At the end of June, I attended a Summer Institute for AP World, which I’ll be teaching in addition to APUSH this school year. The Summer Institute was beneficial for World as well as APUSH. As a result, I decided to redo my APUSH curriculum.
To start, I wanted to accurately teach each time period with how much of my instruction it represents.
Here’s the number of class days I will be spending on each time period, including assessments:
147 days of instruction until APUSH Exam
- 2 personal days
- 2 conference days
- 2 snow days
- 1 ap pre registration day
- 9 days of review
- 1 day First day of school
- 1 day to go over thesis/contextualization
- 3 days of wiggle room – PSAT Day, Counselor days, etc.
125 days
Period 1 = 5% = 6 days including a quiz
Period 2 = 10% = 12 days including an assessment
Period 3 = 12% = 15 days including an assessment
Period 4 = 10% = 12 days including an assessment
Period 5 = 13% = 16 days including an assessment
Period 6 = 13% = 16 days including an assessment
Period 7 = 17% = 21 days including an assessment
Period 8 = 15% = 19 days including an assessment
Period 9 = 5% = 6 days including a quiz
I also realized there were some holes in my instruction with my videos. Although I covered almost everything in my key concept videos, I wanted to go more in depth, so I began doing the videos in order.
I have 4 videos for period 1, but 6.5 days of instruction. For period 2, I have 6 videos and 12 days of instruction. I usually do a video a night, but I may do a video every two days. In between, I plan on focusing more on historical thinking skills. I’ve already started to incorporate them into my Enhanced Video Guides, (for an example, click here: APUSH Review- Video #14- State Constitutions And The Articles Of Confederation After The American Revolution (Key Concept 3.2, II, A-B; 3.3, I, C)) but I will do even more in class.
I also plan to give more timed, in-class essays for my students.
We’ll see how it all works out and I’ll be blogging again this year.
Good luck!