Atwood on AP®: Essential Skills for Improving AP English

Mike talks with Jennifer Camara-Pomfret, longtime AP English teacher, instructor for Mass Insight, and Department Chair at Seekonk High School. Topics include strategies in writing the Argument and Synthesis essays, making sure students “fill their cups” with knowledge including current events, history, and literature.
Jen also emphasizes the need to “stay on the pole” or stick your thesis statement and respond logically to prompts with relevant lines of reasoning. She shares insight on her AP Language units, activities, and curriculum that help her students to master skills, as well as improve their close reading ability and FRQ writing performance.

In this episode, host Mike Atwood sits down with Jessica Stokes, an experienced AP teacher from Research Triangle High School in Durham, North Carolina. With over 12 years of experience across four grade levels of high school English, including Advanced Placement courses and Creative Writing, Jessi brings a wealth of knowledge to the discussion.

Mike and Jessi delve into a variety of topics, including personalized, digital, and project-based learning, as well as flipped classrooms and AP curriculum planning. They also explore creative strategies for teaching essential skills to all students, drawing on Jessi's expertise in curriculum building with learning platforms and open-source learning management systems.

Tune in to gain insights into the latest teaching methods and best practices for engaging high school students and preparing them for success in college and beyond.

AP Language and Literature teacher and host, Mike Atwood interviews AP® guru, John Williamson about the best practices and essential skills required for effective AP instruction. Throughout the conversation, John points to how teachers need to focus on teaching students the art of weaving in “Can’t Touch This!” abstract ideas into their FRQs in order to elevate lines or reasoning, creating sophistication. The two discuss the essential use of creative graphic organizers to analyze ideas, and organize key planning points in essays, as well as the use of multi-cultural literature blended in with what used to be “The Literary Cannon” for required student reading. John even poses the question “Is there even a Literary Cannon anymore?”
His mantra of focusing on quality instruction and best practices, as well as the idea that “Less is more” when it comes to assigning reading and longer essays becomes clear as shares his rich experience as an AP® teacher, College Board leader, Dean of P12 Programs and Superintendent Model Laboratory School at Eastern Kentucky University.
He is also the author of Ideas in Argument and Ideas in Literature from Bedford / Macmillan

This episode, Mike sits down with Mary Jo Zell, former ELA department chair at Keller High School and co-author of Ideas in Argument - Building Skills and Understanding for the AP® English Language Course, to talk about best practices in AP® Lang including:

• The use of graphic organizers to improve student writing and close reading skills
• Textbook writing
• The benefits of APSI training for new AP teachers
• Strategies for all three Free Response Questions