Developing Pre-AP Skills in High School English
Teachers Help Students Develop a Foundation for Critical Thinking
You don’t have to be an Advanced Placement teacher to help your students develop A.P. skills. The concept of “Pre-A.P.” skills is not a new one, nor is it difficult to incorporate in the “regular” classroom. In fact, you are probably already doing this more than you realize.
Helping Students Develop Pre- AP Skills
Preparing students for college should be the objective of all high school teachers, regardless of whether students choose to take A.P. classes. So, teaching Pre-A.P. skills is really a natural extension of that broad goal.
Pre-A.P. skills center on the following:
- Comprehension
- Interpretation
- Analysis
- Synthesis
Comprehension
Comprehension is the most basic Pre-A.P. skill and the first step towards developing critical thinking skills. Students must first feel ownership over the material before they can be expected to manipulate it. Let’s say you are teaching To Kill a Mockingbird to an average ninth grade class. Your first objective is to help students understand the text. To facilitate understanding, you might prepare study guide questions to answer basic factual questions such as:
- Who? Students need to remember the characters in the story
- What? Students must understand the basic plot and details.
- Where? Students should identify the setting of a story.
- When? Students comprehend the time period of the story as well as major historical events occurring during that time.
- How? Students should be able to relate how key events occur or are related in the story.
Study guides serve as a wonderful tool to help students improve comprehension of a literary work. A study guild helps students grasp elements of plot, delineate sequencing of events, understand characters, and learn new vocabulary. This essential understanding will encourage students to develop a solid foundation on which to build.
Interpretation
Once students improve comprehension of the text, you can encourage them to interpret it. This is when the following question “Why?” becomes critical. Students need to understand why certain events are happening as well as what characters’ motivations may be for acting the way they do. By giving students the opportunity to interpret information, teachers help them build confidence and practice forming their own opinions while also backing up those opinions with details from the text. An important Pre-AP skill is for students to substantiate opinions with details and facts, so interpreting novels allows for ample practice.
The following questions will help students interpret the text:
- Based on what you’ve read, can you predict how Scout and Jem’s relationship may change?
- What is Dill’s motivation for telling tall tales?
- Why do you think Scout and Calpurnia have an antagonistic relationship?
- Do you think that Atticus is good father? Why or why not?
Once students have developed a solid knowledge base about a novel, it is easier for them to extend this knowledge and develop more advanced skills. Pre-A.P. focuses on encouraging students to develop critical thinking skills that extend beyond factual knowledge. Encourage your students to express their ideas in the classroom.
