The count down is on for the Spanish Language and Culture AP Exam! I’m preparing my third batch of Little Darlings to take their big test on May 16 and I’m feeling pretty good moving into CRUNCH TIME!

I thought it might be helpful to share the things we do leading up to The Big Day, especially if this is your first year of AP Madness.

The Month Before:

Final Exam: I schedule their Final Exam (the actual 2019 exam, released by College Board) the week before we go on Spring Break, using the same location they will take their actual exam, in our case, the Library. By trying out the exact location I can confirm the sound can be heard clearly and figure out the best places to seat students (and where NOT to seat students: places where the sound bounces around funny or they can’t see the clock or the sun streams right into their eyes.)

I schedule our final right before our Spring Break, so I can use my hours of flying time and airport waiting to grade Argumentative Essays, on my way to Mitten CI! If you know anything about me you know I HATE grading with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns, so I try to be strategic about when I assign them. (Full disclosure, I only grade two Argumentative Essays the entire year, all the rest they self score or peer score!) In January I gave them a different Practice Exam for their Fall Final, so after Spring Break, we compare their January and April scores and I report how much better everyone did. (Amazing, our class average was 22% higher on the multiple choice, or whatever) It makes us all feel good and a little less stressed! We also play around with this AP Score Calculator , set some goals for their AP Exam, and create a personalized homework plan to help them focus on their goals for the last few weeks before their Exam.

Personalized Homework Plan: Now, I am not a fan of homework, but in AP (and only in AP!) I assign weekly HW, usually a Duolingo Podcast to listen to or a topic to research related to the current AP theme. After reflecting on their final, they create their own plan and tell me what they’ll do at home each week. I preassign a zillion My AP Classroom practices and they can pick and choose to strengthen their weaker spots. Whether they do it or not is on them, by this point in the school year I am too tired to spend any energy on it.

A few weeks before:

Another Practice Exam: I want my Little Darlings to take a practice exam in one sitting because the stamina needed to power through 4 hours of a Spanish Exam is no joke. For the other practice exams, we needed to divide the exam over several class periods, but I really want them to experience the exam all at once. I give mine two options and I tell them they HAVE to do one:

• They can do a practice exam at home during Spring Break. I give them everything they need to take it at home, including a test booklet, scantron and writing papers. I post in Google Classroom a Google Slideshow that has links for all the audio recordings, built in timers, and links to record their audio using Formative, to walk them through the entire test. You can make a copy of my template here and add in specifics for your specific practice exam!

• For students who would prefer not to take a 4 hour exam during their Spring Break (who would?!), I schedule one evening the week after break where I administer the practice exam in my classroom. I call all the mama’s of the Little Darlings who didn’t do the Spring Break test to stress the importance of being here for the required practice exam. We start right after school and as they finish up, the famed Señor Chase stops by with a pizza delivery and we eat dinner together. I use the exact exam and slideshow as the Spring Break one. What happens if someone doesn’t do one of the options? Well…last year I told them it was required and everyone believed me. Fingers crossed that this year’s bunch buys it too! Like I said, I’m at the point in the year when I’m really tired and this is definitely one of those cases where my bark is worse than my bite, but hopefully no one tests it!

Small group / Individual Practice: I save the theme “Vida Contemporánea” for last. (Jane VanderBeek recommended this my first year teaching, since it feels lightest and they’re most familiar with the vocab. It has proven to be excellent advice!) I split our 90 minute block period into 2 segments during our last tema. For the first 45-50 minutes I teach a lesson focusing on something fun and light related to Vida Contemporánea like mate, tapas, ingredientes prehispánicas, el festival Yipao and música peruana. For the second half of the period, I teach a “mini lesson” and work with a small group on a specific skill, maybe supporting an argument with evidence, organizing the Comparación Cultural or feedback on the Conversación. Students can choose to join my lesson OR work independently to prepare for the AP exam. I created a slideshow that I drop into Google Classroom, with loads of practice activities from our textbook, Triángulo Aprobado. Through the slideshow, they can access the audios, answers, videos with tips and more. My school is all about “Voice and Choice”, so there you go!

Practice with the DAC App: My Little Darlings will use the DAC App on their ChromeLibros to record their oral responses on The Big Day. We practice with it, so they know where to find the App, how to log in and how it will look In Real Life. I’m not sure if College Board has released the DAC practice instructions yet, but the instructions are the same as previous year’s, so if you’ve got those, go for it!

One Week Before:

Gallery Walk: I hang 5 large pieces of paper around my classroom, each labeled with a different Free Response Task (Email, Ensayo Argumentativo, Comparación Cultural, Conversación Simulada) and one that says Selección Múltiple. I divide my Little Darlings into five groups and they rotate through the papers, adding strategies, useful vocabulary phrases or transitions, instructions, and tips for each task. It’s a good way to tie everything together that they’ve been practicing all year long, and we leave it up until the exam. My hope is that Little Darlings who look like they’re zoned out are actually memorizing all the useful suggestions on the Gallery Walk papers.🤞

The day before:

Test and label headphones- We do one final headphone check and then they label and decorate “their” headphones with stickers so they’re ready to go for The Big Day! It seems to make everyone feel better knowing that they have “their” headphones and we’re certain that they work!

Pep Talk: I tell them that I’m proud of them and all their hard word this year. I tell them that they’re ready to conquer their test. I remind them to charge their ChromeLibros and to go to bed early so they’re ready to do their best, or else.

Set Up: After school I help the librarian set up the tables for the test and deliver their headphones. I set out snacks and extra pencils, black pens and a little love note. And I pray, a lot!

Test Day:

Greeting: Some classes want to meet early to eat breakfast together before the test and others don’t seem to care one way or another. (If they’re not enthusiastic about breakfast, I just meet them outside the library to give high fives on their way into the test, and offer bubble wrap to the especially anxious ones. (Popping bubble wrap is a surprisingly effective stress buster!) If they’re into the breakfast idea, I make breakfast burritos, wrap them in tinfoil and load them into my crockpot to keep them warm, and we eat together before the head in to slay their exam.

Then I head back to my classroom, and pray some more! (and obsessively check the AP Spanish Language and Culture Teachers Facebook page for updates from teachers on the East Coast, who are three hours farther into their exams than we are!)

Post Test:

Score index cards: I got this suggestion from the aforementioned AP Spanish Language and Culture Teacher’s Facebook page. I wish I could remember who posted it! The idea is to give every student an index card and ask them to write their name and their prediction of the score they think they got. They turn in the card then the teacher also writes a predicted score on the card. In July when we get The Big News, jot down the actual score the student received on the same index card. (So one card has the students name, their prediction, the teacher’s prediction and their actual score) This practice has been useful to to help me calibrate my expectations and to reflect on how well I’ve taught the College Board expectations to my students by comparing their predicted and actual scores.

Take a deep breath and take some notes: Once you’ve got a chance to debrief with students about the exam, take notes about what they think when well and their suggestions for helping next year’s batch tackle the AP exam. What can you change, add, tweak to make next year even better, even smoother, even less stressful? That’s the best thing about this job of ours, we get to keep starting over, trying new things until we’ve got it figured out!

Wishing you all the best, AP teachers! ¡Sí, se puede!