Q 3 Database Assignment to Prep for the AP Lang Exam

Here's an assignment that give my students each year before the AP Lang exam to help them with their argument essays. That assignment is Q3 database. And so I've varied how do it each year. This year they're doing it on slides instead of Google Docs. But basically the premise is have students come up with about three to five examples for different categories. This year we're doing three examples. So for example, have them come up with three historical figures or events that they know about. And basically they write brief summary about it. And then they think about some keywords that that example could relate to for an argument prompt. So keywords would be like prompt topics like justice or resilience or things like that. The idea is to get them to think about the knowledge that they already have. So for instance, if they're taking AP Push and they studied figure in that class, they could use that knowledge for this assignment. So they're not looking up new information, but rather repurposing information that they already know or information from other assignments. There are other categories as well. So besides historical figures or events, there's also current events. And we did current events project earlier this year. So they get to reuse that information. They also write about three personal experiences. There is an outside knowledge category. So this could be like pop culture or sports. We also have reading category. So for this one, give them list of some of the anchor pieces that we've read throughout the year with summary to kind of remind them what it was about, but then they write about it on their own as well and add those keywords. So basically, if you're familiar with CHORES, they're taking the letters of CHORES essentially and writing about that with maybe few other categories mixed in. This is an assignment that you as student can do or as teacher you could assign it to your students. But will tell you the disclaimer that give my students each year. And that is cannot promise that the database is going to help. Each year about 50% of my students say that they used something that they wrote about in their database on the exam. But again, sometimes it just doesn't work out that way and that's okay. There isn't really list of things that students can study to cram for this exam. It's not like AP Push or Bio where you have stuff to memorize. However, if students are familiar with certain topics that they could write about well, it helps build confidence as they go into the exam. So that's what my students are working on this week to prepare for the exam.