Four Review Games & Activities for the AP Lang Exam

Test prep is a mixed bag of emotions for me. Teaching to any test is a quick trigger of my fury, but after time and experience with the AP Language and Composition exam, I’ve really shifted my mindset. In many ways, the entire course is test prep. The course is backwards designed: exam at the end, curriculum built from back to front to support the skills needed to perform on said exam. But what’s different about the Lang exam than any other test I’ve ever experienced in the secondary education world is that I care about these skills.

Are the timing constraints, blind prompts, and other testing factors perfect? Not by a long-shot, but time after time, I’ve seen my students flourish as writers over the course of a year as they prioritize the skills that show up on the exam.

So here’s the thing: we don’t talk much about the exam during the year. Yes, we do some timed writes, but those are for me to measure progress and less about “prepping” for the exam. But when it gets closer to exam time, we do start to talk more about the components of the exam and discuss the different ways students would benefit from reviewing the coursework and practicing the skills before test day.

These are four of my favorite review activities that I wanted to pass along. I hope you find a few gems here and can take a bit of the workload off your shoulders this May!

1. Choice BoardS

Not every student needs to work on the same things, and this is where a choice board comes in so incredibly handy. With a choice board, you can create categories of review study and load each category up with options that will review, give practice, or challenge students as they prepare for the exam. I design my choice boards in either Google Slides or Canva. In Slides, I build the board using VIEW —>. TEMPLATE, basically building out the “background” of the slide. Then, I add buttons on top of that background that are clickable and linked to various review materials. In Canva, I make the board, link each box, and then share a VIEW ONLY link with students. It makes no difference at all what you use — it’s all up to your comfort level. I have one made and ready to share if you want to take a peek and see if what I have will work for your students, too.

2. Mother Knows Best (Disney)

When it comes to reviewing for RA, there’s nothing more that I love than using some Disney. Disney songs (and so many other songs in musicals) are plot based, therefore, the characters that are singing often have an agenda of some sort. Take Mother Godel, for instance. After kidnapping the princess to take advantage of her magical hair, Mother Godel has a lot invested in this tower situation. It’s imperative that she keep Rapunzel in that tower locked away, so when Rapunzel starts to get a bit curious and ask questions, Mother Godel shuts down that show pretty darn fast. Using Disney songs and movies are a playful way to review RA skills, and at this time of the year should be pretty easy for students to dive into in small groups without teacher assistance. I also use these to introuce rhetoric, but a Mother Godel lesson in October is a very different from one in May. Use it how it best suits you!

3. Commencement Speeches

There are many benefits to using commencement speeches for exam review:

• They fit into the end of the year feel and thematically feel like a natural fit this time of year

• Commencement addresses are frequently used on FRQs if you check out past exams

• There are plenty of engaging, interesting speakers to choose from all across YouTube

Depending on the speech, you might need to amend the length, but other than that, these speeches are abundant and easy to find. I like to take these speeches and break them up into pieces and make small groups experts on each piece. We then bring the pieces together for a “work as a whole” conversation and that is usually very powerful in preparation for exam day.

A few more speeches I love using:

4. Spare Change Game Show

If you’re looking for a whole class, interactive, hysterical and fun way to practice argument, The Spare Change Gameshow is it. All you need is a coin to flip and a timer! Using my slide deck, students are paired up and face off arguing for and against a wide set of claims. My favorite part of this exercise is that the coin decides the students’ argumentative fate: heads must argue the affirmative, and tails must argue the negative. It makes no difference whether or not they actually agree or disagree with the claim: they must comply with their coin’s decision.

So there you have it, folks. My four favorite ways of exam prep before the AP Lang Exam. I hope one of these resonated with you and that you have a wonderful end of your school year with students. Let me know in the comments how you’re feeling this year and which of these review materials you plan on using!

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