Sorry to say but many colleges are NOT having semester finals but just another exam (this is in many classes not just chem). We say we are prepping kids for college but themn they come home saying they never had a final. Confusing!
Bruce Palmer wrote:
I was looking through the guidelines for AP Chemistry and it said one double period lab per week. What Brad said about 22 recomended labs and that it was "unreasonable" to expect all labs to be completed made me think. One semester at our school is 18 weeks Do we get 14 free weeks? I think that the people on the college level don't understand the high school calendar and economics.I don't teach AP chemistry for the test. I teach the students to help them prepare for college chemistry, not replace college chemistry. My former students have said for the most part while other students struggled with chemistry, they felt for the most part very comfortable and knew what to expect. (These emails are going into the audit)I know last year there were comments about how poorly students prepared/worked for finals. I want to know what college has a final covering an entire year, and why do the AP people expect high school students to excell at one? Would it not make more sense to have 2 AP exams (fall and spring) to "better match the college experience" which is what this whole audit process is about.I think I am just going to send in what I am doing now and see what happens.------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: /"Cline, Brad" <bcline@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>/ Reply-To: /kact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/ To: /<kact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>/ Subject: /[KACT] Re: AP Audits from Bruce/ Date: /Tue, 5 Dec 2006 08:45:24 -0600/ We are in the process of doing ours. Our AP coordinator is working with us to get some time off to work this out as it is a large amount of work to plow through. From a basic standpoint, you have to submit your syllabus including the content and lab activities you use in your course. I personally am glad to see them doing this and I understand exactly why they are doing it. As Kelly already has mentioned, there are people calling their courses AP which really don’t meet the criteria. This is an effort to get the courses structured to meet the criteria, so the AP course is actually an AP course instead of AP in name only. As we entered AP, I was worried our district would only support it in name only as a “selling point” for the district. This has helped me to get the real support I need from the administration as they must help me to meet the requirements. They are supporting me in producing a double block of time for the AP Chemistry class, so that I have enough time to cover all content and cover the 22 recommended labs. We haven’t started our audit process yet, but I’ve attended a conference on it and since my wife is the AP coordinator for our district, I have had some good inside looks at what we are going to have to do. There are manuals for helping out with this process and a good deal of info at AP Central at College Board’s website. http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/courseaudit Bradley L Cline Chemistry I, Chemistry II, Physics Instructor Goddard High School 2500 S 199th St West PO Box 189 Goddard, KS 67052-0189 bcline@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* kact-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:kact-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Kelly Deters *Sent:* Tuesday, December 05, 2006 8:11 AM *To:* kact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx *Subject:* [KACT] AP Audits from Bruce Bruce passed this question along to me: Also the AP audits are coming up in January. What do people think about this, what are they going to do, are they getting any help from anyone? Bruce Palmer Leavenworth High School ------------------------------------------------------------------------Stay up-to-date with your friends through the Windows Live Spaces friends list. <http://g.msn.com/8HMBENUS/2737??PS=47575> *************************************************** Replying to this email will send it to the entire group--use individual email addresses if you wish to direct a response to individual members. To post to the mailing list, send email to kact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe, change your settings or to search the archives, visit //www.freelists.org/list/kact
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