AP multiple choice and essay practice
Daily Writing and critical reading from selected text
Begin and complete major literary work,
- including film critique
3rd Junior Project
Participation in AP Boot Camp
Class discussion and essay on selected passages
from AP Essay Examination
Assignment of new
book of choice and in class reading
SAT /AP Preparation each Thursday with Jim Irwin, Test Prep Specialist
Additional / SAT/ AP Study Sessions Required
Daily reading/ Writing assignments with rubric scoring
Visits to College and Career Center
SAT registration -Rotary to pay fee for June Exam
Individual Student Conferences
Portfolio building and writing revisions
College and Career Search- ongoing
Assignment of new book for supplementary reading (student choice)
Participate in in-class and/or after school tutoring for
test purposed; required to utilize after school prep if have
under 2.0 as part of Test Prep grade for English 3
John George Essay Contest and other Essay Writing contests:
Students in both English 3 will address the issue of violence prevention in our city through art and writing, submit the essay for possible publication.
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How to Write Effective AP Essays-
Advice from College Board
The following tips were written by Marilyn Elkins, the Chief Reader for AP English Language and Composition, after the 2001 AP Reading. The College Board has created a number of opportunities for teachers to become better informed about the philosophy and content of AP courses, and I urge teachers to attend local workshops and summer institutes. Nothing can take the place of the opportunities that the workshop setting provides for teachers to share effective teaching strategies and to discuss problems and solutions that are relevant to particular classroom settings. With that in mind, I offer the following suggestions:
- Reading well -- for denotation and connotation, inference and implication -- is an important ingredient in helping young writers to develop their writing skills. Therefore, your AP course should focus on the close reading of a variety of genres and texts from a variety of historical periods. When we teach these texts, we need to help students understand the conventions of the genres and their relationship to rhetorical situations. The 2001 exam helps us understand, for example, that personal letters generally use rhetorical strategies in a manner that is different from that of more public writing and that nature writing is rarely moralistic or allegorical. While the conventions of literature and nonfiction prose share some features, others are rarely present in both genres.
- Writing good essays requires ideas and a position; both require a depth of thinking that is neither programmatic nor simplistic. The development of critical thinking skills must be nurtured through careful and thoughtful discussions of reading and writing assignments.
- One of the primary purposes of essays is to convince the reader that the writer's point of view is viable. Such persuasion requires both logic and an emotional quality. While we often teach students to recognize these elements, we also need to help them incorporate such resources of language into their own persuasive writing, whether they are attempting an analysis or establishing their own position.
- While students should be able to identify techniques, it is more important that they understand how and why such techniques work and that they are able to employ these devices in the service of their own writing. It doesn't matter, for example, whether the student refers to a technique as anaphora or repetition; what matters is the depth of the student's explanation of how the technique works in a specific situation.
- Sometimes the holy trinity of stylistic analysis (imagery, diction, syntax) helps a reader sort out how a writer has accomplished his effect. Often it does not. Students need training in deciphering what is important within the context of the work as a whole and especially with regard to the general thrust of the writing.
- We need to provide students with opportunities to write about their own experiences so that they know how to present personal experiences as relevant and appropriate evidence.
- While such structures as the five-paragraph essay may be useful when introducing students to the writing process, these programmatic structures are inappropriate for continued use in a college-level composition course. We need to encourage students to move beyond the predictable and pedestrian in their thinking and writing. College-level writing requires that students employ organic methods of organization that are directly related to their essay's rhetorical situation, purpose, content, and audience. While the five-paragraph response may work quite well in answering examination questions and can give a semblance of organization, it frequently leads students to a number of problems: redundancy, the invention of three points of discussion when the student clearly has only two strong ideas, the omission of a necessary fourth because it does not fit the magical number of three, or a lack of individual voice, among others.
Detailed Objectives:
The students will:
Access and utilize Academic Language Apply “High Stakes” Writing Strategies to Senior Project, College Essays, and Revision Process of AP Essays and timed writings Apply to all relevant college scholarships available for Juniors Conduct a personal assessment of their writing using prior knowledge for engaging in writing to learn vs. learning to write Input College Summit information required for program Read and critique sample AP Essays with rubrics for examination of successful vs. incomplete examples Continue to read daily, produce (2) book critiques and frequent timed writings.
Course specific Assignments with due dates:
SAT Review and Preparation-Homework review as assigned.
Personal Statement- draft-proofed and edited with individual conference with me. No Exceptions. You may turn this in prior to due date.
Book of Choice Critique with class specific guidelines (given out in class)- complete all reading, in class assignments.
Englsh 3AP
Personal Statement- revised draft-proofed and edited with individual conference with me. No Exceptions. You may turn this in prior to due date.(TBA)
Begin- The Scarlet Letter- complete all reading, in class assignments and final critique.
ASSESSMENT:
The students will be graded on a (modified) graduate school model:
A+, a, A-, B +, B, B- / Not ready to be graded/ Must revise for grade (2 week limit for revision)
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| Peer Response and Support / Individual Assessment, using Portfolio Model | |
Individual Progress Conference (Personal Conference with each student)
Some Planned Instructional Strategies for Academic Language Instruction:
· Content Reading Inventory
· Think Aloud- strategy for predicting out loud meaning of the text
· Teacher model with a script to help introduce text
· Student Mock-up of teacher modeling for personalizing help
· Note taking to record thoughts or Listener/Recorder trade-Off
· Question the Author
· Use of Graphic Organizers
· Sentence Starters
· Personal Vocabulary List Building
Library Support-Library and
Computer Lab for Research
In class reading: August Wilson's Fences
