So You’re Teaching AP English Next Year? Don’t Panic. Start Here.

Congratulations—or maybe condolences? You just found out you are teaching an Advanced Placement^® (AP) English class next year. Whether it’s AP Language and Composition or AP Literature and Composition, the news likely came with a mix of excitement, dread, and the overwhelming question: What do I...

AP® English: Sophistication & Complexity Webinar

The sophistication point on the essay rubrics often meets with much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Students want to know how to write it. Teachers want to know how to teach it. Readers want to know how to reward it. Consultants and trainers want to know how to advise it. 

Pole Vaulting Your Way Through the DBQ

Teaching a young, eager, and naive student how to write a sophisticated DBQ is like teaching a similarly inexperienced athlete how to successfully clear the bar in a pole vault competition. You wouldn’t set them on the runway with a 12-foot long stick and tell them to go jump....would you?

Architecture, Design & Structure in Literature

Ernest Hemingway once famously said that “Prose is architecture. It’s not interior design.” Well-known for the sparsity and tight structure of his prose, this is no surprise. That said, there are a number of other writers (and readers) who would no doubt argue with this. Where would most poems be...

AP® Literature at The Middle of the Year

It’s December. You’re tired. You are fairly certain that you cannot lead another discussion about—or design another activity around—something like the juxtaposition of short sentences and longer sentences in the same text and the effect that variance would have on the text.  

Balancing Skill & Content in AP® World

Do you struggle with teaching over 800 years of content and building college-level skill proficiency to AP^® World History students? Does teaching AP^® World seem like riding an escalator, where you are never being able to get off on a floor to explore? Are you always struggling with timing and...

“Where in the…?" — A Conversation on Literature & Setting

Everything happens somewhere.

Hester and Pearl live on the outskirts of town; George and Lennie start off in the wilderness but then live on a farm; Sethe has to live in Cincinnati with her flashbacks across the river in Kentucky; and while Garcin, Inez, and Estelle suffer in their single room in...

What if we taught composition like Bob Ross teaches painting?

Back in my hometown, it was a rite of passage at the age of twelve to get a paper route. There was no status associated with it, nor did it come with a certain badge of honor – you see, back in the day kids got newspaper gigs to have deep pockets so that they could buy candy and Nintendo games and...

Current Events & Your AP® Government Classroom

Around 2005, I started a more regular and purposeful current events routine in my AP® Government and Politics class. I would supply three articles on Sunday, and students needed to read them by class time on Tuesday. I creatively called it “Current Events Tuesday.” No students cheered, but I soon...

Organizing Your AP® European History Course

Do you need some ideas and/or extra support to organize your AP® European History course? Join Lou Gallo as he shares ideas on organizing your course and explains strategies that he has used successfully with his students.