Easy, Low-Prep AP Lit Exam Review Ideas for Teachers

As we creep toward the beginning of May, AP teachers and students around the world feel stress levels ratchet up each day. Some teachers spend a lot of time doing AP Lit exam review. Some AP teachers do little more than announce the date of the exam. While we are firm believers that the AP English Literature and Composition exam is not one you can cram for, we do believe there’s nothing wrong with a little last-minute review to put the mind at ease.

The truth is, for better or worse, there’s not a whole lot you can do in the weeks before the AP Lit exam to dramatically affect students’ scores (and really, it’s important to remember that any high-stakes English test relies on the cumulative effects of our students’ entire educational careers). Unlike many other AP exams, the AP Lit Exam is almost entirely skill, not content, based, and students who haven’t learned to close read literature or write effective essays by April aren’t going to magically get it by May thanks to a few well-timed exam review sessions.

In terms of AP Lit exam review, we believe its benefit for our students is more about their mental states: we want to set them at ease with a recap of what they have learned, and remind them they already know what to expect on the test. We find this is the best way to ensure they show up on test day ready to put forth their best effort.

Here are some last-minute activities you can do with your students in the weeks prior to the exam to best position your students for success on test day.

8 AP Lit Exam Review Activities

Make Sure Your Students Know What to Expect on Exam Day

Probably the best thing you can do for your students at this point is make sure they know exactly what the AP Literature Exam will look like. It’s likely your students already know what to expect at this point because your class structure all year has been geared toward preparing them for the exam and you’ve probably been using released College Board prompts, but in our classroom experience, and Steph’s experience teaching AP Exam Review courses, students don’t always make the connection between what happens in class and what they’ll see on the exam.

Who doesn’t feel anxious when they think they don’t know what to expect? A quick review of the exam particulars acts as a (gentle) reminder they actually do know what to expect on the exam.

Review Key Literary Terms

This is a bit of a deceptive one. Reviewing literary terms can sometimes make students think all they need to do is identify examples of them on the exam and they’ll be golden. We all know that this is not the case, but when you’re dealing with an exam in which there’s little chance that “cramming” is going to be of much use, reviewing these terms not only addresses any lapses in memory, it also empowers students so they feel like they’re “doing something” to prepare for the exam.

They will, of course, encounter these terms on the multiple-choice portion of the test, and they should refer to them for at least two of their three essays, so it’s not a waste of time, but we always try to remind our students that knowing the definition of the term is a prerequisite; on the exam, they are expected to recognize its application and discuss its significance to the meaning of the work.

We usually gave a literary terms test in the weeks before the exam as part of our AP Lit exam review activities in order to motivate students to review the terms, and we eventually created a series of Kahoots to ensure students reviewed throughout the year (you can get both here and save yourself some prep time). If your students are already struggling with overwhelm, don’t pile too much on: there’s a relatively narrow list they truly need to know in order to be successful.

Go Over a Few Practice Multiple Choice Passages

Many of us struggle to know how to effectively work multiple-choice practice into our daily AP English Literature lesson plans. After all, we’re teaching a skill, so no matter what text we’re working on as a class, our students are getting practice close reading a wide variety of texts.

But again, it’s helpful for our students to see the format and structure ahead of time, get used to the College Board’s phrasing, identify their own tendencies to over or under interpret passages or misread questions, and review test-taking strategies. And while it may not seem worthwhile (or practical) to go over these passages in detail often, doing so at least a few times as part of your AP Lit exam review does help students feel more prepared.

Practice Analyzing Prompts, Writing Thesis Statements, and Making Outlines

We don’t recommend having students write full essays in the last couple weeks before the exam (unless, of course, it’s the culminating assessment for your last unit). No student, and especially no AP student, likes to write essays that aren’t read and evaluated by a teacher, and you don’t need to add to your own grading pile at this point.

More importantly, if a student is struggling, the last thing they need in the days before they take the AP Lit exam is to receive poor essay scores and negative feedback. It will only undermine their confidence (whether or not that confidence is warranted). If a student comes to you wanting to discuss a particular essay, that’s a different story and can be a valuable experience, but we digress.

This is not to say there’s no point in reviewing for the essay portion of the exam. We liked to distribute a few practice prompts we could work through as a class. We focused on helping students analyze the prompt to ensure they were addressing all parts, write clear and defensible thesis statements that responded to the prompt, and create an outline that established a line of reasoning and addressed all parts of the thesis statement.

Our students tended to find the experience valuable, and it was a way for us to give some writing instruction and feedback without overburdening ourselves.

Review the Novels You’ve Read in Class

In addition to studying literary terms, students need to come to the exam armed with an assortment of novels of literary merit they could write about for their third essay.

In order to help students prepare throughout the year for their final review, we assigned a flip book activity at the end of each novel or play unit that, if completed correctly, would help them review each text’s setting, point of view, theme, characters, plot, and key literary devices. This was an activity we strongly encouraged them to do as part of their own AP Lit exam review activities.

Even if you don’t assign these throughout the school year, having students create flip books in the weeks before the exam would be a worthwhile activity and allow them to show off their artistic flair.

Go “Speed Dating” with Released AP Prompts

As we mentioned above, the third essay students write is about a novel/play/epic poem of their choice, that is, theoretically, of literary merit. Throughout the year, we selected an assortment of released prompts from past years’ administrations of the AP Lit exam for students to choose from as their final assessment for assigned novels and plays, but on the actual test, students do the opposite, getting one prompt and selecting the text they write about.

They need practice determining which text(s) would best fit a given prompt, and they are going to have to make that decision in a matter of minutes on test day. Creating a “speed dating” activity where students have 5–10 minutes to read a prompt, select a work of literary merit, and draft a thesis before passing the prompt to someone else as part of our AP Lit exam review activities was an engaging way to help students prepare for this aspect of the exam and helped them think about the works they read in different ways.

Host the “AP Lit Awards”

Another way we prepared students to remember and think creatively about their library of texts was by hosting the annual AP Lit Awards. We created a Google Slides presentation with categories like:

• “Character You Would Most Like to Spend the Day With” (Pecola Breedlove, Mr. Darcy, and Hamlet’s BFF Horatio all made appearances)
• “Most Pessimistic View of Humanity” (students were surprised to realize Pride and Prejudice and The Importance of Being Earnest were, perhaps, ultimately more pessimistic about humanity’s future than The Road)
• “Most Obnoxious Quotation from This Year’s Literature” (“Okay” from The Road almost always won)
• “Novel, Play, Short Story, or Poem Your Parents Should Be Assigned to Read” (usually Heart of Darkness so they would have to share their child’s pain)
• “Child You Would Most Like to Adopt” (usually a run-off between the boy from The Road and Pecola Breedlove)

Some of the categories came straight from released AP prompts like “Best Use of a Symbol,” “Best Use of a Scene of Violence,” or “Best Use of an Act of Betrayal.” It was a fun way to review the texts we read (and gave us an opportunity to discuss which of students’ independent reading novels might work for the exam), and it was a low-stress, high-engagement activity, especially for the days when lots of students were out of class taking other AP exams.

Wrap Up Instruction with Some Last-Minute Tips (Because Lots of Multiple Exam Takers May Be Absent)

In the last couple class meetings before the AP exam, we liked to go through a presentation with reminders about exam format, test-taking strategies, common mistakes our students loved to make, essay tips, and the importance of a good night’s sleep the night before the exam. It set our students’ minds at ease and allowed them to feel some measure of control and preparedness, regardless of their performance in the class throughout the year.

No matter what you do, try to end your last couple days before the exam on a positive note. What’s done is done, and everyone will be best served by going into the exam with a positive attitude and at least a measure of confidence.

What are your go-to AP Lit exam review activities? How much time do you spend out-and-out preparing for the exam? Reach out to us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works to share or to get more details about any of the ideas we’ve discussed here. Best of luck to you and your students!