We have been dancing around the AP question for years. This question from Darcy is truly unique in that she is inheriting only CI kids in an established program, as she replaces a successful TPRS/CI teacher who left the school:
Hey Ben:
The situation at my school is a little different than other AP programs, I think. They have always had CI/TPRS, they don’t know anything else actually. These kids have never had grammar. I’m not at all interested in teaching an AP text, so I’m just sort of thinking of it as a higher level class.
I will, of course, submit something to the officials at College Board that is not representative of what I will actually teach so that we can call it an AP class and I have admin support for that. My understanding is that this is what the last teacher did – I have all her documents on Google drive, but she is gone in Peru so I don’t have access to pick her brain on it.
I have class sets of tons of novels. I’m thinking I will base my curriculum for the year around the novels? And maybe spend the last 2-3 weeks before the exam on a practice test? Last year she had unprecedented AP success with the first generation of all CI/TPRS (no grammar/textbook) students – 72% pass rate, and every single kid in 4th year took it, plus some 3rd year students too (school pays for AP tests). I’m just freaking out a little because I need to keep improving on that success and I feel nervous about it…
Are there current CI/TPRS AP teachers on the PLC?
My response is to go build an actual AP group on the Forum where you all could communicate some ideas during the year. I’ll set that up now. There is also the AP category here in the categories list on the right of this page.