (Agricultural) Revolution began around 10,000 BCE; the earliest civilizations arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and the Yellow River valley.

Classical markers: Athenian democracy (508 BCE), Roman Republic (509 BCE), Roman Empire (27 BCE), and the fall of the western Roman Empire (476 CE).

The Silk Roads and Indian Ocean networks moved goods, technologies, and religions such as Buddhism and Islam across Afro-Eurasia before 1500.

The Columbian Exchange began in 1492, carrying maize, potatoes, and tobacco eastward and wheat, horses, and smallpox westward.

The Protestant Reformation began with Luther's Ninety-Five Theses in 1517; the printing press (about 1450) accelerated its spread.

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain around 1750 with coal, steam power, and textile factories, later spreading to continental Europe, the United States, and Japan.

World War I (1914-1918) was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; the Treaty of Versailles (1919) imposed reparations and territorial losses on Germany.

World War II (1939-1945) included the Holocaust and ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the United Nations was founded in 1945.

Decolonization after 1945 created dozens of new states in Asia and Africa; the Berlin Wall (1961-1989) symbolized the Cold War division of Europe.

Constitutional articles: I legislative, II executive, III judicial, IV relations among states, V amendment process, VI supremacy clause, VII ratification.

Amendments are proposed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress (or a national convention) and ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Expressed powers belong to the federal government, reserved powers to the states under the Tenth Amendment, and concurrent powers such as taxation are shared.

Checks and balances include the presidential veto, Senate advice and consent on treaties and appointments, impeachment and removal, and judicial review.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) established judicial review; McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) upheld implied powers and federal immunity from state taxation.

The First Amendment protects speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition; the Fourteenth Amendment applies most Bill of Rights guarantees to the states.

The Electoral College has 538 electors (House seats plus Senate seats plus three for the District of Columbia); 270 electoral votes are needed to win.

Senate cloture requires 60 votes to end a filibuster; conference committees reconcile House and Senate versions of a bill before final passage.

House seats are reapportioned after each census and fixed at 435; gerrymandering is the drawing of district lines for partisan advantage.

Latitude lines run east-west and measure distance north or south of the equator (0 degrees); longitude lines run north-south and measure distance east or west of the prime meridian (0 degrees).

Every map projection distorts: Mercator preserves direction and local shape but inflates high-latitude area; equal-area projections preserve area but distort shape; Robinson is a compromise.

Site is a place's physical setting (terrain, water access, climate); situation is its position relative to other places and routes.

Demographic transition stages: high birth and high death rates, then falling death rates with high birth rates, then falling birth rates, then low birth and low death rates.

Push factors drive migrants away (war, famine, persecution); pull factors attract them (jobs, safety, political freedom).

Plate boundaries are divergent (spreading ridges), convergent (subduction, mountain building), and transform (strike-slip faults).

Population density equals total population divided by land area; physiological density instead divides population by arable land.

Climate is long-term average weather, while the Koppen system classifies climates by temperature and precipitation patterns.

Scarcity forces choice; the opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the next-best alternative forgone.

Demand shifts with income, tastes, prices of substitutes and complements, and expectations; a change in the good's own price moves along the curve instead.

A price ceiling set below equilibrium causes a shortage; a price floor set above equilibrium causes a surplus.

GDP = C + I + G + (X - M); real GDP is adjusted for inflation with a price index, nominal GDP is not.

Unemployment types: frictional (job search), structural (skills mismatch), and cyclical (recession); the natural rate excludes cyclical unemployment.

The money multiplier equals 1 divided by the reserve requirement ratio; the central bank's main tools are open market operations, the discount rate, and reserve requirements.

Fiscal policy (spending and taxation) is set by Congress and the president; monetary policy (money supply and interest rates) is set by the central bank.

Comparative advantage rests on lower opportunity cost, not lower absolute cost, and is the basis for gains from specialization and trade.

The CPI prices a fixed market basket; inflation is a sustained rise in the general price level that reduces purchasing power.