dear ap language teachers (week 2),

Last week, I began compiling a year’s worth of AP lessons. (See Week 1 here!). After an awesome response from my PLN, I am so excited to send out another week!

Last week - our first week! - was pretty successful. I have enjoyed sitting down with kids to talk about their learning and futures in the student interviews. It’s definitely something I want to continue from here on out. I will admit, however, that I didn’t do the academic resumes. Technology hated me, so I dropped it. We also couldn’t do our state testing. (Ugh).
​
Nonetheless, I definitely call Week 1 a win, so... on to Week 2!
​

Week 2

This week - another 4 day week! - is about revising their diagnostic essay from last week. Unfortunately, I have to complete their state testing still - because heaven forbid we do it on our own schedule - so we are knocking that out on Tuesday. The rest of the week, then, we can go over different revision strategies (emulation, score comparison, and read aloud… if we have time). Students will mark up their original diagnostic and hand that version in, along with the final, revised version, on Monday. This will allow me to get a diagnostic on their revision practices as well.
​

A huge part of Teaching Sincerely is that you adapt to the kids or your own BIG ROCKS. As I talked with kids, they all pointed out that they needed models or examples to do their best work. Therefore, instead of jumping into critical reading, I postponed that for a week to allow me to teach them how to do thoughtful revisions.

Flexibility is the key to good teaching, and that’s something the kids have been affirming in my interviews. Too many times, things like common curriculum, or lock-step teaching, keeps us pushing forward to stay on the timeline, even when our kids are not ready. Teaching Sincerely means standing up for the changes you know are needed for the sake of kids. For me, this means approaching my team frequently with evidence to defend whatever change I want to see. Advocacy is a lot easier with the proof to back it up!
​

Lesson Plans

And there you have it! I hope the Scribd format works as well as linking. (It's linked to the "Lesson Plans" title just in case).

​Here's to another great week with kids!