AP Literature: Character Layers Analysis Activity

We are all constantly practicing the skill of character analysis. I remind my often insecure students of this fact before we dive into a difficult text. We are constantly asking ourselves questions like—Why did I just say that to my mom? What motivated my friend to get back with her jerk boyfriend?...

Top 5 Takeaways From the 2023 AP® Language Exam

While the 2023 AP English Language and Composition exam represents year 4 of assessment using the analytic scoring guide and year 3 of the changes to the multiple choice section, for me personally, it truly felt like the 22-23 school year was the very first “normal” instructional year since the...

AP® Language: Vocab Acquisition Template

This lesson provides strategies for predicting meaning, previewing texts, and making inferences about word meaning and vocabulary. Students will be able to visualize keywords and descriptions in texts and read around words and lines to increase their understanding of new terms. This lesson can be...

AP® Language: Exploring Contemporary Issues

In this lesson, students are asked to consider how they are situated within the world around them–locally, nationally, and globally. Students will identify contemporary issues, being sure to define them as controversial contemporary issues, happening locally, nationally, and globally. Students will...

AP® Language: Connect an Anchor Text to the Art of Banksy

This lesson introduces students to Bansky’s graffiti art, its impact on pop culture, its reflection of different societal, cultural, and political values, and the mystery behind the man who creates the art (and how this anonymity might engage us in his art and his story further). Students are...

AP Language: Analyzing Anti-War Protest Songs

This lesson is designed to be a supplement for fiction or nonfiction anchor texts used in the classroom. This lesson would be appropriate for any text-pairings with the following thematic ideas: war, politics, music/musician, the influence of culture on artistic meaning, free speech, community,...

AP® Lang: Places & Spaces

For this activity, a place is considered to be a geographical location, whereas a space might be an abstract state of being. Students will review methods of development and practice using definition, compare-contrast, definition, and description to define their place or space, noting how their...

Mediums for AP® Lang

In this activity, students will read and reflect on the different types of writing they might encounter on the AP^® Language & Composition Exam. First, they will match the mode/medium of writing to a definition and to how this might look at the AP Lang Exam. From there, students will do a...

AP® Lang: Understanding a Line of Reasoning

Guide students through an engaging activity that stresses the importance of the thesis & topic sentences to structure the line of reasoning. Students will articulate their understanding of the essential components of a rhetorical analysis essay, specifically composition structures like thesis,...

Author Q&A: Dr. Brandon Abdon