
Free AP Language & Composition Materials (Early American Lit)
Updated: Oct 17, 2022
I taught AP Language and Composition for about 7 years and it was my favorite class, In 2018, I switched to IB Lit & Lang because my school wanted to start offering an SL version of IB English. They asked me to spearhead the class since some of it overlaps with AP Lang & Comp, but I still like AP Lang & Comp a lot more. There are not enough sections of AP Lang & Comp to go around anymore, and I am transitioning away from teaching English anyway, but I highly recommend this class to anyone who gets the chance to teach it.
It took a few years for me to get the pacing, content, and intensity of the class correct. The first year or two, I was still determined to follow the sequence of American Literature since that was the curriculum for my grade level 11 kids, and I felt really strongly that the AP kids should not miss out on the only year of American literature in the curriculum. I did abandon that idea after time, but this blog post has the materials from those early years when I tried to fuse AP Lang & American Lit.
Introduction To Class
Ridiculous PowerPoint I used to introduce the class this particular year. (Mostly I was trying to mentally prepare them for how hard the writing was going to be and for the corresponding drop in grades...it never really worked. Kids were always in shock, anyway, when they got their first few essay grades back.)
American Lit Time Period Descriptions
Early America/Puritans
Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands...." Rhetorical Analysis Practice
Introduction to Rhetoric (General but I had connected the lecture to Edwards.)
Rationalism