Teaching Tips

In order to do well on the AP Exam, students need to know the content of the questions as well as the structure of the questions, and there’s no better way for them to see this than by trying to write some questions on their own!

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Have students work in pairs to create 2-4 test questions that are either multiple choice or free response. Direct students to write questions that range from straightforward/easy to challenging. Tell students that their questions must cover concepts from units 3-4 and incorporate at least three of the four representations (graphical, numerical/tabular, analytical, verbal). This helps students gain a greater understanding of what data needs to be given to be able to answer a question, and how that data can be represented. Allow students to be creative! Students enjoy coming up with their own contexts for derivative problems and realize quickly the challenge of choosing values and functions that are reasonable and usable. Some students even provide distracter information or make wrong answer choices stemming from common misconceptions. Students should provide a full solution on a separate piece of paper to ensure the solvability of their question (sometimes this is when they realize their numbers don’t actually work out!) 

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Once students have had time to put together their questions (about 10 minutes), have them try to solve each other’s questions. You may wish to collect them all and distribute them randomly or simply have students trade with another pair. To make things competitive, you could have prizes for “most challenging question”, “best conceptual question”, “most creative question”, etc.