The Possibilities of the AP Classroom

Photo Credit: Eric Terrade

One of my favorite classes to co-teach in is art classrooms.   Art teachers understand the importance of performance based assessment and students needing time to rehearse and practice both artistically and linguistically.   The language is rich with Tier 3 vocabulary and more importantly Tier 2 words.  I had the pleasure of working with a co-teacher named Victoria for one year on AP Studio Art, which despite being a portfolio based AP course requires intensive academic English.   My school at the time was comprised of bilingual students with different degrees of English proficiency. It was an absolute joy.

I had the pleasure of working with other AP courses as an EAL specialist.  The biggest challenge that I experienced was not the dense content, or my students developing English proficiency, but rather the great bravado of the AP; the notions of what an AP class is and an AP class isn't.  In classes like Victoria's and others, co-planning was a reciprocal process, a balancing of the content needed and the ELL strategies that were important for students to access the content and develop academic discourse.  It was a synergistic relationship centered around students and formative assessment, rather than an external exam.  

That is why when Victoria shared the Atlantic article Rewriting Art History by Jacob Urist I was excited to read it.   It may be a year old, but the message still rings true. I applaud the College Board for analyzing a test and making the appropriate changes to diversify the artists and narrow the content in order to allow for more depth.   This also allows for a pedagogical shift, where teachers are able to design a variety of educational experiences, rather than frantically covering art from the Stone Age to today.  I wonder what other AP exams will follow suit?

What strategies might be integrated into an AP Art History (or rather any AP class) class in order to benefit ELL students?  What are the possibilities?

• A favorite of mine is the Socratic Seminar with a combination of Inner/Outer Circle or Fishbowl.  This is a more structured class discussion that allows for the inner circle to go first and the outer circle to reflect upon the depth of discussion.  Preparing and participating for discussion can be scaffolded with graphic organizers and sentences starters.
• Another favorite strategy for when their is a lot of text that needs to be covered, processed and mastered is the Jigsaw strategy.  This works best for nonfiction texts.  The first grouping can be grouped homogeneously (and where reading and speaking strategies can be rehearsed and mastered), but the "home" group can be grouped heterogeneously, where concept mastery is required. This allows for coteachers to offer the "just right" degree of support in reading and language instruction, as AP content is being discussed. Once again, different degrees of scaffolding like sentence stems, talking cards, and graphic organizers could be used.
• Finally, I enjoy the "Find Someone Who" as a method of end of unit review.   The game can be "bingo" based in nature.  It is a way to review a large breadth of content.

I didn't invent any of these strategies. Many of them have been around for decades.  What we know is that these are required for English Language Learners to access the content and develop academic language.   These are the types of strategies that need to be interwoven into teacher lesson planning and in the AP teacher's instructional toolbox.  The Atlantic article is very clear in highlighting the inequity in access to AP classes.   These strategies are the micro-decisions that we can do as teachers to rebalance these systems.

What strategies have you found successful for ELL students in your AP classroom?

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Photo credit: Annie-Spratt