Addendum #5: A Way to Use College Board AP Review Videos + Interactive Lecture Strategy = A Step Toward Effective Curriculum and Instruction Coherency

As I’m talking with colleagues, several of us are grateful for the Advanced Placement Online Classes and Review Sessions. These resources are helpful for our emergency remote teaching and learning conditions, but they’re also important as a reminder and a model of what coherent and effective curriculum and instruction can be. 

As an experienced teacher of two levels of Advanced Placement English, I’ve been to many AP workshops over the years, but this year the PD and instructional support at a distance, even before the COVID-19, has moved to a new level of excellence and usefulness. (AP has also done much this year to clarify best-practice instructional goals and effective sequencing to help new and veteran teachers.)  

Once we get through the current crisis, I will likely do much more with adapting these sorts of videos as a central instructional support piece for my students. Meanwhile, here is my simple approach to using the videos: 

1. Take notes as you pre-watch the video using some sort of sticky-note method (I’ve got “my stickies” on my current browser.). I especially like the way a virtual sticky-note can stick with the individual video for future reference. Note what segments look most relevant to what you’ve taught your students, what you want them to learn, and what you might need to clarify.
2. Use the “Interactive Lecture” strategy as explained by Harvey Silver or some other thoughtful educator. (In my classes, I tend to find that video segments are effective somewhere between 5-20 minutes per session.) Find those stopping points and plan on sending the students off to practice the skill that is highlighted in your video. 
3. For your online assignment, develop your lesson sequence. Include the relevant links to the YouTube session, what to watch, and what you want students to do. With the help of right-click or control click, you can set and copy your link to the YouTube session to start at a specific spot. 

Here’s what I have as an option for a brief session of further study this weekend for juniors who plan on taking the AP Exam: 

• If you’d like some review and extension teaching on rhetorical analysis, watch the following AP video, and note any concepts or strategies that might help you do well with the complex rhetorical analysis task.
• https://youtu.be/35NsF5YgZcg?list=PLoGgviqq4845w6_VxQLtAmVypmSMtTd0r&t=869
• The link should start at about 14:30 minutes. Watch it for about 20 or more minutes.

(For our weekly lessons, I try to have some more specific practice steps, but this was a quick and live example that I could share now.)

Onward!