By Taylor Johnson and Mackenna Stewart
As finals approach, tensions rise across all grades. Some students, like the 9th graders, are concerned about the opportunity to take more challenging classes, such as AP World, or maybe you are like 11th and 12th graders who are just glad to be done with AP World.
However, current 10th graders have had to endure long hours and weekends filled with studying and, of course, the Heimler History Youtube channel.
The test is Thursday.
We decided to speak to a few 10th graders to see how they were feeling in the weeks and days leading up to the test. Coi Kilcrease had positive things to say about her teacher Mrs. Jesperson. “She’s so kind and cares about you more than just a student,” Coi said.
For many 9th graders hearing this can be very reassuring. As a 9th grader, before I took AP World, I was very nervous that I was going to get a teacher that was super strict and stern since it was a harder class. However, all of the AP World teachers are patient and there to guide their students through the course.
For rising 10th graders, it’s important to think about AP World as a course and not a class. Doing this will allow students to consider their progression instead of immediate success. One of the key performance indicators that will track this success is homework. Sometimes AP World homework can look like reading 4-8 pages, answering multiple choice questions, and/or answering short answer questions.
While this can be time-consuming, it is a crucial skill that will be used during the AP World Exam. During the Exam students will have 40 minutes to answer 55 multiple-choice questions, however, students will also have to analyze pictures or paragraphs before answering these questions.
By October, I was already feeling a little more confident in my writing ability, and also my homework time had gone down a little as well. “It makes me very happy when she only asks multiple choice questions or just short answer questions,” said Coi. I could tell she was thinking about the ruthless nights when we had to do both SAQs and MCQs.
While sophomore Ridley Newton believes Mr. Tuttle gives a lot of work that is really time-consuming, she thinks it’s really helpful. “He also grades fairly,” Ridley added. For Ridley, homework entailed a lot of essays, a lot of reading from the textbook, and SAQs. Writing and reading with efficiency are very crucial skills that students will acquire during their AP World course, which can also help them in classes like English.
When I asked her how she was feeling about the AP World exam, Ridley said she was “a little iffy on the first units” from way back in the fall semester. But as she prepares for the Exam, she reassures herself that her preparation will pay off, which has included taking timed multiple-choice tests and SAQs.
“Literally all our hands are hurting by the time we finish,” Ridley said jokingly, but I could sense that she would always remember the way her hand would shake and ache after every test. Oh yeah, did I mention that the final exam is all handwritten?
Just as Ridley is persevering, so is Coi, as she tries to figure out how to get the complexity point. “It’s called the unicorn point because not a lot of people get it. Basically, you are supposed to analyze the question from a different view,” Coi explained. “You can also get it by analyzing different variables like cause and effect, cause and change over time.” Coi plans to read through her book to identify different variables and themes throughout the book and of course use Heimler History on TikTok and Youtube to help her.
For the 12th graders, it’s officially been two years since they took the exam. Ava Petro and Sloane Santos both had Ms. May Beaver as their teacher. To prepare for the exam over the course of the year they started with SAQs, MCQs, DBQs, and last was the LEQs. They explained how helpful the tests were. “They were just like the exam,” said Sloane. They described the tests to be mostly multiple choice with either an SAQ or DBQ.
For homework, they had a textbook where they read certain passages and answered questions at the end. Sloane and Ava started preparing for the exam a month ahead of time. This flabbergasted Mackenna and me because we had not even looked at the content when the test was2 weeks away. Oops.
They both shared a favorite tool they used to study for the exam: the Crash Course books. “They gave an overview of every topic and were so helpful,” said Ava. Sloane said the book helped her “remember the key topics from each unit on the exam.” Obviously, their study habits and preparation over the year paid off because they scored very well on the exam.
Maybe current AP World takers can use these tactics as they prepare to face the same challenges. When it comes to AP World time is a student’s biggest enemy. Ridley said that was the hardest part for her because Mr. Tuttle didn’t give them a lot of time to write their essays. However, this was all by design as students only have 40 minutes to write their DBQ and LEQ.
“Assignments weren’t really challenging, they were just time-consuming,” Coi agreed.
The main takeaway from AP World is learning how to effectively and analytically gather information that will either help you answer questions or write essays efficiently. For example, Coi thought of the assignments where Ms. Jespersen gives her students documents to practice analyzing them in order to later answer a final overarching question, or sometimes students will have to create thesis statements.
We checked in with Mr. Brunt, who also is facing his first AP World test…as a teacher. He wanted to become an AP World teacher to “educate students on the mistakes we made in the past so we never repeat them again.”
In preparing his students for the AP exam he made his students do all the CEDs over the course of the year. In addition to this, he put out review sheets for each unit for students to complete in preparation for the exam.
“The review guide, the CEDs, and the worksheets: those three things will help the students look at each time period and then compare and contrast them,” says Mr. Brunt. Mr. Brunt does support Heimler’s history but he thinks that students should, “use other resources that aren’t just video to retain the information better.”
Best of luck to all the AP Worlders…and if all else fails, the answer is probably Imperialism.
