AP Language: Nov. 28-Dec.2

This is an important week in AP Language as we are finishing up our third major writing piece: argumentative essays. Students have been drafting and revising over the past two weeks and should be spending this week putting final touches on those essays. Today (Monday), Tuesday and Thursday, we will dedicate the whole class period to writing conferences, revision and final drafts. Students should come to class prepared with specific questions about their drafts.

Students wanting even more feedback should plan to attend Academic Advisory on Wednesday when I will have 10-15 former students available to help with revision. I will also be available at school Tuesday evening from 6pm-8pm in my classroom. The high school will be having its open house for prospective students; my room will be open for new parents to stop by and see a writer’s workshop in action. I’d love to have some students come get some help during that time tomorrow night.

In addition to argumentative essays, this week is also the last opportunity for students to turn in revised drafts of their rhetorical analysis essays. For students who tackled the revision opportunity early in the month, this deadline is not a challenge; for others, unfortunately, they waited until this week to take advantage of the revision opportunity and are now trying to juggle two essays at once. As much as I hate to see them under pressure, I’m hoping you can (gently!) help me remind them that they’ve done this to themselves!! Good writing takes time and planning; both of these essays have been in their hands since the beginning of the month. If they planned poorly this time, I hope they learn better time management for the next essay.

Wednesday and Friday this week we will turn our attention to multiple choice practice. Students are struggling with the sophisticated nature of the AP Language multiple choice questions. They are complicated, layered questions about challenging texts. We will dissect some of the questions on Wednesday and work on reading strategies to help them tackle those questions more successfully. Friday they will take a second MC assessment with the hopes of replacing their current MC score in MiStar.

I hope you have a great week!! Please let me know if you have any questions.

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