AP English Literature Project Ideas for the End of the Year

The time after the AP English Literature exam is a strange one for teachers: our test is one of the first, students miss class frequently throughout the duration of AP exams, and they’re seniors . . . they are pretty much checked out. While there are some teachers who do nothing but watch movies, we just can’t. We also want to give our students one last chance to boost their grades. Enter the post-AP exam project. We have come up with several AP English Literature project ideas that hit that sweet spot between letting students relax and still making them do something (read: worthy of potentially raising their grade) until the school year ends.

A little context: For many years, we had almost an entire grading period (6 weeks) left after the AP exam. With this calendar, we had to get creative with AP English literature project ideas that were robust enough to fill such a lengthy amount of time, but were also something our we’re-almost-college-students-we’ve-checked-out-of-high-school seniors would buy into. Thankfully (mostly, it’s a bit of a Goldilocks problem), the academic calendar shifted, leaving us only a couple of weeks to fill, and our AP English Literature project ideas became a more pared-down attempt to give students one last chance to raise their grades minus having to keep them busy for what felt like an inordinate period of time.

Over the years, we tried a number of AP English literature project ideas (all of which had their strengths and weaknesses), so we’re sharing them here in hopes it sparks your creativity, which may be running low as summer approaches.

6 Post-Exam AP English Literature Project Ideas

Literary Adaptation Film Project

Our first year teaching AP Literature, we created a film comparison project in which students viewed six films centered on literary greats, William Shakespeare and Jane Austen:

• Because we were filling nearly six weeks, we started with a little mood setting (Shakespeare in Love and Becoming Jane)
• Then we paired a relatively faithful adaptation with a modern, “inspired by” adaptation (Taming of the Shrew and 10 Things I Hate about You; (Emma and Clueless)

Students completed basic study guides about each film as they viewed them. After, they completed a project of their choice analyzing one of the two faithful adaptations and comparing it to the modern adaptation.

This project only lasted a year, likely for several reasons: it was hard to make sure students watched all six films, and, because it was the end of the year, our classrooms seemed to have revolving doors with different students in and out every day. It was also a project with relatively “loose” guidelines. Some teachers thrive with this type of freedom. Not us. We liked clear directions and expectations, and the longer we taught, the more we leaned into this.

We did, though, find that we really enjoyed providing our students with accessible “texts” to help them manage more challenging ones, and the idea of semi-literary-related film units became our go-to.

Twelfth Night Projects

Our AP Literature curriculum didn’t originally include any Shakespeare (a story for another day, and we eventually changed our minds), so for a few years, we thought it would be a good idea to give students some exposure to the Bard in a low-stakes way. In retrospect, this project was a lot of work (yikes, we got nicer over the years!), but our students enjoyed it (especially since we showed the film and its modern adaptation She’s the Man in class).

After reading the play and viewing the films, students worked in groups to complete a characterization project (initially a life-size silhouette, later replaced by a Facebook page . . . look at us changing with the now-dated times), a musical interpretation for one scene of the play based on “Elephant Love Medley” from Moulin Rouge, a performance of intertwined love speeches, and an illustrated version (drawings or photographs welcomed).

Teen Film Genre Analysis

This was a year Steph taught AP Lit without Kate’s practical voice of reason, so she decided to change it up, create a presentation on the evolution of the teen film genre over time, and then have students write a final essay analyzing the use of the genre’s conventions in Rebel without a Cause and Mean Girls. It was fine, if a little academic for after the AP exam, but this didn’t last once Kate came back.

AP Lit Goes Hollywood

This was our most successful AP English Literature project idea and was, unsurprisingly, also the longest-lasting (five years). With the rationale that they were learning to apply their literary analysis skills to films “of literary merit,” (See everyone, you can use this type of thinking out in the world and not just in an AP class), we showed students a selection of Oscar-nominated films (which expanded from 4 to 6 over the years and varied slightly based on success with students, changing times, and new options):

• The Help (once; we would not recommend using this now)
• Argo (all five years)
• Silver Linings Playbook (once)
• Life of Pi (four years)
• The King’s Speech (four years)
• Midnight in Paris (four years)
• Nebraska (once)
• The Imitation Game (two years)
• Toy Story 3 (two years)
• La La Land (once)
• Fences (once)

The first year, we just asked students to enjoy the films while taking notes on a viewing guide and then select one for which to write an essay in response to an Open (or Q3, depending on your preferred lingo) Prompt released by the College Board. Over the years, we started adding flip book assignments and quizzes to offer students a chance to raise their grades in multiple categories.

As we mentioned earlier, for our last few years teaching AP Literature, our district changed our academic calendar so that school started in August and ended in the last week of May/first week of June. Now that we only had 2–3 weeks with our students after the AP exam, we had to abandon our lengthy film unit in favor of a shorter project. AP English Literature project ideas, always evolving, right?

Fairy Tale Children’s Book

We provided students with a selection of fairy tales (the original versions, not the Disney versions). We auctioned off the fairy tales (always fun), and then, working in groups, students created a modern children’s book adaptation of the fairy tale which they would read to the class in the last few days of school, children’s storytime style. The project was relatively easy, we enjoyed the students’ creativity in modernizing the stories, and the read-alouds made for a fun last few days of school.

Group Essay

Our last year teaching AP Literature was during the pandemic, so our usual projects wouldn’t work and weren’t really worth the effort to try to adapt. (We were tired. We were all tired.) Throughout the year of online learning, our students regularly participated in online discussion groups, in which they would analyze and create a written product for a short story, soliloquy (hi, Macbeth), or poem. In the last couple weeks before the AP exam, students wrote group essays about an assigned poem.

We were so pleased with the results of the process, we decided to give them the option to complete one more group essay in an effort to give the essay category of their grades one last boost. Students could opt out (it was their senior year, and we were in a pandemic, after all), but if they opted in, they had to commit and would be graded based on their effort and participation.

We had done group essays in-person before and weren’t particularly thrilled with the results. Being able to track participation in a Google Doc? A real game changer for us and our students.

What AP English Literature project ideas have you got this year? Do you like to have your AP students complete a fun or “fun” activity at the end of the year? Reach out to us at hello@threeheads.works or on Instagram @threeheads.works to share or to get more details about any of the ideas we’ve shared here. And best of luck to you and your students: you’re almost at the end!