Free AP Language & Composition Unit: What is Success?

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This unit was from early in my AP career. Since we teach AP Lang & Comp during junior year, which is also supposed to be American Literature, I went through a phase where I tried to merge the two. I eventually moved away from that, but that is why this unit includes Ben Franklin along with Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I always felt it was important to try and do this unit with my juniors because I so vividly remember being a junior and being crushed by the weight of it all. I learned my limits, but that was not how I remembered it back then. Back then, I just felt like a failure all the time-and it was depressing. I wanted to give my juniors the perspective that I didn't have when they inevitably failed so that they wouldn't get too down on themselves...so that's where the idea for this unit was born. I am not sure that I reached any kids or made a big difference in their thinking with this unit, but I still felt it was an important topic to cover at the start of the year.

The unit below is one iteration of my AP Lang & Comp "Success" unit. This was sometimes the first full unit I did but other times it was the 2nd or 3rd.

This unit always came after a brief discussion of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. For a few years, we had students read Outliers as their summer reading. It took me a while to figure out exactly how to approach Outliers at the beginning of the year, from an AP Lang & Comp perspective, but I usually settled on a reading test (paid product), just to make sure they read the dang thing, some discussion, and a toe-dip into analysis.

• Outliers Vocabulary

• Outliers Practice Vocabulary Quiz

• Outliers Vocabulary Quiz (no answer key)

• Fiction vs. Nonfiction Discussion

• Outliers Introduction Questions

• Outliers Discussion Preparation

• Outliers Discussion Graphic Organizer

• Outliers Book Review Assignment Sheet

• Outliers Practice Open Prompt

• Released AP Prompts that Connect to Outliers

​Side note 4/26/23: I am listening to the book Range by David Epstein and it is a great counterargument to Gladwell's 10,000 hours chapter.

Once we finished Outliers, I would do some version of the steps below. At the bottom I included materials that I used in the past during other units.

Good luck! I hope some of these readings help your kids rethink the failures they will face during their junior year.

Success Unit

Objectives:

• To show that success comes in many forms and happens for many different reasons

• Start identifying literary devices in difficult texts

Essential Question (essay question):

• What is success and how does one reach it?

Time: 5 weeks (~12, 84-minute class periods)

Texts:

• An excerpt from Ben Franklin’s The Autobiography of Ben Franklin- “13 Virtues”

• National Geographic article

• “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom” Wall Street Journal

• 1 full-length non-fiction text

My daily class routine was usually grammar or vocabulary to start, and then the core of the lesson.

Day 1

-Vocabulary Time: Have kids take our their Ben Franklin vocabulary chart and work on it for 10 minutes.

Ben Franklin Vocabulary Chart

-Opening Unit Discussion: The opening for this lesson was the article "Failure is an Option" by Hannah Bloch, which was published in National Geographic. I asked students to read and annotate the article and then answer some questions about their connection to failure.

Failure is an Option

To contrast this article, I then had students read an excerpt from The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. In this book, Chua describes a tough parenting style that, personally, makes me cring.

"Tiger Mom" Article

Day2

-Vocabulary Time: Have kids work on vocabulary packet for 10 minutes.

-After vocabulary time we got into Ben Franklin. I didn't have my kids read the whole Autobiography, just the part where he describes his plan for self-improvement. At this point in the year (fairly early), I was also trying to introduce the rhetorical analysis essay to my kids, so the lessons were heavy on literary analysis. I gave them the printed excerpt and we went through the first paragraph together so that they could wrap their head around the language and practice annotating the way I wanted them to. For each paragraph or section (depending on the text), I used to make my AP kids summarize the section, identify its function within the passage, and then identify some obvious literary tools and techniqes. I gave them the rest of the period to work.

Excerpt from The Autobiography of Ben Franklin

Day 3

-Vocabulary Time: "Find Your Partner". Each student is given a piece of paper with either a vocabulary word or a student-friendly definition on it. The students with coordinating vocabulary word and student-friendly definition must find each other. Once everyone has found their partner, mix up the papers and repeat the process several times.

-After going over the first paragraph with my students the day before, I realized that I need to lecture on a few literary devices. I spent about 20 minutes going over some of the more common terms from this list:

• anecdote

• allusion

• mature diction

• parallel structure (repeated grammatical structure; different words)

• repetition

• alliteration

• polysyndeton

• ethos (building credibility)

• humor

• use of quotations

• personification

• irony

• chiasmus

Once I finished lecturing, I gave kids time to finish reading and annotating the excerpt and whatever they didn't finish became homework.

Days 4 & 5

This lesson was one that I recorded for my National Boards submission, which is why the handout was so extra. I think I did maybe end up using an excerpt but I don't really remember. The goal of the lesson was for students to be able to identify literary devices in a passage with difficult language.

In the first part of the lesson they answered some general questions about the passage, then they practiced identifying devices. Lastly, I assigned each group a section of the passage and students had to prepare a presentation and share out their analysis. Both rubrics are on the handout.

Ben Franklin Group Work & Analysis

Day 6

-Vocabulary Task : Choose 10 Ben Franklin vocabulary words and create an original practice sentence with a context clue for each.

Once we got through the presentations, I gave students a "teenage improvement chart" in order to mimic the improvement chart Franklin made for himself. I thought it would be funny to give students the chance to try his methods and then reflect on it at the end of the unit.

Teenage Improvement Chart

The next thing I did was introduce the choice book assignment. There are so many great books out there related to success and I wanted to give my kids a choice of what to read. I provided them with this list below (the list is also on the assignment sheet) and asked them to choose a book by next class. They could also pitch me a book of their choice.

​How To	Difficult Childhood	Psychology	Sports

​Nature	Women	Science/Technology	Race/Imprisonment

I also wanted to give kids a choice in how they demonstrated their understanding of their choice book, so I created a menu of options on the handout below and tried to organized the options by learning style/preference.The choices included an advanced book review. I got the idea for this assignment when I was reading The Washington Post and realized that their book reviews had some overlap with the rhetorical analysis essay.

Success Choice Book Assignment Sheet

Homework: Get your choice book from the library or Amazon and start reading it.

Days 7-10

Today they had time to work on their choice assignment.

Day 11

For the first half of this class, I had students do a timed writing. The 2014 AP Exam has a letter from Abigails Adam's to her son John Quincy Adams that fits well with this unit.

Next, students worked on a practice vocabulary quiz in preparation for a real quiz and we went over the answers together.

Lastly, students had time to finish up their success choice assignment, which was due next class.

Day 12

For vocabulary time, I had kids do a practice vocabulary quiz in preparation for a quiz next class.

Ben Franklin Practice Vocabulary Quiz

Next, I had students share out their success project. I put students into groups of 8-9 and had them sit in a circle. Each of them then had to share out/do the following:

• What they read (author and title)

• A 1-sentence summary

• Their thoughts on the book

• What they did for their task

• Briefly show their task if they did a visual option

• Explain if they had any “take-aways” or anything they learned.

• Share out what happened with their Ben Franklin tracking chart.

Day 13

• Ben Franklin Vocabulary Quiz

Odds and Ends

This unit was a bit different each time I tackled it. Below are some other articles or activities that I used with the unit at some point in time.

• More Ben Franklin Analysis Questions

• "The Limits of Grit" The New Yorker

• Ted Talk "The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers"

• "Success Failure Project"

• "Grit Overrated" Washington Post

I hope these materials are helpful to you!