May 1st. How in the world are we here? I had a hard time imaging making it to this point of the year in the late fall and early winter, but now that we’re here, I have no idea what kind of time machine I have been in for the last three months. My seniors last day is May 11th with senior exams starting May 5th, so we’re at the end. (Don’t worry though, I’ll be back to work on July 25th when the rest of you are still at the pool).
Here’s are several end of year activities that were formerly posted on APLitHelp. I’d also love to know what you’re doing to end the year. Stay strong, teacher friends!
End of the Year Choice Board by Susan Barber
Since we get out so early, I hardly have anytime but do have to take an exam grade. This choice board provides some light but focused activities which provide closure to the end of the year.
Navigating the Big Questions by Jennifer Stuckey
Our librarian introduced me to a podcast from This American Life titled Rosie’s Paradox in
which twelve year-old Rosie’s father tells the story of how, when she was nine, he encouraged her to
write down the many questions she had, and they all ended up being big, even enormous, questions,
impossible to answer simply. To start, in August, we listened to the podcast together to get a sense of
the kinds of broad questions Rosie asked her dad, and then students brainstormed those big questions
of life on their own. After sharing their ideas, students got together in groups according to the
similarities in their questions and looked for initial sources for answers in literature, poetry, music,
science, nonfiction articles, videos, news stories, additional podcasts, interviews, and documentaries.
Thus, the conversations began, sparking the notion that today’s answer may well be different from
tomorrow’s, but the real value is in the conversation itself.
Here are some of the student-generated questions from those early conversations:
Do true love and soulmates exist?
Who decides what is morally wrong and right?
Does religion cause more harm and conflict than good?
Do things happen for a reason?
What do we need to accomplish as humans in order to live a successful life?
All year we have re-examined these big questions in the literature we’ve studied, and I’ve asked
students to write blog posts exploring their thoughts. After the exam, they’ll come back to their original
ideas and take a look at how the poetry, novels, and plays they’ve read help them continue to develop
their answers.
For the final project, I will ask them to choose one of the original questions (or create a new one) they
can “answer” with book quotes, a poem, a piece of art, and a found podcast. The project requires them
to create a collection of these resources before collaborating in small groups to create a
podcast of their own. I’m super excited about this podcast element because of the potential it has to
broaden their audience.
Although we have incorporated different steps of this project throughout the year, if you have a few
weeks after the exam, it could easily be condensed. If it happens for you the way it has happened for
me, your perspective will be enriched by your students sharing theirs.
Jennifer Stuckey teaches AP Literature and Pre-AP English 10 at her alma mater, Brookville High School, in central Virginia. She loves that one of her students recently asked, “Have you ever noticed your class has a way of making us think about life?” Outside of school, she enjoys spending time with her family, reading, baking, and playing nerdy word games like Balderdash.
End of Year Reflection – Elizabeth Chatwell
All of our AP Lit students are surely tired of reading, analyzing, and writing. So this project asks them to audio/video record themselves reflecting on the year.
This may need to start as a beginning of the year project that culminates in an end-of-year reflection. But I am sure it could be tweaked. My co-teacher, Angela Bien, and I ask our students to keep a reflective blog (an e-Portfolio created using Google Sites) of their work throughout the year. After each project, presentation, and essay, we ask them to upload their work to their Site and then reflect on their process, progress, and outcome. (Where have I been? Where am I going?)
At the end of the year, students record themselves using Screencastify or Loom; they walk us through their e-Portfolio. This is an informal reflection; we do not ask them to script it. Instead, they focus on their learning since August.
- What have you learned from this experience?
- What does this mean for your future?
- Of what you are most proud of?
- How can you encourage students to take this class next year?
Elizabeth Chatwell is the mother to two teenage boys, teacher of seniors and sophomores (30+years?!) at Kouts High School in Kouts, IN, and is still searching for the perfect little black dress and happily ever after.
AP Lit Anti-Essay: A Retrospective on My Four Years of High School – Ashley Hendrickson
After a year spent writing endless essays, what better gift could you give your students in the last few days than an “anti-essay” – an essay written almost entirely in images, GIFS, videos, and memes? The retrospective anti-essay has students reflect back on their four years of high school and gives students room to create and design their story in a reflective way.
I created this assignment for my students in what I knew was going to be my last year at my former high school. I’d finalized all my new hire paperwork, taken my new ID photo, and was just trying to think of a way to say goodbye without crying. On the last day of class, each of my students took us on a journey through their four years at South Garland High School, complete with their favorite tunes playing in sync with their images. And we laughed, and cried, and celebrated each other. At the end, I surprised them with an anti-essay of my own I’d created in secret – one where I told them I was leaving and ended on a slideshow of every photo we’d ever taken in our AP class.
There are several ways you could modify this assignment for online learning. With small classes, synchronous screen sharing with everyone watching live could be an option. If you have large classes or synchronous learning is frowned on, you might ask students to contribute links to their presentations into a shared class document. Then, add a requirement that students choose at least two presentations to view and comments on with nothing but GLOWS! Another option might be to shorten the assignment and have students show just personal photos in a Flipgrid video while they talk, and then have students watch and comment. However you modify it, students will appreciate how personal and memorable this assignment is!
If you’re looking to end the year with emotion, laughter, nostalgia, and yes, even funny GIFS, this is the perfect choice!
Ashley Hendrickson teaches AP Literature at Plano Senior High School and Dual Credit World Literature through Collin College in Plano, TX. She is proud to be a mom of two, a coach and AP curriculum writer for NMSI, and an AP Reader for AP Language.
Senior Memoir Project – Lisa Palena
The video project has become a favorite assignment for the senior class; often, they begin asking about it in September or October. They are excited to create a lasting legacy for themselves, their classmates, and the school community. The project itself is fairly straightforward–students choose a video platform and compile pictures, video clips, music, and other forms of media. They choose an overarching theme: most choose one that conveys their individual passion. The project also asks them to reflect on meaningful relationships and influences throughout their four years of high school; their tributes to people and memories alike never fail to invoke tears. Another requirement is a literacy connection (this is English, after all!), and that varies in choice–from poetry to books to music, movies, etc. Once the project is completed and submitted, we set aside a week to view the videos in class. It is a touching, emotional way to say goodbye to one of the most important periods of time in their lives! This year may look a little different, but I’m still planning on watching the videos together through a Google Meet where I can “present” the videos to the class. The pandemic may have taken many of their senior milestones away from them, but they will still have the opportunity to leave their mark on the school community which has served as their home for the past 4 years.
Senior Video Reflection Project
Lisa Palena is a teacher at Maple Shade High School in Maple Shade, NJ. In addition to teaching varying levels of high school English, she is also the co-director of the Maple Shade Drama Club and consequently, all school shows. She also serves as co-advisor for the Class of 2021 and is the PLC coordinator for the English Department. In her spare time, she likes to read for pleasure and catch up with family and friends. She is going into her sixth year of teaching AP Literature, and it has been her favorite course to teach thus far!
The Food Memoir – Nikki Wilson
Brillat Savarin, the French lawyer and gastronome, famously said, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.” In literature, scenes of meals provide rich material for consideration about how food — its preparation, its consumption, and even its deprivation, shapes identity. In the midst of the 2020 quarantine, the importance of meals, and the rituals associated with them, has been heightened; however, if we go back as far as 1997, one of our prompts asks us to consider the following: “Novels and plays often include scenes of weddings, funerals, parties, and other social occasions to reveal the values of the characters and the society in which they live. Select a novel or play that includes such a scene and, in a focused essay, discuss the contribution the scene makes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.” [RETROFITTED] Meals matter at all levels, from fairy tales to more sophisticated literature.
Regardless, at the end of the school year, and especially after the AP English Literature Exam, students may be “fed up” with analyzing the lives and values of other characters; they may even be “fed up” with analyzing the writing style of other authors.
Behold. THE FOOD MEMOIR.
In the movie, The Holiday, Iris, a young woman from England escaping the pain of a break-up by visiting Los Angeles, and Arthur, an old, but brilliant Hollywood legend, share a meal that marks the critical moment of Iris’ life. She realizes that she is “supposed to be the leading lady of [her] own life” — it is the bildungsroman moment that marks her shift from being weak and passive to being bold and empowered.
The inspiration for the food memoir, the “Food and Folklore” dinners at the Eatonville Restaurant in Washington, D.C., also celebrates a strong female writer, Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote about Janie, an equally strong female protagonist who learns to be the “leading lady” of her own life.
Likewise, students also need to be the “leading” men or women of their own stories — and what better way to do so by writing a food memoir that analyzes the significance of a meal as an expression of their own values and cultural norms.
During the 2020 quarantine, students were given 2 ½ weeks to complete this assignment, culminating in a virtual conference where students could view and provide feedback for three presentations. They had already read the magazine articles and scholarly journal entries about the meaning and importance of food during a prior unit, and they had already written prose passage essays about the significance of food or celebration scenes in their choice of contemporary novel. Naturally, any part of this assignment could be modified or eliminated.
Through this assignment, students not only found a creative outlet to synthesize many of the AP English Literature skills that they honed during the year, but they found a way to authentically connect with their families and traditions by creating, sharing, and consuming their culinary identities.
Nichole Wilson teaches Advanced Placement English Literature and English 4 at William Mason High School. She is also the Grade 12 ELA Team Leader at Mason, and a Teacher Leader Liaison for the state of Ohio. She is also an AP English Literature Consultant, Mentor, and Exam Reader, and has spoken about best practices at a number of conferences, including the Advanced Placement Annual Conference (2017, 2018, 2019) and the College Board’s National Forum (2013, 2015, 2017). Through the J. William Fulbright program, Nichole taught Literature, Language, and Media Studies at East Norfolk Sixth Form College in England. She has also worked as a journalist for a daily newspaper, and as a Public Relations Director and adjunct instructor at Mount Vernon Nazarene University. A consummate foodie who worked for years in the restaurant industry, Nichole frequently uses food and cooking metaphors to personally engage students and teachers in the big ideas of literary analysis. She speaks more about creating, sharing, and consuming a culinary identity — and the development of the food memoir assignment — in this TED Talk.
