Free AP Language & Composition Materials (Early American Lit)

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.)

• Beginning of the Year Survey

• American Lit Time Period Descriptions

Early America/Puritans

• Introduction to Puritans PowerPoint

• Anne Bradstreet "Versus Upon the Burning...." Annotations

• John Winthrop "Letter to My Wife"

• Winthrop "Letter to My Wife" Analysis"

• Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands...." Rhetorical Analysis Practice

• Introduction to Rhetoric (General but I had connected the lecture to Edwards.)

• Rhetorical Analysis Template for Jonathan Edwards

• Word Parts and Literary Terms Quiz

• "Sinners" Vocabulary List

• "Sinners in the Hands..." Vocabulary Quiz (paid product)

• Puritan/Religion Socratic Seminar

• Seminar Reflection

Rationalism

• Introduction to Rationalism PowerPoint

• Declaration of Independence Dialectical Journals

• Declaration of Independence Rhetorical Analysis Template

• Ben Franklin Annotation Packet (Excerpt of his Autobiography)

• Vocabulary for Ben Franklin

• Self Improvement Tracking Chart

• Ben Franklin Autobiography Paragraph by Paragraph Analysis

• Ben Franklin Autobiography Questions

• Everything's An Argument & "Ain't I a Woman" Discussion Questions

• Introduction to Rhetorical Analysis w. Sojourner Truth (paid product)