AP Seminar: April 24-The Exam!

Hello! It has been a busy few weeks in AP Seminar but we have almost completed all of the Individual Multimedia Presentations.  I hope your students have shared their presentations with you; they have a lot to be proud of with these!!  

Once our presentations are complete will move onto our final task:  preparation for the end of course exam.  Students have been given some review materials on Google Classroom and should be spending a little time at home reviewing those and preparing questions for when we begin our work in class. We will spend Thursday-Tuesday reviewing and practicing.

I will also be running an optional after-school full length practice session after school on Monday, May 1. This will be for practice only, but will give students a chance to see what it feels like to write for a full two hours. Students who are also taking AP English Language may not find it necessary to sit for this extra practice, but those who have never written for two hours straight may find it beneficial.

The test is divided into two parts and students have been practicing the skills it tests all year long. The first part (30 minutes) asks them to read an article and answer three short answer questions about it.  They need to identify the author’s argument, explain the line of reasoning, and evaluate the effectiveness of the evidence. We’ve done this with pretty much every text they’ve read this year!!

In the second part of the test (90 minutes), they will be given four different articles that are all thematically related. The four articles will represent different perspectives on the theme, and students will need to develop their own argument using two of the four articles. Again, this is a skill they’ve done often. They just did it with their IWAs.  

The biggest thing you can do to help support them right now is encourage them to sleep and stay positive. These weeks of prepping for the AP tests and then taking them can be a little stressful around here; if they are well-rested, they’ll be in much better shape on test day.  
Thanks for reading and please let me know if you have any questions!