Instructors and students in Thomas County Central High School Advanced Placement courses kept busy over the summer with special assignments and have put their knowledge to use in the classroom.
One AP teacher attended specialized training and three others assigned students summer work to better prepare them for class.
“I believe it shows dedication to the rigor of taking an AP course, and it will give the students something to come into the class with the ability to ‘share’ their knowledge,” AP Psychology teacher Amy Ponder said of her summer assignment.
Laura Kornegay, who teaches AP Environmental Science (APES) this year, attended training during the Summer Institute, held at Walton High School in Marietta this past June.
“The training helped prepare me for this new program,” she said. “We performed several labs related to APES, we learned how the AP test is scored, and we had a chance to work with other teachers to plan our course. I learned a lot about the class and was given a set of resources to help me get started. Studying previous AP tests, and talking to someone who has been grading the tests for years taught me a lot about what I need to do to help my students get ready for the test.”
AP Latin teacher Cary Riggs, AP Biology teacher Judy Holwell, and Ponder all assigned summer work to their students.
Riggs asked his students to read “The Aeneid” in English and take notes about major plot points and other interesting information. He calls the story “an extremely complex piece of literature” both for “the complexity of the Latin” and how it was written “to provide a history of the Romans and a model for the Roman Empire.”
During class, students will read and translate “The Aeneid” from the original Latin and Riggs said having read an English version will help “fill in the gaps.”
“We each read a different translation so that we can compare how the translators took the same Latin and ended up with varying versions in style, pacing and tone,” he said. “This work gave my students an overview of this major classic we will be working with in detail this year. The first week we had a lengthy test on the materials to make sure we were all on the same page. We will continue to look at the English versions when we have a particularly challenging passage in order to see the different ways other translators have handle the material.”
?Ponder assigned summer reading to her AP Psychology students: “Opening Skinners Box” by Lauren Slater. Students were given questions and videos to accompany the reading.
“It was a book I had read when it was released and was recommended on AP Central as a great motivating resource for introducing psychology,” she said. “It shows that they can learn the different perspectives of psychology. Learning from the people that made landmark discoveries in a research or laboratory setting gives these students reference to draw from in other material learned in class.”
Ponder’s clas will focus on discussion and study of various psychology approaches and the teacher said the book will come in handy.
“Each chapter of this book was dedicated to a different approach,” she said. “We will be seeing these experiments along with others throughout the year. It has been the best improvement I have done in my AP class to date. I am hoping this will improve the students’ test scores and incorporate a basis for their psychology knowledge.”
Most students polled in Ponder’s class found the assignment interesting and helpful. Lessons learned from the reading include: “everything connects in psychology,” “everyone thinks differently,” “the lengths people go through for their experiments,” “reinforcement and how it affects behavior,” “knowledge/background that has allowed me to relate more to the material taught in class,” and that the human is “complex.”
“I learned that the human brain is complex and that we do things that may seem odd, but make logical sense,” student Vince Wynn said. “The summer reading has prepared me by allowing me to understand the complexity and contradictions of human psychology.”
Student Maggie Martin said the assignment “gave me an idea of what psychology is like and explained some interesting experiments.”
Holwell’s AP Biology students read a unit on Ecology and completed study guides based on the material. She said, by having ecological concepts under their belts, students can move directly into lab-based learning.
“There is insufficient time in the school year to master all the topics that are tested on the AP exam...and to do the mandated labs,” Holwell said. “I have found that having students read the ecology chapters during the summer can save us up to three weeks of instruction. Ecology is selected because typically it is a topic that the students find compelling and is easy to comprehend.”
Student Joyia Hough said the summer assignment did help her prepare for class.
“I enjoy being able to get some of the book work out of the way,” she said. “It gives us more time to do labs. Also, going over some of the packets has helped me understand the packets better."
Dakotah Wyche appreciates her teacher’s dedication to the class and its students.
"Mrs. Holwell makes class fun and not so boring to the point where you would want to fall asleep,” Wyche said. “She understands that we're teenagers and that we can't stay seated and like to have fun, but do our work at the same time. I felt that summer work was work to keep our minds on school and to also see who is dedicated enough to do it.”