English with Mrs. Lamp

Curriculum Planning and Pacing

• Concern: Many new teachers find it challenging to plan and pace their AP® Lit course effectively due to its breadth and complexity.
• What to Do: Aim for an organized approach with a manageable number of units, building the essential AP® Lit “Big Ideas” into each one. Instead of doing a unit for each big idea, however, I weave them into units that are based around texts and literary movements. My advice is to aim to include a variety literary works covering major genres and periods throughout the year, and don’t forget the importance of poetry and short stories! (Many teachers are doing TOO MANY novels & plays, and many folks are not putting emphasis on poetry & short stories, which are so important for exam success, so don’t ignore them!)
• Less Is More: When you’re first starting, aim for four units per semester, and go slowly! You can add more as you grow in confidence and knowledge of the course and your students, or you can stick with a smaller number of units so you can dig deep into everything and take the time necessary to aim for excellence and mastery rather than rushing through things.
• My Units:
  • Crime and Punishment
  • Romanticism
  • 1984
  • Modernism
  • Catcher in the Rye or Huck Finn
  • Victorian Lit
  • Heart of Darkness
  • Renaissance Lit
  • Hamlet
  • Test Prep
  • Contemporary Poetry
  • Choice Novel (We do this after the May exam as a fun way to end the year.)
• The Big Ideas to Plan Around:
  • Big Idea 1: CHARACTER (CHR) …
  • Big Idea 2: SETTING (SET) …
  • Big Idea 3: STRUCTURE (STR) …
  • Big Idea 4: NARRATION (NAR) …
  • Big Idea 5: FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE (FIG) …
  • Big Idea 6: LITERARY ARGUMENTATION (LAN)
• Grab my year-long unit outline here! My AP Literature course guide explains how the big ideas are integrated into each unit.

Balancing Test Preparation and Love for Lit

• Concern: There’s a struggle to balance preparing students for the AP® Literature and Composition exam while fostering a genuine love for literature. How much “test prep” is too much? How can we have fun & encourage book love while also getting the kids ready for the test in May?
• What to Do: Try to strike a balance by integrating essay prompts (<- explore how to write good AP prep prompts here!) and activities that not only prepare students for the exam but also promote deep engagement with literary masterpieces & a discovery of the joy of reading great literature. A balanced approach will nurture critical thinking and the analytical writing skills that are essential for success on the exam, while also fostering a profound understanding of and appreciation for literature’s broader themes and societal relevance. Don’t be afraid to do lots of student-centered discussion and fun activities. They’ll remember what they learned during discussions and activities more than they’ll remember what you “skill and drilled” during practice tests and other test prep days. If you want your class to be a memorable, life-changing kind of class, it can’t be all test prep all the time! (Find free discussion ideas here!)
• Specific Ideas: My students love debates, fishbowl discussion, Socratic seminar, gallery walks, post-it-note discussions, TQE, and fun artistic activities like making word webs or word clouds, creating visual study guides, making tiktoks from a character’s perspective, drawing the plot arc or making comics out of key scenes, creating maps or dioramas, and creating mini-movie trailers!

Teaching Poetry Effectively

• Concern: Teachers often seek better resources and techniques for teaching poetry and engaging students with this genre. Often, teachers feel they don’t have experience teaching poetry or that other ELA courses tend to skip poetry or use it sparingly, so teachers feel that they don’t have many poetry materials or a large set of poems they know well to draw upon, and kids don’t have the experience with poetry to feel confident about approaching poetry in AP Lit class.
• What to Do: Create FULL units dedicated to poetry! I do Victorian, Modernism, Renaissance, and Romanticism poetry units, sprinkled throughout the school year. Each unit is filled with discussions, specific activities, and poetry explications aligned with AP® skill areas. You’ll want to find or make graphic organizers that systematize poetry analysis for your students to make things easier, too. A structured approach where you dedicate full units to poetry will help you more effectively teach annotation techniques, combat student apathy towards poetry, and build students’ confidence and skills through frequent, sustained engagement with poetic works.
• Specific Ideas: Find poetry analysis methods that work for you and your students. My kids finally understand what the poem means and does when we use graphic organizers like my modified TPCASTT worksheet and my “Poetry Analysis Charts.” The students will need a foundation in literary terms, too, so don’t listen to people who say you don’t need to teach lit. vocab anymore. You absolutely do! (My poetry graphic organizers can be found here!)

Professional Development and Support

• Concern: New teachers need support and resources to improve their teaching practices, while seasoned educators are often looking for new ideas to refresh their curriculum & improve student outcomes.
• What to Do: Do not try to reinvent the wheel! Beg, borrow, and steal from other educators who have graciously shared their materials either online or in person. Attend an APSI® (AP® Summer Institute) weeklong course & soak in everything they provide! You’ll typically receive TONS of free materials from the course facilitator. When you find a great teacher blog, use the search bar to see if they’ve covered topics you’re interested in; comb through people’s TpT stores or search for what you need using the TPT search (it’s surprisingly good); and try searching on Pinterest to find the materials and ideas you need to keep you from burning out, feeling alone, or wasting time spinning your wheels!
• Specific Ideas: If you’re interested in a year-long course guide, look around to see what’s out there. My guide offers ideas for activities and essay prompts & provides organized unit breakdowns and actionable teaching strategies. Taking an APSI® course, looking at other people’s year-long plans, and finding folks whose teaching style is similar to yours (I love Pinterest for this!) will help you continuously develop your teaching skills and stay aligned with the evolving AP® framework expectations. It’s also a good idea to read your emails from the College Board® to be sure you know what’s new right away!

Navigating Grading Challenges: Leveraging Rubrics for Fair Assessment

• Concern: Grading in AP® Literature can be a complex and seemingly subjective task, especially for new teachers navigating their first year. Common challenges include uncertainty about how to evaluate student work, concerns about grading too harshly or too leniently, and potential conflicts with students or parents over grades.
• What to Do: Incorporating the right rubrics into your teaching practice can help mitigate these issues and ensure fair and consistent assessment. Rubrics will provide more clarity and consistency for both you and your students; they help students understand what constitutes exemplary, proficient, and developing work; they reduce grading conflicts; and they promote more objective grading. Rubrics also help us provide more & more constructive feedback to encourage improvement and a growth mindset! I love how I can just circle or highlight things on my rubric, and then write less on the actual paper or in an end note to the student. In the end, rubrics support student growth by offering actionable insights into their strengths and areas for development, and they save you time by making grading faster and easier to do with less hemming and hawing along the way.
• Specific Ideas: Work on making rubrics that make sense to you and help you grade faster. For example, I have tweaked and tailored these rubrics since 2011 to ensure they assess what my students need to be able to do well AND align with the AP® framework, including the new sophistication point!

Overall Reflection and Improvement

• Concern: Educators need tools for reflection and improvement in their teaching practices.
• What to Do: Think about how your activities and assessments align with AP® skill areas and “Big Ideas.” Go through with a list of the “Big Ideas” AND “Essential Understandings” next to you, and mark out which units or activities/assessments cover each one. Figure out if there are any holes in your curriculum, and then plan out where you could fit those skills and ideas into your existing units. Another big thing is finding places where you feel supported in evaluating your teaching methods and adapting them based on student needs and feedback, whether that be with your department at school, a facebook group or an online forum that really “gets” you, or during an APSI® course. These courses are another great place to meet dedicated educators who want to really discuss what works in AP® Lit and how to push yourself to the next level, and you can take them again and again with different instructors & groups of fellow teachers to gain unique insights and continue to hone your craft over time!

Do you have another question or concern about teaching AP® Literature and Composition? Leave a comment on this post! I always reply to comments 🙂