In this course, I will give sessions teaching the Document-Based Question (DBQ), Long Essay Question (LEQ), and Short Answer Question (SAQ) for students taking an AP History exam in May. I spent the last two summers grading essays for the AP World History: Modern Exam for the College Board, and I feel that I can use this experience to help students in all AP History courses (AP World History: Modern, AP US History, and AP European History) succeed.

My hope for this course is that students that join will communicate in the class conversation board about what parts of the writing they might need extra help in, the unit you are currently working on in your school, anything that was not clear that you've learned before, or whatever else you may need. If students don't have any suggestions on topics needed to be covered in a particular meeting, I will have a lesson prepared that covers one part of the document analysis or writing process that I think is especially necessary. Since this may be difficult with a larger class, I have capped the number of students in any particular meeting at twelve.

I plan to both teach skills during the 30-minute class and, when students are comfortable with the different elements of the essays, assign practice essays for homework and grade them myself. My teaching style is very engaging, using a large amount of student interaction and student-produced examples. Students are often asked to give self-references to concepts in order to enhance memory retrieval with important concepts. Students will be able to interact with each other and with me throughout the class.

Students joining this course should either already be part of an AP History course (AP World History: Modern, AP US History, or AP European History) or be actively self-studying in order to take an AP History exam. I will make sure that content is presented as if it were the students' first time learning the information, so as to accommodate for students who may be learning the elements of the DBQ, LEQ, and SAQ at different times than others.

In the event that students do not give suggestions of topics to cover in these meetings, here is a schedule of topics that I will prepare for the first four weeks of meetings:

Week of August 22 - Writing a Thesis
Week of August 29 - Intro to Contextualization
Week of September 5 - Document Analysis: Written Sources
Week of September 12 - Document Analysis: Visuals