Teaching Tips

If at all possible, we like to give students at least one full length mock exam to practice pacing and mental stamina throughout a long exam. In the past we have offered this on a Saturday or Sunday, and then offered additional after-school time slots for students unable to make the weekend exam. If this is not feasible in your school, you can split up the mock exam and have students take it during class. 

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There are numerous ways to go over practice exams, and we tend to modify our approach from year to year. One valuable (and quick) activity for the MC is to allow students about 10 minutes to explain the MC solutions to each other in small groups. This goes fast at the end of the year. But, usually, there are 4 or 5 problems that almost everyone struggled with and the groups won’t be able to figure out all the solutions.  For this reason, we post the solutions to all the MC around the room and hallway, and let students browse through the answers in groups. You’ll see a huge cluster of students at problem 17 or 23 or 87 or 91… It’s easy for the teacher to see which problems caused the most trouble and students can read your posted solutions. You will hear all the oh’s and a-ha’s!!

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Going over FRQs is tougher because there is so much material to discuss and the possible mistakes are numerous. We have found it helpful for students to grade their own FRQs immediately after they finished writing their responses at the mock exam. This way, they had already seen the scoring guidelines and what they should have written before they returned to class. Plus, it saves us hours of time grading hundreds of FRQs over the weekend!