<p>My high school freshman is taking AP Human Geography. Last week they had a test and the teacher gave them 13 minutes to take the test. She said that on the AP exam, they would only have 45 seconds per question, so that is how much time she was going to give them for her tests.</p>
<p>I would have no problem with this if it was April. But this happened half way into the 5th week of school. Seems like she should give them time to “ramp up.”</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>Just like at our school; welcome to the intense world of AP.</p>
<p>It’s as if the teachers are expecting them to perform at AP level before they’ve even taught the class. Why do they need a teacher then?</p>
<p>Again, I have no problem with this method of testing when the AP exam is upcoming in the near future. But school has just started. I also have no problem with the teacher giving them timed “sample AP exams” that don’t count on their grades, just to jar them into reality.</p>
<p>Sounds like a young teacher. It’s kind of a brash, un-nuanced response to the issue of time. She’s got time to teach them how to work under time pressure.
Jar them into reality, okay, but don’t discourage others who need to ramp up into it. I hope kids don’t drop the class over it. </p>
<p>If it counts NADA on the course grade, then no harm done, just a silly exercise, IMHO. I’d minimize its significance to my kid, if that were me.</p>
<p>To be honest, I don’t agree with the idea of HS freshmen taking AP courses (unless they are exceptionally gifted children).</p>
<p>Welcome to AP. A lot of AP teachers have found by experience that starting at a challenging level from the beginning (by giving tough tests on the material covered in the beginning of the class) is the best way to get students ready for the exam in May. There is no time like the present to practice. </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>By the way, the plurality of students who take the AP human geography test take it as ninth graders.</p>
<p>Token, I see your point, but they are 14 years old and there are 7 months between now and the exam. What’s all the scare and confrontation about here?
Seems like the teacher could make the same point as a classroom quiz-show challenge, to demonstrate quick thinking and what they’ll learn to do over the next 7 months. I don’t like early pressure because I think it can discourage some kids before they get a few inches past the starting gate. </p>
<p>I’ve also read many complaints on CC around April that the teachers didn’t sufficiently prepare the kids for the test…middle ground, anyone??</p>
<p>It does count toward the course grade-double, since it’s a test grade. She’s not a young teacher…she’s an older, kind of odd teacher who is constantly doing things that the kids want to post on youtube. The kids who take this course are the “identified” gifted/talented kids. (However, not all of them are truly “gifted”…my daughter is more of the “good at school” type rather than gifted.) </p>
<p>I’ll just have to bite my tongue for a while and try to teach my daughter test-taking strategies myself. My son had the same class with the same teacher two years ago…I thought she was weird then, too, but my son got a 4 on the AP exam and he has pretty terrible study skills.</p>
<p>They are on block scheduling, so each class is 90 minutes long. I think it would be a much better idea for her to spend maybe 10 minutes once a week on sample quick tests, that (at least during 1st semester) would not count toward their grade. </p>
<p>I think she’s confusing two parts of the class…getting them to learn the material, and preparing them for the test.</p>
<p>With her 45 seconds per answer method, at this point she doesn’t know whether the kids who did poorly didn’t know the material, or merely ran out of time.</p>
<p>Here’s how I’d do the same lesson.</p>
<p>I’d say, when you study for each unit this year, you have to study it HARD so you’ll know the information “cold.” You’ll have a chance to review in in Spring, but your first go-round, I want you to study it HARD, so that Spring is a review and not new.</p>
<p>Here’s what I mean by knowing something cold. (Point to a kid and ask–“what’s your name?” – (quick answer, I presume!).</p>
<p>That’s a fast fact recall. THere will be too many facts this year for you to know all of them that fast, but…</p>
<p>here’s an example of being well informed so you can think quickly and answer in a short time: “How many hours are in the school day?” Obviously they’ll have to reason and use the info bits they already know (opening bell, closing bell) to come up with an answer.</p>
<p>If you knew NOTHING about the school, not even when the start bell time, you’d have nothing to work with. You have to get enough facts together this year so you have something to work with and reason with when they ask a question on the AP test. </p>
<p>I think that might inspire them to study hard. A teacher has to teach kids how to learn, not just impress them with how hard it’s going to be.</p>
<p>I think some teachers want parity between the grades they give a student and the student’s final test score. They don’t want to give a kid an A and have him get a 3 or even 4 on the actual AP test. Some of my kid’s AP teachers used actual AP questions for their in-class tests. </p>
<p>It could work both ways- my son was pulling a B in an AP class; during the final weeks of school they started “testing” in class using old tests and he was acing them- for some mysterious reason, my son’s final grade in the class turned into an A. Lo and behold, when he got his test scores back, he had a 5 on the AP exam. A friend’s son was taking a class where they did the same thing- but his “practice” tests were coming in as 2s and 3s. He ended up with a C in the class, although he felt like he should have had a B. He also ended up with a 4 on the actual AP test. My friend’s and my conclusion was that the teachers didn’t want to look to easy or too tough in their grading.</p>
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<p>Bingo. You said it better than I. </p>
<p>I like your thought to teach some test-taking strategies, and am sorry she counted this one towards the grade. As you say so well, she can’t tell yet who knows it and who’se just a quick-flash thinker. </p>
<p>Sometimes those who work hard can feel badly next to the quick-flash bulbs, but if they learn to harness their strength (hard work) and couple it with the skill of reasoning at a higher order of thinking…they’ll do just as well if not better. </p>
<p>Some students really need to learn test-taking as its own skill. Bide your time, though. If she can really study it to know the unit material in October, that’s a lot to achieve for now, even if she’ll need to bring it up to a higher level by May.</p>
<p>Doubleplay, that is fascinating. Last year, my son had a pre-AP English/AP World History block that he just loved. The same teacher taught both classes. </p>
<p>Near the end of last semester, the parents gained access to the new “Skyward” computer system, which includes the teacher’s gradebooks. For every subject, you can click on the grade and it breaks it down to list every grade on every assignment and test. When you click on a particular assignment or test, you see the class average, the high and the low. That is how it is supposed to work.</p>
<p>However, in the pre-AP English/AP World History gradebook it only showed one grade…no breakdown of any assignments, tests, projects. Second semester, my son got an 88 in each class (although I think his work was a lot stronger in the English part of the class than in the History part) and he got a 3 on the AP exam.</p>
<p>I wonder if the teacher was doing what you were implying some teachers do?</p>
<p>My D had AP Biology as a freshman, and her teacher used the same approach as the OP. From the beginning the tests were timed, according to the AP seconds/question average. It was very difficult for a lot of kids. She did ‘test corrections,’ where she allowed you to look up the answers for the ones you missed, put why it was the correct answer and turn that in. She then gave a 1/2pt credit for each one of these you did. All in all … it got the kids working very quickly through the tests … at least the kids who would normally work quickly through the tests. The rest of the kids … the ones who shouldn’t have been in an AP Bio class their freshman year … it just compounded their difficulties. As the teacher did not teach the material, either … first year AP bio teacher fresh out of middle school, it didn’t help. My D pulled a 5 on the exam, but I tutored her (masters in bio education) extensively outside of class. We have no idea if the students did better or worse with her method of “timed tests” from the beginning because she didn’t teach the material well, anyway, so so many didn’t pass.</p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>My son had at least some AP type tests from the very beginning in most of his AP courses. The first test will be a shock for many, but after that they learned that you really had to know the material cold. My son got 5s on all his APs, so I’m not complaining! (They had normal work, papers and projects on top of tests.) Every teacher also warned us to expect a lot of Bs first quarter till the kids got used to the pace and intensity. I too have my doubts about freshmen taking APs as a standard course, though my sophomore is doing World History now and loving it. (His teacher is very much not a facts guy though - they are discussing big ideas.)</p>
<p>p-3-tuitions: it’s supposed to be equivalent to a college level course. Sorry, but if age is relevant, and I don’t think it is, then perhaps a 14 year old should reconsider taking the class. However, such gnashing of teeth also occurs in Junior year, if that is the first time that a student encounters AP/IB.</p>
<p>missypie: the good news is that most kids crank up thier study habits to the level of the teacher and by midterms, they are doing as well as they want to.</p>
<p>What I am having a huge problem with is that the classes are NOT the equivalent of college level courses…they are the equivalent of taking the AP test over and over again. I doubt that in an actual college Human Geography class you only get 45 seconds a question; it’s just that they give you that on the AP exam.</p>
<p>My 16 year old is taking AP Biology. No dissections, because there are no dissections on the AP Bio EXAM. Don’t you think there are probably dissections in actual college bio?</p>
<p>I don’t actully remember TIME being a huge factor in any undergrad tests. Time was a big factor in law school exams where you had three hours to answer three essay exams, but that’s a whole different thing.</p>
<p>My son took AP Bio, and I can’t remember whether they did dissections. I do remember someone bringing in a real human torso and they all worked with it, but did not actually dissect it themselves.</p>
<p>They did have an AP Bio Lab manual, and there were something like 15 (?) standardized labs- that is, I think the labs are all specified and all AP Bio students do the same labs. I think there’s pretty much a standardized curriculum with respect to labs. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong. I remember the “Fly” lab because we had to cart little bottles of fruit flies with us to Georgia for Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>There’s a Thanksgiving fruit fly lab? Eek! We are going to Disneyworld that week…do bottles of fruit flies meet the TSA carry-on requirements?</p>
<p>My AP Econ does the same test weekly. However, the scores are curved for all the students who take the tests.</p>