AP Art History

AP Art History 2022-2023

Supplies:

  • 2 Inch Binder

Course Description:

What is art and how is it made? Why and how does art change? How do we describe our thinking about art?

Through these essential questions, students explore the big ideas of AP Art History, effectively and precisely articulating an artwork’s meaning and function, its maker’s methodology and the ways it reflects and affects its historical and cultural context. With these core questions as the foundation, this course is organized into five chronological units, emphasizing daily practice of questioning techniques, methods of discussion, analytical paradigms, guided discovery, and independent learning. These enable our students to develop critical thinking and visual literacy skills with which they can mine meaning from any artwork they encounter throughout their lives.

Course Outline:

  • This course is broken down into 5 chronological units, each of which takes us approximately a 6 week grading period to cover and test. This will ensure we finish the content in advance of the AP test in May, with time left to review all content. There is also a week of introduction time at the start of the year and three weeks of enrichment activities at the end after the AP exam.


  • Throughout the course, students will complete a Full Visual Analysis on key works from the image set that include full identification, sketching the work, form, function, content, context, vocabulary and elements and principles used. These are bound into books for each of the five units.


  • At the completion of study in each culture, students will populate a chart of the major works of 2-D , 3-D, architecture and key events figures and vocabulary.


  • On a weekly basis, students are given a list of works to review from the Smarthistory website review questions are asked based on what they have learned in class.


  • Hands-on art activities connected to course content will occur every 3 weeks.


  • At the completion of each Content Area (CA) students are given the Essential Knowledge (EK) and Enduring Understandings (EU) to generate their own test questions on the works studied, in order that they have a strong review at the end of each CA. These questions may be added to the Unit test.


  • Students are given both essay exam and multiple choice exam questions throughout the course in addition to planned exam dates.


  • Students have a final project at the midterm and end of the year. Half way through the course, students will be asked to create an Architecture Book. In the second semester, after the AP test, they will create an Artist Birthday Party.