<p>I have noticed that some kids here take 3-6 AP classes in one year. Soooo... I wondered...</p>
<p>Do these kids (or your kids) go to schools that get a "head start" on AP classes by assigning homework/reading in the summer? </p>
<p>My kids' school assigns 2 -3 books to read in the summer to read for their honors English; there is a several page form to fill out for each book. AP English assigns more books. I was wondering if the AP classes in other subjects give summer homework at your kids' schools.</p>
<p>At our school they read 2-3 books for history and 2-3 books for English. They would have the same thing in an honors class - just different selections so it's not really more work. D never took AP math or science so cannot respond to that.</p>
<p>I'm a student not a parent, but at my school we usually have to teach ourselves the first few chapters of an AP science class in the summer and be prepared for a test over the material the first week of school. Otherwise we would have trouble finishing the course material before the exams. AP English assigns one book more than honors English.</p>
<p>The kids who take more than 3 AP classes are likely on a block schedule. My S's school did not assign summer reading except for incoming 9th graders, and then no one spent any time discussing those readings.</p>
<p>my son is a senoir who took 3 ap's in 10th & 4 in 11th & took 6 AP exams total. They have a block schedule. Only English honors & AP & AP history (eur & US) were they sent some summer reading. And in these subjects they only had small quizzes. No AP Math (Calc ab, bc, Stats) Or AP Chem & Physics material was covered or assigned in summer. In these subjects he did have to read (esp Chem & Phy a lot on his own from the textbook</p>
<p>Our kids had pretty much the same....3 AP's jr. year, 4 sr. year....no block scheduling, though. Summer reading of 2-3 books in English and History courses, nothing for science and math, AP Portfolio had 3-4 assignments in different media over the summer.</p>
<p>We start in September so we had to read a few chapters for AP US history and prepare essay outlines for a few questions. AP Chemistry was just reviewing some background chemistry information, for english we had to read 3 books and write a 1 page response paper and for Biology, it was to read a bunch of chapters and take notes. It was pretty managable overall, most people just did them in the week before school started.</p>
<p>My D took 5 APs as a junior and 6 APs as a senior; we do not however have block scheduling. The most summer work was in APUSHistory and AP English, where there was note-taking and annotation required. In the AP sciences, there was some reading, and nothing in the AP calcs.</p>
<p>Students could take as many AP classes as they wanted so long as they met the prerequisites. I'm not sure why a school would restrict how many APs a student takes based on how much summer work is assigned.</p>
<p>What is the total # of APs offered by your school anyway?</p>
<p>The school offers about 10 AP classes (plus or minus 1 or 2). Because the school doesn't require much summer homework for those classes, I think that the school thinks that kids will not be able to "keep up" if they take more than 2 or 3 AP classes a year.</p>
<p>i'm a student, but i think AP classes are overrated in terms of difficulty.
My school thinks the same, that 2 or 3 classes are enough, above will be very hard for the students. But having taken 2 this year i'll say i'm totally disappointed, the classes are very easy. just a bit more hw thats all.</p>
<p>i'm sure if my school didnt overate n scare us with its difffculty, i would've taken more ap classes..</p>
<p>That's a strange philosophy for your school, jlauer. The summer work does not really make a dent in the AP curriculum. Maybe a week's worth of what would actually be covered in school? I felt that the summer work was mostly to get the student in gear, get them thinking about the material, and understanding what the class will be about, and basically brain fitness over the summer. What really matters is the amount of independent work that one has to do in each class once school begins.</p>
<p>Like I said, my D did 11 APs, minimal summer work, and did not really get stressed out durung the school year. She never stayed up past 11:00 p.m. doing schoolwork.</p>
<p>At our school all AP's have summer work except math classes. It's mostly reading the textbooks (which are issued at the end of the previous school year) and answering a lot of questions on the reading. The Psyc. class last year had a book to read over the summer and they were tested on it the first week of school/</p>
<p>Every student at our school has summer reading for English no matter what level you take (ap,honors, regular) and there is usually a test and/or project to be completed during the first month of school.</p>
<p>I like the idea of issuing textbooks at the end of the previous school year. </p>
<p>How many chapters do the kids have to read over the summer?</p>
<p>I think that our S's AP Euro teacher gave the kids tooooo much homework last fall because she didn't have do anything (except read a TOTALLY unrelated book) during the summer. Therefore, in order to get thru the book, she had to go at "break neck" speed. If the kids had read 2 or 3 chapters during the summer, the "urgency" would have lessened.</p>
<p>Our school starts well after labor day, so the first three+ chapters are required reading of nearly every text to prepare for a test on those chapters in the first week of class. English Lit requires reading 2-3 novels from a list of 20+, with a compare/contrast essay due first week of class. The only AP our school offers that does not have required summer reading is Stat. Texts for AP classes are distributed the prior spring.</p>
<p>High achieving Jr & Sr students takes ~3-4 AP's per year, on an alternating block - classes every other day for 9 months. School offers ~15 AP courses, but the curriculum design essentially precludes taking them befor Jr year -- Art History, Music Theory & Stat are the only ones available to Sophomores, with the latter two having prereqs. i.e, completion of H-Alg II prior to AP Stat.</p>
<p>At our school, any student can petition for an AP class without a teacher recommendation, as long as he or she has met the prerequisites. Consequently, the AP English and History teachers unapologetically pile on the summer work- partially to weed out the kids who are unprepared for the greater workload an AP class requires, and partially because our school year doesn't start until early September, so our kids need the extra work to be prepared for the AP tests in May. There's also a summer reading requirement for honors AND regular English classes from grades 1-12 throughout the district (I think it's two required books and a third of the student's choice). </p>
<p>The "weeding out" process works - my sophomore daughter signed up for AP Euro last spring, then took one look at the summer reading and essay requirements and decided she'd rather take world history (which required no summer homework) instead.</p>
<p>i'm a student and the only summer AP homework was to read 1 chapter in a book by stephen ambrose for APUSH and write about what i thought about the chapter. for the other 4 that i've taken so far there hasn't been any summer homework, and we aren't on a block schedule.</p>
<p>jlauer:
Can't remember exactly but seems like it was about 3 chapters for U.S. History but more (maybe 5 or so) for Biology. Environmental Sci. was not out of a book per se, it involved finding current event type articles and answering questions/summarizing. English was 2 books... Psyc. 1 book</p>
<p>oh, forgot to say that the assigments were given out with the textbooks in the spring. So the kids did have all summer to work on it though my S has always been the wait til the eleventh hour type.</p>
<p>AP English- We had to read 5 books (one free choice) and write a journal for each book (about 6 entries per book)</p>
<p>AP Government- Survey 5 people about their involvement in the government and write a paper about our results and conclusions we can draw from our results</p>
<p>AP Chem- a packet that reviewed all the chemistry concepts we would need to know right away. Unlike the others it wasn't for a grade, but with only 2 weeks to review a year worth of information, you would be screwed over if you didn't do it</p>