<p>As an AP teacher who is interested in improving an AP program, I just wanted to get input from those of you who have completed at least one AP course on what you believe makes a good AP course/program. More specifically, what do you think caused you to be successful on the AP exam?</p>
<p>With your reply, could you state what AP courses you have taken and your exam score. </p>
<p>Thanks ahead of time!</p>
<p>Taken:
AP Bio-5
AP U.S History-5
AP English. Lang-5
AP Calculus AB-4
AP Psychology-4</p>
<p>I really think it was an emphasis on practice tests and quality reading. By doing the practice tests, you find out the structure and exactly what kind of questions might be on the AP Test. By scoring the tests, you can find your weak areas. Also, the tests are very consistent each year with what scores you get. I.E if you get a 5 one year on AP European History, you would very likely have gotten a 5 on last years AP Euro. test.</p>
<p>My 5's (In those I had classes for)
AP Calc AB
AP Calc BC
AP Chem
AP Micro
AP Stats
AP Physics B</p>
<p>Maybe it's my natural affinity for maths and sciences, but these classes also provided consistent reinforcement of the material, and made sure we didn't just absorb everything for a test and then forget about it later. Doing old free response/multiple choice questions work as well. Cumulative tests could keep students on their toes.</p>
<p>Also, giving busy work is not recommended. We students tend to get tired of busy work, because it changes our focus in class to mainly getting the work done instead of caring about whether we learned the material or not.</p>
<p>Teacher also plays a huge part, especially when communicating the information to others. Incompetent teachers will subject students to more stress because they are forcing students to learn the material on their own to even have a chance of passing.</p>
<p>World History - 4
Chemistry - 5
Stats - 5
US History - 5
Government - 5
Physics C - 5
Macro - 5
Biology - 5
Calculus BC - 5</p>
<p>History, Biology, Macro, and Government were classes that benefitted from lots of assigned reading (from both the text and supplemental materials), so that the teacher could review and consolidate the reading material or cover more difficult concepts in class. In addition to that, planned or surprise reading quizzes forced us to actually learn the material, not just read it. </p>
<p>For Chem, Physics, Calculus, and Stats, daily or weekly problem sets helped us to learn how to apply the concepts and theories we learned in class. WebAssign was a useful tool. For all the sciences, regular labs were highly beneficial- especially since the AP Exams tend to ask Free Responses about standard lab procedures or lab applications. It makes it a lot easier to remember the process if you've actually done it, and labs make Physics more intuitive as well. </p>
<p>For all classes, regularly practicing Multiple Choice and Free Responses and grading them according to the AP rubric will definitely help. Let students know how the grading system works, because partial credit is the only reason I got these scores. It also helps to wrap up the curriculum a couple of weeks before the AP exam to leave time for in class review. And I agree with It'sGr82BeAGator- busy work always seemed like a waste of time.</p>
<p>And of course, a knowledgeable, experienced, and helpful teacher will do wonders. My most helpful teachers had flexible tutoring hours, lots of practice materials from many sources, and even held official review sessions in the spring.</p>
<p>Art History - 5
Computer Science A - 5
English Language - 5
Psychology - 5
US History - 5</p>
<p>Only one of my classes prepared me in a way that made me feel ready for the exam without pursuing any external source of study, and that was my US History class. I had an excellent, albeit strict teacher who gave the most rigorous course I had ever taken in my life. I'm in my senior year now, and none of my classes are half as hard.</p>
<p>We read The American Pageant, and usually read two chapters a week (and this is on 4-period a day block scheduling, so we only saw the teacher every other day). Over each chapter we had a study sheet to review what we read (these were initially taken and graded - very harshly - but the teacher stopped taking them up soon), and these were usually very complex questions requiring several sentences to answer...and we had usually about 70 on average per chapter (well into three digits in the later chapters, which we wound up having to chain-read and lose sleep over to get it all in before the AP test). </p>
<p>After the night we were assigned to read and answer study guide questions to another chapter, we had a quiz immediately. These were very harshly graded and very few people got consistent As on them. Some of the quizzes toward the middle of the year required a short essay. Along with about twenty other questions, all due in about ten minutes after the bell rings to begin class.</p>
<p>As for what we did with the majority of the class time itself, the teacher would take the quizzes up and then any homework, and then immediately begin an hour-long verbal quiz to the class (not graded, just review) over the chapter we had just read. Then we usually got some homework and the teacher would go over it a little and then we would have a little bit of time sometimes at the end of the period to get started on it. If we didn't have a new chapter to read the night before, we would do all sorts of review activities.</p>
<p>Periodically, the teacher would assign us a very complex project (these were the sources of some of my lowest grades), usually involving some mixture of poster boards and origami, focusing on a specific event in US History (this could be interchangeable with any sort of crucial topic for a different course). We had around five of these total during the whole year.</p>
<p>A few weeks before the test the teacher started printing out detailed review guides attacking the subject from several different angles...I can honestly say these probably guaranteed my 5. A thorough review before the test is absolutely vital...none of my other AP classes really did this for me, and I had to get review books.</p>
<p>That's pretty much the formula to ensuring that your hard-working students get a 5 on the test. You'll probably be the sole reason several students are ready to die of sleep deprivation, but it's pretty much the only way to make it stick.</p>
<p>The purpose of an AP class is to present introductory college material to students. Keeping this in mind, most good teachers I know model their own class after an equivalent college course. Essentially, they make the course rigorous and fast paced.</p>
<p>For students to succeed well on the AP itself, I believe it is highly necessary to cover ALL yes... ALL the material on the exam by March. From my observations, this gives students time during April to essentially review for the AP.</p>
<p>Concerning homework and projects, the quantity you give out really depends on the subject being taught. For instance, science and math courses should be weekly if not daily in order to reinforce learned concepts well. In addition, finals should be modeled after the AP test format itself. This helps students get acquainted with the format.</p>
<p>Ultimately, in order for AP classes to be successful, the teacher has to put all the time and effort to make it a success...</p>
<p>my $0.02</p>
<p>This is great guys. Thanks!</p>
<p>Calc AB - 5
Chem - 5</p>
<p>For AP chem, my teacher boasted at the beginning of the year that she had never had anyone score below a 3 on the AP test. The majority of my class got 5's, virtually the rest got 4's and only a couple were 3's.</p>
<p>We didn't know it at the time, but we found out later the reason why the AP test seemed so easy was that all year our tests were only former AP test questions, SAT II, and chem GRE test questions. So all year we were practicing for the test without knowing it as part of our grade. Our teacher also would give us 0.25 points back per question missed if we corrected our tests explaining why the correct answer was correct and the other ones were wrong. It helped our understanding of the material doing that.</p>
<p>Calc AB - 5
Chem - 5
Euro - 5</p>
<p>Basically at our school, all tests are modeled very similarly to AP exams. (There are some exceptions.) Basically all teachers gave a Mock AP in April, and we crammed old AP exam problems down our throat through the month of April in Calc. For the others, the mock AP helped also in organizing my thoughts and recalling some of the rusty stuff. From the mock AP in mid-late Apr to the AP exam, I didn't really study a lot. </p>
<p>So yeah, mock AP (that counts for a grade to provide impetus for studying) really helps, IMO. Structuring tests similarly (in terms of format and questions), is also good practice.</p>
<p>For how the teachers taught us the stuff, Calc/Chem involved daily lectures and stuff, there were a lot of labs in Chem. Euro was reading but my teacher was REALLY good at explaining cause/effect and getting the big picture. He was also instrumental at teaching us how to construct a good thesis and reiterating answering the question addressed in the prompt.</p>
<p>Regarding specifics:</p>
<p>Calc - lecture, teacher gave us time to work on problems and ask questions, quiz each Friday. This was the one class where tests were not structured as AP exams... until April when we did a sweeping comprehensive review and quizzes every few days with questions from old AP exams.</p>
<p>Chem - lecture most of period, or lab. Daily quiz every few days to reinforce concepts. Most everybody only studied for the midterms/finals which were actually quite challenging.</p>
<p>Euro - reading assigned, teacher goes over stuff in class, open-note quizzes some days to make sure we're reading, FRQ, DBQ, or MC exam about every week.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>AP Bio - 5</p>
<p>I can't honestly say what makes a good AP course, because my teacher was horrible... He only covered 16 chapters out of 51 chapters, never explained anything, did not answer questions, and frequently contradicted himself. To study, I read the whole textbook cover to cover during April. I read over one chapter a day, so I had several weeks before the AP to study some more. Even though I ended up getting a 5, I could have understood it a lot better with a teacher who actually went over the material. I also did several practice tests, which was really helpful. In addition, it would be really good to do labs. We only did 2 labs the whole year (none of which were the AP labs), so I had a harder time with learning the 12 AP labs for the test compared to the other class, which actually did labs frequently and had a tough teacher who went over most of the material.</p>
<p>AP Computer Science A - 5
AP Computer Science AB - 5
AP Chemistry - 5
AP US History - 5</p>
<p>What really helped me get those scores was that my teachers had sufficient knowledge of the topics they were teaching, and were also familiar with the AP syllabus. All of my teachers had many years of experience teaching the classes, and my computer science teacher is also an AP grader. Most importantly, at the start of the year, all of my teachers firmly stated that they believed they could get all the students in their class to achieve high scores. </p>
<p>Good teachers really make a difference, because I go to an international school outside of the US, have never lived there my entire life, yet was able to get a 5 on APUSH.</p>