Bridging the Gap: Moving from a 5 to a 9

This Wednesday marks only 10 weeks until the AP Language exam! Like many of you, I am constantly trying to plan activities and select readings that will get me the most juice for the squeeze with my students to help them feel confident and prepared going into the exam. Over the next 10 weeks I will devote much of my time and energy focusing on lessons that might help my students transition from earning a 2 to a 3 or a 4 to a 5. Since I have been teaching AP Language I have found that students don't necessarily need to do more work in the few weeks leading up to the exam. No, they just need to be doing the most meaningful work. Since the free response questions count as 55% of the students' overall score, I tend to spend much more time improving their thinking and writing than I do focusing on multiple choice. 

In the next few weeks, I will be asking my students to write, read, talk, and reflect multiple times each week in effort to improve their writing scores. Here is a protocol I'm using in the weeks leading up to the exam to help them make the jump from mid-range to successful, convincing writing. 

Day 1: Students complete a timed writing (I recently had my students write the 2011 Thomas Paine Q3). 

Day 2: I team students into small groups (usually 3 or 4) that are complementary to their strengths and weaknesses. I truly want my students to learn from one another during this process.

Students review College Board's released exemplar essays and determine the strengths of each essay. As a class, we discuss the scoring of each essay. (I like to use exemplars that scored a 5 and a 9 so students can easily see the differences between them. I rarely show my students the 2 or the 3 after January.)

In their teams, students focus on a mid-range essay (typically a 5 or 6). They read it, they talk about it, and then they annotate it. I prompt them: How can you take this 5 and make it a 9 while still being true to the student's ideas? The teams work together for 15-25 minutes working on the essay. We spend the rest of class discussing how to improve the mid-range essay.

Day 3: Students sit with their teams. I give them a new prompt that is similar in structure or topic to the prompt from the day before. (I followed up the Thomas Paine prompt with the 2016 Civil Disobedience prompt.) I ask students to work together to craft a thesis and to create a master list of evidence they could use for that prompt. I check in with each group and ask them which evidence would be most sophisticated and convincing from their list. Then, the groups write an outline for the essay.

Day 4: Students work to complete a group essay answering the prompt. (Here is a helpful handout when doing group essays for the first time.) I score the group essays before the next class day, but I do not mark my score on the actual essay.

Day 5: Students sit with their teams to review the highest scoring exemplar essay from the new prompt. While they read, I place the group essays around their rooms at different stations. Students then read each group essay with their team and give it a score. Then, I reveal my scores to each group. 

Once the group has their scores and have discussed them, I ask each student to answer the following questions:

1. What do you understand better after working with your team?

2. What aspect of this prompt or question do you need to work on?

3. What advice would you give other students about this prompt/question?

I use the feedback from these questions to plan upcoming lessons and/or organize study sessions by the topics they list for question two. I try to incorporate this protocol for each type of essay in the final weeks leading up to the exam, so my students will do it three times. 

Have a great back-pocket trick to help your students transition into deeper thinking and higher quality writing right before the exam? Share it in the comments!