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Exam reviews that worked for my students with Janet Mann

Kathy Hays

It’s basically the middle of March with the AP test only 2 months away! YIKES! I am beginning to think REVIEW! Since this will only be the second year that I am teaching the comprehensive course, as I had the course assigned in 2019 and 2020—Pandemic years; I am still grappling with the best way to do a comprehensive review.

I tried two things last year, with one falling flat and the other a success. The one that fell flat was a group assignment “shower curtain” of the course time periods. My students said it did not help them because they only focused on a small portion and viewing the results of other groups was of no help.

On the other hand, the “May Madness” brackets for who was the most important historical figure resonated well. Initially each student was assigned to create a social media page for one figure. Once finished, they linked their work by name of the historical figure to a class Google Doc. Students were then expected to view the slides and decide on their top 4 choices. I used a Google Form for students to indicate which four figure we would discuss in a Socratic Seminar. We then held a Socratic Seminar to decide on our MVP. This took about three 55-minute periods. I found this activity to be engaging, inclusive, and active!

Another process that students said really helped were my daily picture warmups. Here is an example. I did this every day for three weeks; students said that some of the pictures and graphics I used showed up on the test!

  • What do you all use to help students do a comprehensive review?
  • Do you have practice SAQs, DBQs and LEQs?
  • What activities have the most efficacy for your students as you review for the AP exam?
Parents

  • Hi everyone!  I'll throw out another suggestion. If you have access to College Board's AP Central site, it's a GOLD MINE.  It's worth taking an hour and getting familiar with it, because it finally has hundreds of AP MCQs with explanations of the answer choices that you can assign students practice/formative/homework questions ... AND AND there are questions behind a password-protected wall so you can use them to write tests.  This is what I used for content review over the last two years.  Then I brought documents in every day for a starting in April and had them use a sourcing graphic organizer.  Students came back after the exam and said all the doc work was key -- since 3/4 or more of the exam is now doc. based.  Document Sourcing Chart

  • in reply to Ane Lintvedt

    Thanks for the suggestion, Ane, I like using AP Central as well for their awesome resources! I like your document sourcing chart. How much time do you give them to complete that? Is it a full class activity where they do that chart for several docs or is it done as more of a Do Now/partial class assignment? 

  • in reply to Marcella Sykucki

    I'm just getting them used to the Sourcing charts.  We spent a 70 min. period sourcing the 2003 DBQ on Indentured Servitude just doing the sourcing (first 3 columns) as a group; then another period "parsing the prompt" (what the heck do I have to have in my answer) and then reading the docs and filling in the last column of how each doc answers the question that was asked.

    Mostly I will bring in one or two docs a day, and give them 15 min. to start, then ratchet down the time as they get used to doing it. And I pillage documents from the AP site! 

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  • in reply to Marcella Sykucki

    I'm just getting them used to the Sourcing charts.  We spent a 70 min. period sourcing the 2003 DBQ on Indentured Servitude just doing the sourcing (first 3 columns) as a group; then another period "parsing the prompt" (what the heck do I have to have in my answer) and then reading the docs and filling in the last column of how each doc answers the question that was asked.

    Mostly I will bring in one or two docs a day, and give them 15 min. to start, then ratchet down the time as they get used to doing it. And I pillage documents from the AP site! 

Children
  • in reply to Ane Lintvedt

    Thanks Ane! I like how you mentioned the part about "parsing the prompt". I actually had a student come to me today asking me questions about a prompt. They knew all the information about the topic of the prompt but the language was tripping her up. I think I'm going to add to my "drills" some more practice of understanding prompts. I was thinking of giving them 3-5 minutes to look at the prompt and jot down in their own words what it means. Does anyone else do something similar to this?   

  • in reply to Marcella Sykucki

    On the note of quick drills, I like the "Evidence or it didn't happen" format. Students often find that being able to spontaneously pull evidence from different time periods is tough - it's so much easier throughout the course when our reviews and writing tasks ask them to draw on information fresh in their minds. 

    If you don't want to do this on hard copy, I think PearDeck or small whiteboards would be solid approaches too. 

  • in reply to Anne Koschmider

    This is very similar to how I do my drills but I like this format better than what I use. How long do you give them to do this? Is it the whole document or do you have them only do certain parts?

  • in reply to Marcella Sykucki

     I've done it both ways, just depending on the class time available for review. 

    If we are doing the full document, I would give students about 10 minutes to filling what they can independently, 5-10 minutes to work with a partner or small group to add to their responses, and another 5-10 minutes to consult notes to fill in gaps as needed. 

    If I'm looking for a shorter time, I would either post topics around the room and have students do some carousel brainstorming or respond to prompts on individual whiteboards, followed by a class discussion.