Is your middle or high schooler ready to study world history?
If you answer is yes, let me suggest the following award winning curriculum to you:
World History Detective: Ancient and Medieval Civilizations by John De Gree published by The Critical Thinking Co.
[Disclaimer: We do not receive any compensation for this review nor are members of the publisher’s affiliate program.]
Who Is World History Detective for?
Any student between 6 to 12+ grades will benefit from learning from this book. Do not let the seemingly simple and short lessons deter you from having your high schooler gain their knowledge from this curriculum. They will learn and they will enjoy it.
Why Did We Choose This History Curriculum?
After completing U.S. History Detective in the 8th grade, we decided to turn to the same publisher for the world history in the 10th grade. The U.S. History Detective prepared my 14-year-old for his first college CLEP exam (with only minimal additional work). That proved to us that the depth of information and the teaching methods presented in this curriculum were very proficient. Therefore, we purchased World History Detective.
How Is the World History Detective Structured?
- There are 74 lessons broken down into 3 sections: Ancient Civilizations, Medieval Civilizations, and Early American Civilizations.
- Each lesson includes 1-1.5 pages of text, including maps and charts, and ten review questions. Nine of these questions are either a multiple choice or require only simple written answers, one is a “Written Response Question,” which is equal to a short essay.
- The study pages include black and white maps, charts, and pictures.
- Each lesson also includes a concept map, which allows the student to see the big picture of the lesson and visualize how individual facts fit together.
- The answers to the reviews are located at the end of the book.
- You can view sample pages of this curriculum here.
What Did We Like About This Curriculum?
- The book provides short, interesting and thorough information and encourages independent studies with little input from the teacher. There are no lesson plans needed for this curriculum.
- Each sentence in the text is numbered and the review questions require a proper answer as well as the number of a sentence that best supports the answer. This encourages the student not only to read through the text but also to work with the text.
- It teaches students to distinguish between facts and opinions, evaluate evidence and arrive at a conclusion based on the facts. This is a basic foundation of critical thinking.
- The short essays help the student develop their critical thinking skills and, as an added bonus, strengthen their writing skills.
Note: I have seen reviews of this curriculum stating that the textbook is very dry and needs to be supplemented with another curriculum. It certainly was not our experience. My 15-year-old enjoyed it tremendously, considered it to be very captivating, and easy to understand. This is yet another proof that the best curriculum for one family may not be the optimum choice for another.
What Did We NOT Like About This Curriculum?
Even though the curriculum is very sequential and thorough, it misses review lessons and activities provided in the U.S. History Detective. Such reviews would be a useful addition to the textbook. We supplemented the lack of these by creating our own reviews every tenth lessons.
What Can You Do After Completing World History Detective?
This curriculum will give your student an excellent foundation for taking Western Civilization I: Ancient Near East to 1648 college CLEP exam. With only a short addition to their aquired knowledge, they will be able to pass the exam without any difficulty. [You can read detailed information about taking this CLEP exam in How to Pass Western Civilization I CLEP Exam.]
In summary, we were very pleased with the World History Detective. We were only dissapointed that The Critical Thinking Co. does not offer a curriculum for Modern World History.
