Help! I need somebody, help!- Anne Russell

First of all, I would just like to say thank you for a great year, Mr. Logsdon, it's been really fun getting to know you! Sorry, just had to get the sunshine and rainbows out of my system.

As far as the AP test goes, the practice essays and multiple choice were obviously effective to a degree. For the multiple choice, I think it helped when you showed us the breakdown of how many people missed what and covered the really bad ones, and the ones people had questions about. Going through each and every question is tedious, and usually loses people's attention. Letting people ask their own questions usually accomplishes nothing, granted higher scoring tests don't necessarily need gobs of time to go over. But the occasional multiple choice test to refresh our minds, as well as give us scores to compare throughout the year, has definitely helped. Although, maybe Fridays aren't the best days to do them:P

The essays are somewhat mixed. Of course writing the essays under time constraints is good practice. However, grading is sometimes not very helpful. Grading in small groups makes people too nice, while grading as a whole class takes a long time and sometimes makes people too open and sometimes too mean. One fix to this would be to grade another class's, so that no comments are personally offensive. Mandatory but brief, one-on-one commentary with you about one or two essays throughout the year would help, because in the end, your opinion (as a former grader) matters more than kids' in the class. I think the most effective essay tactics are, first off, being taught strategies of how to successfully write that essay, going through and outlining some together, writing our own, and then scoring essays, but with an emphasis on your grading.

Some things that have been questionable to me are the socratic seminars and both of our final assignments. Not to say that any of these assignments are useless or not worth the time, but it's hard to see how any of them relate to the test. Especially because neither the persuasive speech nor the PSA video are things we have really focused efforts on in class. I did enjoy the socratic seminars, I just wasn't sure of their importance in preparing for the AP exam. I'd say they were most effective in helping us get to the root of a text, but the format and style of the questions were most confusing to me. Class discussions, when participated in, are really effective for me in general, though.

Again, thank you for always listening to what we have to say, not judging me for asking stupid questions, and always being willing to help and talk to students, whether school-related or not. It has been a pleasure!