charts!
Charts!
CHARTS: AN INTRODUCTION, EXPLANATION AND ADVICE
Throughout the year you will be receiving several charts in this class, of which these are the first. The primary purpose of these charts are to help you review at the end of the year for the AP exam, especially for items from the beginning of the year which are almost entirely forgotten by the time May rolls around. In some cases the charts will also be allowed to help you either in preparing for an in-class essay (as is the case for the Early Civilizations chart), or for use while taking that in-class essay. In addition, in some cases the charts will be assigned for a grade. I will try as much as possible to assist in the filling in of the charts for the first time (as you can see I have filled in some of each of the charts), but the information will be found in the readings.
Let me take this opportunity to say that charts are almost universally abhorred, but also pretty much universally considered to be one of the single most helpful items to complete and use in preparation for the AP exam. Your predecessors really encouraged me to “make them do the charts.” I would listen to what they had to say.
Let me also tell you a couple of things about work in this class. It was generally (but not universally by your predecessors) recommended to work with classmates to complete some of the work in this class (for instance in the completion of charts, but not for in-class essays, tests, or book reports). They generally also said to make sure you can work with the people in your groups (so not always your friends) but to keep the groups small and manageable (4 max).
From my side I too recommend working in groups, but I would like notification in advance of who you intend to work with on the assignments, an email will be considered sufficient notification as long as it contains the same information that you place on the assignment (that is your group members’ names) and sufficiently in advance, not just the day before it is due. Let me also take this opportunity to say that this does not mean that you should simply copy your group members’ materials to your paper, and if you are caught at school all parties involved will be penalized to the full extent of my abilities. However, if you are truly working on it together, you will know in advance, tell me about it and in some cases maybe even work on it together on a computer (but then I would like an electronic copy as well).
On that final note let me also say that most assignments that I give you in this class I will have available in electronic format (that is a computer file) that I would be happy to email to you as long as you email me the request (I will not remember a request given orally in class in most cases). For those of you with, shall we say, challenging handwriting, I really encourage to take full advantage of this opportunity.
As always, feel free to email me with any questions just do not leave it until the last minute as I am good about replying to email, but not instantaneous. With that said, enjoy your first charts!!!
Mrs. Bond-Lamberty's JMM APWH Website
