š¶ Whoa, we’re halfway there!
The fall semester is D.O.N.E (yay!) and whether it’s been smooth sailing or you feel like you’ve been living on prayer, it can be helpful to reflect on this semester before the spring semester begins. For those on a semester block schedule, if you’re done with your course rather than at a halfway point, it can still help to reflect so you can plan for next year (or for a new section of the course in the spring.)
Reflect on the Writing Skills
You may not have covered all 3 AP Lang FRQs at this point in the year, but it is a good idea to reflect on which skills students have become proficient in or even mastered versus the skills that need to be revisited or retaught.
For me, the easiest way to do this is with a checklist of the general concepts I want my students to learn and reinforce throughout the year.
Click here for a copy of the checklist. Feel free to adapt it to your needs.
It’s important to remember that many of these skills take time to learn. So, while I feel pretty confident that my students know how to write a defensible thesis statement, I know we will need to continue to work on commentary. Documenting this in the form of a checklist helps me realize how much progress we’ve made in the fall semester, and it helps remind me about the skills we need to revisit or introduce in the spring.
Reflect on the Multiple Choice Skills
I typically use AP Classroom for the progress checks and the full-length tests. Since the data is available on that platform, I don’t necessarily add these skills to my checklist (though you totally could.) I do, however, keep track of ACT skills, as this is the state test for juniors in my state.
In the fall semester, we reviewed the grammar skills, especially punctuation. In addition to assessing whether or not students understood these concepts in the form of multiple choice questions, I also had them work on varying their syntax in their writing.
Seeing students learn to use dashes and colons correctly in their essays makes my teacher heart happy!
Reflect on Lessons and Units
I swear there’s a point in every school year where I come across a new text I want to add to one of my classes. I’ve learned to write these ideas down as part of the checklist because otherwise I will not remember them later.
I also like to keep track of which activities worked well (my future self usually thanks me for this.)
Speaking of lessons, I know you’re busy trying to plan for the holidays and keep up with the ever-growing to-do list that comes with being an AP Lang teacher. Hopefully, I can take a little something off your plate.
I will be hosting a 3-day video training from January 10-13, 2022.Ā As part of this free training, I’ll be emailing you 3 engaging rhetorical analysis activities that you can add to your curriculum for next semester.
What’s in the training?
Day 1:Ā Carousel Annotations (get your students moving and collaborating to identify choices, purpose, and more!)
Day 2:Ā Unscramble the Passage (a relatively low-prep activity to introduce or reinforce line of reasoning–I’ll even send you a sample passage so all you have to do it print, cut, and you’re ready to go.)
Day 3:Ā Secret Speech (an independent rhetorical analysis project)
Day 4:Ā Bonus video!
Click here to sign up for the video training, and be sure to check your inbox starting January 10th!
