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Channel: Susan Barber – AP LIT HELP
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Happy National Poetry Month

April 7, 2019, 7:41 am
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Have you checked out the Teach Living Poets Digital Library by Melissa Smith and Scott Bayer? This is an amazing resource provides so much information on poets and their works in a format that is extremely user-friendly. And here are some posts from our archives that should give you some inspiration for bringing more poetry into your classrom this month. Enjoy! Teaching Sonnets Today by Adrian Nester Conga Line Poetry by Jori Krulder Digging into Poetry Analysis by Matt Brisbin The Poetry Service Project by Karla Hilliard Post-It Note Poetry Discussion by Jill Massey Literary CSI by Brian Sztabnik Texas Teens Meets Shelley’s Skylark by Roy Smith And from earlier this month a few quick (and maybe not so quick) strategies to help students make meaning of poems.

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Articles of the Month – April

April 10, 2019, 9:31 am
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Written by a first-year college writing professor and a high school teacher, Bridging the Writing Gap: Centering Student Voices in high School and College Writing focuses on the the gaps in writing between high school and college. This article has lots of food for thought regardless of what level you teach. Revising for Meaning from Lanny Ball at Two Writing Teachers gives some ideas to strengthen the revision process and help students value the process. 1,000 times YES to Curriculum Development: Start with Questions (Instead of Standards) by Matt Renwick. I am already starting to think about next year (is it just me?), and themes and questions will guide my planning – not standards. Celebrate National Library Week with your students this week! The theme is Libraries = Strong Communities. Thanks to Lisa Fink at NCTE  for the reminder. Finally, if you’ve not checked out the Living Poets Digital Library by Melissa Smith and Scott Bayer, you should right now! It’s an extremely valuable resource!

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Advice from Readers 2019

April 20, 2019, 7:21 am
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As promised, we have a new set of videos for Q1, Q2, Q3, and Multiple Choice Tips from AP readers which will hopefully reinforce what you’ve been saying in the classroom all year long and build confidence as students head into the exam. Struggling with Zenobia worksheet And for the AP Langers, here’s a video from last year with advice from readers.

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The Week Before the Exam

April 28, 2019, 12:42 pm
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I am a marathoner. Actually, I ran one marathon to celebrate turning 40 in order to prove that age doesn’t define me; clearly, I had no friends at that stage of life or they would have talked me out of this crazy idea. Marathon training is interesting. Sometime around four weeks before race day, the runner runs her longest training run of somewhere between 20 – 24 miles, and then the runner tapers. The taper is my favorite part of training not only because I have completed the hardest part of training, my body is in prime condition, and my mental focus is strong, but because I now enjoy some rest in order to be fresh on race day. The taper still calls for healthy eating, shorter runs (I was amazed when 10 miles seemed like a short run), and speed (speed is a relative term at my age) drills, but it’s also a time ... KEEP READING

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APHelp Meet Up

May 28, 2019, 2:14 pm
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AP Literature Chief Reader’s Opening Remarks 2019

June 4, 2019, 4:27 am
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This week several hundred educators are gathered to score AP Lit exams. This is a privilege that we do not take lightly and also a very fun week full of friends, collaboration, and growth. Before the reading begins, the chief reader, David Miller, addresses all readers with not only introductions of a fabulous team of leaders and housekeeping matters but with words of encouragement and inspiration. For those who are not readers and have not had the opportunity to meet David Miller, it’s an understatement to say how fortunate we are to have him as our chief reader. I asked if I could share part of his charge to us today with the AP Lit community at large because I wanted you to not only know the heart of our leader this week but to be encouraged as you finish the year. Here are a portion of his comments:    In a moment you will ... KEEP READING

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Reflections from 2019 AP Literature Reading

June 14, 2019, 7:51 am
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I have just finished my fourth AP Literature reading where I read essay after essay after essay for Question 3, so I am writing with this experience fresh on my mind. For the AP Lit exam in particular, teachers want to know what books students should be writing on to score well on the AP exam. Does the book have enough literary merit to yield a good essay for the open-ended question or does it fall short in the literary merit category thus resigning the student to a lower half essay? And so the work of the classroom begins with many teachers choosing novels that work for the exam and teaching them. This is where we are failing our students: we spend too much time teaching the text and far too little time teaching students how to think and write. What I have seen too often at the reading are formulaic essays where students all ... KEEP READING

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Summer Learning: Folger Summer Institute

July 23, 2019, 8:27 am
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I consider myself to be a mover and shaker in education. No – I’m not the person changing the trajectory of education pedagogy or policy, but I’m the person down the hall with the loud classroom – the literal mover and shaker. E225 is the class where students are out of their seats, spilling into the halls with markers, scissors, playdough (insert other craft supplies here) in hand in order to become better readers and writers. So when I first attended a Folger workshop at NCTE several years ago, I knew Folger people were MY people. The Folger crew is the group not only out of their seats but standing on their seats yelling Shakespeare across the room. I have been a Folger fan since and was thrilled to spend a week studying with them this summer.  Our week was three-fold centered on learning and experimenting with the Folger method, a deep academic dive into ... KEEP READING

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The Plan for Another Year of Organized Chaos

August 4, 2019, 5:50 am
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Sometimes I wish I were the type of person who could follow a plan exactly the way that it’s detailed out. Life would be so much easier that way because I wouldn’t have to be thinking about what’s next all the time. But my approach to planning is more of a combination of big picture ideas coupled with ongoing assessment of where my students are and what they need, which leads to a somewhat organized chaos.  When I got my binder in late July and started looking through the course redesign, I was encouraged that the layout of the material is friendly to both the detailed planners and big picture thinkers. The redesign will not change a whole lot of what I already do in the classroom, but it will provide a more structured framework and progression of skills that I can easily refer to and check progress throughout the year.  Based on the framework, ... KEEP READING

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Resources to Help Students Make Meaning of a Text

August 25, 2019, 6:37 am
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Happy new school year! Because you’ve not spent enough of your own money buying supplies for your classroom, I’m now going to add some books to your list to buy if you don’t own them already. These are five books that I’m always consulting for different ways to teach students how to dive into a text and make meaning from it. Digging into Literature by Joanna Wolfe and Laura Wilder This is one of my go-to book for teaching literary analysis which is either on my desk or at arm’s reach. The book not only provides strategies for close reading but also bridges the gap between reading and writing with targeted ideas for writing literary analysis. One thing I love most about this book is the series of questions associated with each unit provided to guide thinking about a certain element of literature. These have really been helpful because they have moved students from summary to ... KEEP READING

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Fiction Boot Camp Resources

September 8, 2019, 4:32 am
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I’ve had a lot of interest in parts of the fiction boot camp materials this past month and wanted to publish all of them in one place along with some context of how I use them. The past few years, I have done some type of short story or fiction “boot camp” to introduce students to the different elements of fiction we will be diving into during the year. A lot of this material is review for students – some more than others – but the class period devoted to each element provides a good starting point for discussion as well as a working vocabulary.  I started putting resources in a slide format because when I changed schools last year, I floated and needed to have all of my materials in one place. Google slides made sense; I could access it from any classroom and click through to whatever links I needed. (I’ve since started ... KEEP READING

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Metacognitive Writing Strategy

September 11, 2019, 2:43 pm
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This activity is always eye-opening for my students, and since it’s fresh on my mind (we did this today), I wanted to share. And while this is for an AP prompt, this activity can be tailored to any writing activity. My students wrote on The Street (2009) prompt Monday/Tuesday (A/B block schedule), and instead of immediately scoring this (guilty – always thinking of how to delay grading), I wanted them to reflect on their writing first. This is what we did.  I passed back their essays, we reread the prompt, reviewed the analytic rubric, then looked at these samples. Students individually read the first one which I scored a 6 (who knows if this is accurate because I’ve not had a lot of practice doing this and have only seen a couple of scored samples) and highlight claims, evidence, and alalysis.Yeah for highligting!  Next I had students work in pairs to score these samples . I scored ... KEEP READING

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AP Mock Reading – Thinking About Writing

October 13, 2019, 9:37 am
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I had the privilege on Friday of leading a regional training session for AP Lit teachers with Jim Wickes, a fellow Georgian and AP reader. He took us through a Mock Reading that he does with his students at the beginning of the year. I love this activity for a few reasons. First, this gets good writing in the hands of students from the beginning. Second, students are engaging with the rubric early on and learning what constitutes good writing and what’s required to take writing to the next level. This activity also provides a working vocabulary for the classroom and specifically communicates expectations. Finally, students have the opportunity to analyze writing with this activity – not just literature. I honestly feel like this is the most neglected piece of writing instruction in today’s classrooms – studying samples as a writer considering what makes it good, where the piece may fall short, and considering stylistic ... KEEP READING

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Using Art in Today’s Classroom

October 20, 2019, 7:40 am
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As I prep my Frankenstein unit, I’m once again reminded of the benefits of using art in the classroom. Art analysis relies on the same skill set as analyzing a text but provides a different medium for analysis giving students an often needed break from words on a page. Art is one of my teacher tricks. When students stare through bloodshot eyes at a text and have nothing to offer, I put up a piece of art and wallah, everyone is talking and more importantly thinking. Here are some of my go-to uses for art: Close Reading Skills  Getting students to slow down to pay attention to small details make a big difference when interpreting a text. Introducing these details with art is a great way to begin a conversation about selection of detail and imagery. As with texts in my classroom, we start with What do you notice? Why do you think it’s important? ... KEEP READING

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Strategies for Reading Poems

November 2, 2019, 5:57 pm
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Need some some entry points for poetry other than TPCASTT or SOAPSTone? Try these ideas: These two are approaches I created (Susan Barber) 3×3 from Matt Brown Notice and Note from Jori Krulder Head, Heart, and Gut from Scott Bayer #thebookchat A 1, 2, 3 Approach from Julie Adams And another 1, 2, 3 from Melissa Smith #TeachLivingPoets If you’re looking for a way for students to do a deeper dive and spend more time than the entry activities above, try Code Breaking by Kelly Herrera. Explain the Code Breaking Steps to students then allow them to work through the process recording their answers on this sheet. Finally, here are my rules for reading poetry that has served as reminders in my room for the past several years. Do you have strategies for entry into a poem not listed? Send them to me at susangbarber@gmail.com, and I’ll include them in a follow-up post.

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NCTE and ALAN Reflections

December 1, 2019, 11:08 am
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NCTE is an experience that’s hard to put into words; the experience is greater than the sum of its parts. I’ve tried to put some of this in words with three things I enjoyed: 1 – Being with people who inspire and shape me as a teacher.  Like many of you, connections are made online and through social media, so the opportunity to learn shoulder to shoulder by someone who is normally cross country or catch up over a shared meal. NCTE is a place where talking shop is always appropriate, and I learn just as much through informal conversations as I do through targeted sessions. Whether talking standards based grading (best paired with chardonnay), favorite titles of students, or making the classroom equitable for all students, meaningful conversations are happening in every nook and cranny in Baltimore during NCTE, and in my opinion where some of the best work occurs.  2 – Learning from ... KEEP READING

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Who’s Doing the Work?

January 4, 2020, 5:37 pm
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e·piph·a·ny /əˈpifənē/ a moment of sudden revelation or insight January 6th marks Epiphany as the Christian tradition marks the visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus and serves as the official end of the twelve days of Christmas. The word “epiphany” takes root from this tradition and marks “a moment of sudden revelation or insight” thus making one wiser. This is the perfect time to think about an insight or revelation in our life or practice, and thus the yearly epiphany post.  One teaching revelation or insight centers around who’s doing the heavy lifting – me, the teacher, or my students. For years, I did most of the heavy lifting in my classroom. I planned elaborate lessons, researched background information and historical context for reading, prepared lectures about themes, spent hours upon hours correcting grammar and writing comments on paper – you get the idea – while my students were basically consumers taking ... KEEP READING

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The Writer’s Notebook: Sentence Structure

January 12, 2020, 4:41 am
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I consider myself a grammarian having done my graduate research in holistic grammar instruction (always a good topic to have in the hip pocket when party conversation is at a lull). Clearly, I do not believe that drill and kill instruction is the best way to learn grammar. In fact, I propose that while grammar does have some guiding principles which makes the understanding of words easier, students should be empowered to make grammatical choices rather than memorize and follow the rules. After all, rules are meant to be broken. But a basic understanding of sentence construction is fundamental for students to grow as writers. Enter the writer’s notebook. The writer’s notebook is where we experiment with all things writing: sentence construction, prewriting, punctuation, figurative language, word order. I love giving students the opportunity to play with words in a space without any consequence on their grade. Here’s a staple writer’s notebook outline of sentence structure ... KEEP READING

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#BookSnaps

January 26, 2020, 4:29 am
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I recently commented on a post in the Facebook group and had several people ask for directons, so I thought I would share on the site. Actually, I searched and was surprised that I haven’t shared Bookshaps here before. I decided to do BookSnaps after hearing my friend Sarah Soper excitedly talk about them. I was looking for a way for my students to engage with their choice novels yet not annotate the full text. BookSnaps seemed like the perfect solution, and even though I am not a SnapChat person, I downloaded the app, opened an account, and nervously gave the assignment to my students. There was a little bit of a learning curve since I was unfamiliar with SnapChat, but overall I learned quickly. If you or your students don’t want to use SnapChat, the assignment can easily be done with Google Slides. Below are videos for SnapChat and Google slides versions, Sarah’s instructions ... KEEP READING

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Observations from the Pilot Reading

February 1, 2020, 12:07 pm
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Last week a few people gathered for a pilot reading for AP Literature in order to gather projections for how many readers would be needed as well as reviewing the new rubric and questions that may bring up during calibration. Eric Rovie on Q1 has shared several takeaways listed here which are very thorough. I have added a few comments; primarily at the end; all of my thoughts are in italics. These are our thoughts and not the law from CB so read accordingly. Eric’s Pilot Reading Thoughts:  1.      There MUST BE A THESIS.  Make it clear and make sure students know what they are saying because…the bulk of the points come from the development of their argument for the thesis (aka the LINE OF REASONING).  These thesis should NOT simply restate the prompt. The thesis can come anywhere, but needs to be explicit and defensible.  *Thesis teaching tool: have students highlight their ... KEEP READING

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