Final Exams Approaching

A lot is happening this coming week.  ASB is spearheading Spirit Week in which there are themes for each day to build up to a rally on Friday and prom on the weekend.  Throughout these potential distractions is part 1 of the final exam.

To help prepare students, I gave two "mini-finals" and returned them with solutions to keep and study this past week.  Many students did well, but almost all will admit they underperformed on it largely due to simple errors in calculation and/or how they wrote their work.  The hope is that the conditioning of how they structure their work will translate to the final exam and the May 11 AP exam.

Why Are Students Taking Their Final Exams In April?

The final exam requires three hours of testing, plus numerous days afterward to grade and score.  The calendar from now until the end of the year is pretty packed.  To understand the remainder of the year, it is best to look at this backwards.

• The final week, week 20 of the semester, consists of three days on modified schedule (Memorial Day is a holiday).  Half of the students are seniors do not attend class those three days because of preparations for graduation.  If I give seniors the final sooner than the others, it would create an equity issue and logistical issue with half of them testing while others are conversing about math.

• Week 19, May 18 - 22:  This is the last week that seniors attend class.  The grades for them are due to the district this week.  This would seem like a good time for final exams but there are potential complications.  On Friday, May 22, seniors will participate in Senior Dodgeball and will not attend class most of the day.  That leaves four in-class days this week.  Giving the final this week assumes that 1) I can grade and score them all - and finalize semester grades - by the deadline (probably Thursday morning?), and 2) no student will be sick and miss a day.  That eliminates this week.

• Weeks 17 and 18, May 4 - 15:  AP testing.  Students will miss days because of tests they may be taking for other classes.  I couldn't give a final during these two weeks without overwhelming them and impacting their preparations for other tests, assuming they would be present.  Additionally, it would be a logistical nightmare to scatter multiple exams over different days.

That leaves Week 15 (this coming week) and Week 16 (next week).  This coming week, students will do their free response portion on Thursday - and their multiple choice portions next week.  There is great urgency in getting every student to complete the free response portion by Thursday.  Friday is a rally day and some students are scheduled to miss class to participate in preparations.  The sooner I get all the exams, the sooner I can score them and return them to students to keep and study for the AP test.  My goal is to return it to them by Thursday April 30.  

Structure Of The Final Exams

The difficulty level and structure of the finals will mirror that of the AP test.  Though the AP test will be done with a laptop, I will not administer the test on a computer.  Students will have to rely on paper, pencil/pen, and calculator.  It is strongly recommended students use pencil or erasable ink for testing.  

Free Response:  There will be a total of four free response questions (FRQs) - two calculator and two without.  Each question will have three parts.  The questions were originally written with four parts, but I will strike one on each FRQ.  The reason for omission of one part is because of the time expectations.  Typically, the AP test allows for 15 minutes per FRQ.  Since four FRQs would mean 60 minutes, that runs over the available time in a period (57 minutes assuming we test immediately upon entry).  Trimming one part from each question addresses that.  This makes FRQ day a 45-minute test, but "50 minutes" will be written on the test.

• Students will begin with the two calculator FRQs first, then put away their calculators either after 25 minutes or when they transition to noncalculator section ahead of time.  Once the calculator is put away, it cannot be retrieved.  Students can still revisit the calculator portion, but they would not be able to use technology to further complete it.

• These FRQs will represent my best guess on what their AP test will have.  Once they are graded and scored, the questions and solutions will be released publicly for students to examine and study.  The solutions will also include the parts I omitted from their final exam.  

Multiple Choice:  There will be calculator and no-calculator portions.  All questions are ABCD, a format AP transitioned to a few years ago.  Like the AP test, students can guess without consequence for wrong answers.  The questions are a mixture of past AP test questions and self-generated questions.  The students will have already seen most of the questions in the study materials I have provided.  Because they contain actual AP test questions, I am not allowed to release them publicly.