:: ENGLISH

Please note: The courses listed below are for the 2009 AP Summer Institutes. These course descriptions will remain posted for your reference, until December 2009.

Week One: July 13-16, 2009
Week Two: July 20-23, 2009

In the course titles below, “combined” means that the institute is open to both new and experienced teachers in that particular Pre-AP or AP subject.

Please note that participants in Pre-AP institutes are no longer required to purchase the AP Vertical Teams Guide. This text will be provided by the hosting institution as part of the course materials.

ENGLISH WEEK ONE: JULY 13-16, 2009

Pre-AP English for new Pre-AP teachers (middle school)

This institute is full and we are not accepting any more wait list registrations for this institute.

The Pre-AP Middle School English institute will provide materials for new Pre-AP teachers. We will discuss how Pre-AP strategies can be used in all classrooms, for all students. We will also look at the AP Exam, discuss how we can lay the foundations for more students to take the AP tests, and discover how early preparation for AP tests improves test-taking skills for current-level state-mandated tests. Mostly, we will discuss the power of language and how we can empower our students with language analysis in both their writing and reading, including a unique, hands-on approach to grammar as a part of literary analysis.

Lead Consultant: Teresa Tyra
Teresa Tyra teaches eighth-grade literature at Shawnee Middle School in Shawnee, Oklahoma. A 21-year veteran educator, Ms. Tyra has taught English to grades seven through eleven, college-level Composition I and II, Survival Reading for College, eighth grade and high school U.S. History, honors Oklahoma History and adult basic education/GED preparation. Ms. Tyra has been a College Board Pre-AP consultant since 2003 and has presented at several summer institutes and one- and two-day conferences. She holds a B.S. in education (language arts and social studies) and a Master’s in Liberal Studies from the University of Oklahoma.

Pre-AP English for new Pre-AP teachers (high school), Section 1 (Conquest)
For grade levels: Inexperienced high school grades 9-10 Pre-AP English (0-2 years Pre-AP experience)

This course is designed to acquaint participants with activities and strategies that will help prepare their students for the challenges of upper-level AP courses. Attendees will have opportunities to practice with reading, rhetoric, writing, and discussion strategies that will foster deeper analysis and critical thinking. In addition, participants will work with ways to modify AP materials and develop scoring guides and rubrics that better meet Pre-AP abilities. This course is targeted toward the inexperienced high school Pre-AP teacher (two years or less Pre-AP classroom teaching experience) who seeks activities that will provide a practical foundation for AP Language and Literature expectations.

Participants should bring the following:

Highlighters
Post-it notes
A poem, short story, novel, or play used in your classroom

Lead Consultant: Patricia Conquest
With degrees (B.A. and M.S.) from Purdue University and additional course work at UT-Austin, Pat Conquest has taught a wide variety of levels and courses in her 35 years in the classroom, the last 13 of which included the sophomore Pre-AP area. Although recently retired from Westwood High School in the Round Rock Independent School District, Pat remains active as an observer for UTeach student teachers and as a College Board consultant in the areas of SAT and Pre-AP, presenting at one-and two-day conferences as well as summer institutes. She considers herself a lifelong learner, a student along with her students and participants.

Pre-AP English for experienced Pre-AP teachers (high school)

Participants will explore ways to improve and enhance a Pre-AP high school English course and will share ideas on how to develop lessons for major units to reflect AP goals. They will also discuss the AP Language and Composition and Literature and Composition exams and how to best relate Pre-AP goals to future student success on the exams.

We will focus on the following items:

Close reading
Annotating the text
Analyzing and Author’s Style
Attacking an AP Prompt
Writing Multiple-Choice Questions
Developing personal voice in writing
Creative ways to teach literary analysis
Creative ways to teach poetry and analysis

Participants should bring the following:

A thumb drive to save a lesson you will develop for a five minute presentation
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
A copy of one major work of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama that you plan to teach and that is most often taught in schools across your state
A highlighter
A pen
A pencil
3” x 3” Post-Its
1.5” x 2” Post-Its

Lead Consultant: Yvonne Kaatz
Yvonne Kaatz teaches 11th-grade AP English Language and Composition and 10th-grade Pre-AP English at Dripping Springs High School in Dripping Springs, Texas. She has taught 9th- and 10th-grade Pre-AP English for the last 20 years. For the past seven years, she has presented at one- and two-day conferences for the College Board, and in 2006 at the AP National Conference. Since the summer of 2006, she has presented at weeklong conferences in Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. She has also presented for Region XIII and at The University of Texas. Ms. Kaatz is currently the English Department Chair and the AP coordinator for her school and has served as events coordinator, grade-level team leader, and district curriculum advisor for the Austin ISD. She holds a B.S. from Texas A&M with a specialization in writing.

AP English Language and Composition for new AP teachers, Section 1 (Olson)

This course is designed primarily to assist teachers new to the English Language Arts AP Curriculum. The course will carefully dissect all of the skills necessary for the exam and suggest teaching strategies to help teachers better prepare their students. We will focus primarily on non-fiction prose and also look at ways to integrate fiction with the curriculum. Participants do not necessarily need to bring anything to the “party,” but, if they have a favorite text or collection of non-fiction prose, they should bring it along.

Lead Consultant: Steven Olson
Steve Olson has been a teacher in the La Porte Independent School District for 27 years. For most of those years, he has been an AP English Language teacher. He has been a grader for the exam for 15 years and a consultant for the College Board for 12 years. He just completed a study guide for the exam for Houghton Mifflin. He is married and has two children and two grandchildren. He is an avid birdwatcher.

ENGLISH WEEK TWO: JULY 20-23, 2009

Pre-AP English for new Pre-AP teachers (high school), Section 2 (Villarreal)

In this interactive workshop, participants will learn foundational Pre-AP strategies that align with AP English Language and Composition and AP Literature and Composition. These strategies include close reading application for fiction, non-fiction, and visual texts. Additionally, participants will learn methods for teaching introductory skills for research, argumentation, rhetorical analysis, and synthesis writing tasks. Participants will leave with hand-on activities, lessons, and graphic organizers and will also learn strategies for integrating these tools into their existing curriculum. This institute will feature many new curriculum pieces to include a new Pre-AP synthesis unit that will be co-presented with guest speaker Millie Fisher.

Participants should bring the following:

Course syllabus and titles of major works taught
Copies of a few pages (1 or 2 powerful pages) of major works taught; copies of poems, essays, short stories, visuals, etc.

Lead Consultant: Elizabeth Villarreal
Elizabeth Villarreal has taught all levels of English, from grades six through eleven. She currently teaches AP English Language and Composition at New Braunfels High School. She has taught English for the past 17 years, 13 of which have been in Pre-AP/AP. She is an endorsed College Board consultant and an Educational Testing Service Reader for the AP English Language and Composition Exam. She is also an SAT Reader and a member of the NCTE. She has presented at workshops and APSIs in Texas, New Mexico, and Maryland. In addition, she has been a presenter at the AP Annual Conference and at the AP Colloquium for Equity and Excellence. On her off time, Elizabeth writes poetry and paints.

AP English Language and Composition for new AP teachers, Section 2 (Coker)

This institute is designed for new teachers of AP English Language. During the week we will focus on preparing students for success in upper-level academic courses and for the exam, through practice in critical-thinking strategies in reading, strategies for analysis, and strategies for constructing argument. We will also look at sample essays from the 2009 reading and examine recent changes in the English Language exam. The workshop includes practical activities and teaching units.

Participants should bring the following:

A book of non-fiction you want to teach in your classes
Post-It notes
Writing tablet

Lead Consultant: Sandra Coker
Sandra Coker is an experienced teacher of AP English Language and Composition and currently teaches at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. A veteran table leader at the AP English Language and Composition reading, and a College Board consultant, she conducts AP summer institute sessions and teacher development workshops both nationally and internationally. She served as a member of the committee to write and compile the Texas Education Agency’s Lighthouse Initiative for English/Language Arts Classrooms, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), and the Advanced Placement Program. This guide is among the Texas resources available to teachers as they align state curricular objectives with the goals and expectations for Advanced Placement English. She is author, along with fellow writers John Brassil and Carl Glover, of Analysis, Argument, and Synthesis and of Writing the Synthesis Essay.

AP English Language and Composition for experienced AP teachers

AP English Language and Composition teachers will explore strategies to improve and enhance junior English courses by focusing on the five curriculum areas of essay writing: close reading, language analysis, rhetorical analysis, constructing an argument, and personal voice development. Emphasis will be placed on non-fiction selections and methods to approach the Synthesis Question. Participants will work to refine major units to more closely reflect AP goals, will review and discuss the AP English Language and Composition exam, and will brainstorm what AP teachers can do to help students achieve necessary skills.

Participants should bring the following:

30 copies of a successful/engaging lesson used with students
Read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer prior to the Institute. I will be using the Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Co. edition.
Post-its, notepaper, and note-taking supplies

Lead Consultant: Jamie Stanley
Jamie Stanley teaches at Stephen F. Austin High School in Austin, Texas. As a College Board consultant, she has worked with Pre-AP and AP English teachers throughout the Southwest Region in one- and two-day conferences and AP Summer Institutes at Southern Methodist University, Rice University, the University of Oklahoma, The University of Texas, the University of Arkansas, and others. She has been a Reader for the national AP English Language and Composition exam since 1999 and has served as department chair and English Vertical Team Leader. Ms. Stanley holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of Houston Clear Lake.

AP English Literature and Composition for new AP teachers

In this session dealing with the AP Literature and Composition course (usually taught at the senior level), participants will learn about AP Literature and consider successful approaches to the course at their schools, based on their own interests and strengths, their particular students, their schools’ resources, and the demands of the AP exam. Topics will include studying the exam and how it is scored, close reading of prose and poetry, composition, and literary analysis. There will also be daily “survival tips” and discussions of best practices. To illustrate teaching ideas, we will use a variety of literary pieces, including both tried-and-true standards and some uncommon works.

Participants should bring the following:

Post-it notes

Lead Consultant: Gretchen Polnac
Gretchen Polnac taught AP Composition and Literature for 25 years of her 31-year high school teaching career. She has been a consultant for College Board and Laying the Foundation for many years, as well as an ETS reader for the exam each summer. Gretchen received many teaching awards in her high school teaching career, including the Texas Excellence for Teaching Award from The University of Texas in 1989. She is finishing her second year of teaching pre-service teachers in the UTeach Liberal Arts program at The University of Texas in Austin.

AP English Literature and Composition for experienced AP teachers

My course will focus on teaching a course in AP English Literature and Composition. We will examine the structure and scoring of the AP English Literature and Composition Exam, including 2009, as well as the skills students need to succeed on both the multiple-choice and free-response sections of the exam. Our emphasis will be placed on methods and materials we can use to facilitate student mastery of these skills. We will discuss literary analysis and writing the analytical essay, analyzing poetry from different periods, and stylistic analysis. Other topics will include close reading, annotation of texts, connecting device to meaning with commentary, reading and responding to drama, handling the grading load, schools of literary criticism, and teaching full-length works. Participants will receive activities that foster student involvement, and they will work with a variety of literary texts, new and old.

Lead Consultant: Betty Moss
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Dr. Moss graduated from high school there before she attended Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Iowa (B.A.), Arkansas State University (M. A.), and LSU, where she received her Ph.D. in English. Retired from Alamo Heights High School in San Antonio where she served as AP English Vertical Team Leader, she currently teaches at San Antonio College and has taught both AP Language and AP Literature. Nationally certified as an AP consultant in English Language and English Literature, she serves as an AP Literature Reader for ETS and has made numerous presentations throughout the southwestern region at AP conferences and summer institutes, as well as to state TCTE conventions, SCMLA, and the National NCTE convention; she also serves as a trainer for Laying the Foundation. In recognition of her contributions to the profession, she has received the Texas Excellence in Teaching Award from The University of Texas and the Special Recognition Award in AP Literature from the Southwestern Region of the College Board, among others.