AP ENGLISH LITERATURE - PRESENTER - SKIP NICHOLSON

Skip Nicholson has taught English for 40 years, the last 20 at South Pasadena High School and for a year as a Visiting Associate in Rhetoric at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  he earned a BA from UCLA and a Certificate from the University of Bordeaux and completed the work for a masters in Comparative literature at Cal State, Fullerton.  He serves as a reader for the AP* English Literature exam, worked as a Senior Reviewer for the College Board AP* Course Audit, and chairs visiting accreditation teams for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.  He headed the Secondary Section of the national Council of Teachers of English for five years and sat on the NCTE Executive Committee.  He has worked as a master teacher in Folger Shakespeare Library/NEF summer institutes in Washington, D.C. and the Shakespeare Globe Center.  He is consulting editor for five plays in National textbook Company's Shakespeare series and represented the united States as a speaker at the provincial conference of the Centrale de l'Enseignment du Quebec in Quebec City.

Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition

The workshop will help teachers explore the organization of an AP* Literature and Composition course, including structuring the year's readings and activities, integrating test preparation, and coping with students who bring to AP* classes an increasingly wide range of skills and habits.  We will work specifically with some readings to explore some of the best practices in instruction.  The focus will stay on areas teachers of AP* consistently identify as "the rough spots": helping students to understand tone, read poetry with insight, befriend Early Modern English, and best use their knowledge and skills on a high-stakes examination.

Teachers will take away a full course outline and AP* Audit syllabus - provisional for teachers new to AP, strengthened for veteran AP* teachers - as well as new approaches, strategies, and techniques, a library of teaching materials, and a stable network of supportive colleagues.

Course Outline

1.Planning the AP* Course: Demographic, social, political conditions - Equity and inclusion

  issues - Scheduling year-long calendar and summer reading - Choosing textbooks and

  literary works

2.The AP* Audit:  Writing the syllabus and meeting the requirements

3.The AP* English Literature Exam:  Test development, administration, and scoring - The

  Multiple-choice section - The Essay Section - Question writing and student practice

4.Teaching Literature:  the firm foundation - Shifts - Tone - "The meaning of the work as a

  whole"

5.Teaching the Types of Literature:  Selecting, scheduling, and pacing novels - Building

  student confidence with poetry - Giving students "the gift of Shakespeare"

6.Teaching Writing in the AP* Course: Writing definition - Improving style and fluency -

  Revision - Vocabulary development