Even though it feels like the whirlwind of the school year just ended, it’s never too early to start thinking through what you want your course to look and feel like next school year. Whether you are a veteran AP® U.S. Government and Politics teacher, or are teaching it for the first time, there is much to think about when building your course. This post covers how I think through planning my own course, complete with a sample syllabus and pacing guide.
When thinking about how I might want to change my class for the following year, I start by reflecting on what went well and what could be improved. I review exam data, ask my students what they liked or didn’t like about the class, and talk with my teacher network (outside my school and online!) about how the year went. Each of these strategies helps me identify areas of strength and weakness and gives me somewhere to start for planning the next year.
Data can be one of the most useful tools to show where you can improve your practice from year to year. Depending on your reflection practice and school policies, you may have several different types of data points to review, including unit tests, final exam, and AP® exam data.
Unit test data can help you identify what strategies work best for which areas of content. For example, after comparing my unit test data I decided to teach the argumentative essay in Unit 1 (Foundations of American Democracy) instead of Unit 2 (Interactions Among Branches of Government) because the foundational document analysis strategies from Unit 1 lend themselves better to supporting the argumentative essay.
Comparing final exam data from year to year can also help you assess your teaching practice more holistically. How do this year's final exam scores compare to last year’s? The year before? What was different about your teaching practice from year to year?
Finally, AP® exam scores and the reports they generate can help you to drill down to strategies for specific topics and skills assessed on the exam.
Talking to my students about what they liked and didn’t like about the course has been a tremendous help as I planned my course this summer. This year they let me know they needed more support with the foundational documents, so I built in more time in the beginning of the course to walk through document analysis with them. I also added a foundational document quiz within each unit to help them know where they stand prior to the unit test and the AP® Exam. Surveying students is a popular practice toward the end of the school year. To get them started and to set expectations for what kind of feedback you’re looking for, share some of your own reflections. A great way to get input from your students is to ask for one good and one bad thing from their course experience.
One of the greatest lessons from the pandemic is that we are not meant to do this life alone. Teaching is no different. Your teacher network, whether confined to your building or a Facebook group, is a great place to reflect on the year and plan for the next. Compare strategies from the year, data if you feel comfortable doing so, and brainstorm how to make the next school year better than the last with your network.
After you have identified areas of strength and weakness in your course, it’s important to set an intention for the school year. What do you want the year to look and feel like for you and for your students? Heading into the 2021–2022 school year, my intention is to be more authentic. In juggling in-person/virtual/hybrid learning last year I ended up assigning and taking up a bunch of things that didn’t truly move students toward or assess mastery of content. Because of this, I felt rushed and didn’t make time for projects and cooperative learning which were once a hallmark of my class. This school year, I will make sure that all of my assignments and assessments authentically move students toward and measure progress toward mastery of content and I plan to bring back some of the projects we have done in past years that support that mastery.
With this intention in mind, I created the syllabus and pacing guide below. As I worked on these documents, a helpful tool was the AMSCO® Advanced Placement® United States Government & Politics book. I adopted it mid-year last year and I am excited to be able to use it all year in 2021–2022. It is laid out following the Course and Exam Description exactly. The layout helped me trim some superfluous assignments from this past year that did not progress students toward mastery. It also held me accountable to teaching the class in the order that the College Board intended. I know I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t taught the Civil Liberties and Civil Rights unit when school moved to virtual last spring! When the AP® U.S. Government and Politics course was first redesigned, a friend and mentor of mine, who had experience with recently redesigned AP® courses, advised me not to be afraid to pare down what I had done before and focus on the redesigned content. Three years later I feel like I have finally accomplished that.
The AMSCO® coursebook was also helpful as I thought through my assessment strategy for the year. The sample questions at the end of each chapter and unit made an excellent bank to pull questions from for reading check quizzes, unit tests, and my new document and cases quizzes.
One of the biggest changes I am making this year in my quest for more authenticity is that I am not taking up as many classwork assignments. Apart from ongoing projects I will only take the weekly FRQs mentioned in the assessment section of the syllabus under classwork. I pulled many of these FRQs from the AMSCO® coursebook. I hope that by collecting fewer classwork assignments it will allow me the opportunity to provide my students with more high-quality feedback on their writing and content comprehension.
The text was also helpful in pacing my course to leave time for the projects that I missed this year. Each chapter being divided into topics makes them much easier for students to digest and I found that I did less reteaching in the latter part of the year when I began using the AMSCO® coursebooks than in the beginning of the year when I did not have them.
I hope you find the syllabus and pacing guide helpful. What intentions and goals will you set for yourself and your class this year?
Paula Franklin teaches AP® US Government and Politics at West High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. She has been teaching the course for 9 years and has served as an AP® Reader, table leader, and early table leader at the AP® US Government and Politics Reading over the past 5 years. She has a B.A. in Political Science and an M.S. in Theory and Practice in Teacher Education from the University of Tennessee, and an Ed.S. in Instructional Leadership from Lincoln Memorial University. Paula is a 2017 Milken Educator, a Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes Fellow, an AP® US Government and Politics Mentor, and a member of the iCivics Educator Network.
Advanced Placement® is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.
