Welcome to Advanced Placement United States Government and Politics! Please review these policies- by signing up for this optional course, you have agreed to hold yourself to these standards.
The purpose of this course is to prepare you for the AP Exam for US Government and Politics, which will be administered at 8:00 AM on Monday, May 1, 2023. It is expected that you will register for the exam. The exam fee this year is $97, for which assistance is available. Information about registration and assistance will be forthcoming through Google Classroom.
This course uses Edwards, Wattenberg and Linebury’s Government In America: People, Politics and Policy, 2012 Edition. We are in the process of selecting an updates textbook, so you may have the opportunity to sample chapters from a variety of other texts.
You will not need your textbooks at school. If you need to borrow one for the day, I have a couple of extras available. A full .pdf of our textbook is available within Google Classroom.
In addition to your textbook, you’ll get three documents which are yours to keep (one hopefully forever). Please have these on hand each class.
You MUST always have a copy of the Constitution available each class period.
As this class exists to prepare you for the AP Exam, it follows the outline set out by the College Board. Additional work will cover Washington’s state goals for Media Literacy, Tribal Government and Civic Participation. The AP Exam has five units of study, and also expects students to be familiar with certain historical documents and US Supreme Court cases.
The exam itself consists of a multiple choice section and 4 free response questions, which we will spend class time practicing for. The free response questions take four different forms:
policy, or behavior
In general, you’ll have a homework assignment based on assigned readings about every other day, with bullet-point guided notes and possibly a more general question or two. Homework assignments cover either about ⅓ of a textbook chapter, one of the required documents, or another similar length article relevant to what we’re doing.
These are graded on a 100-80-30 scale with 80% score for a completed assignment, 100% for an assignment that is thoughtful and detailed, and 30% (revisable and re-submittable) for incomplete assignments. See below for how some homework assignments are optional.
Every textbook reading assignment is accompanied by a quiz. These use the material you read in the chapter to test your understanding of the concepts required on the exam. Expect a quiz with between 8 and 13 multiple choice questions on the day each chapter is due.
Several assignments (both in-class and take home) will present you with a free response question similar to what you’ll encounter on the AP Exam. These are not particularly long, but will be graded fairly stringently according to AP guidelines.
Unit Exams are modeled after the AP Exam, with a multiple choice section followed by one or two free response questions. PLEASE NOTE: By signing up for this course, you have committed yourself to preparing for the AP Exam and to holding yourself accountable for your preparations. Preparing for Unit Exams are a key part of that, and, just as the date of the AP Exam is not flexible, you must not treat the unit tests as flexible either. Unless you’ve previously made arrangements with me, expect to take a missed exam immediately upon your return after an absence. This may impact your other classes that day if it is a shorter period than the exam is designed for. Please do not miss exam days. You’ll be fine, I promise.
Quizzes and Unit Exams most resemble the AP Exam in that you will be on your own, on the clock and without notes. As a result, they are also graded in line with the AP Exam, where the highest score, 5, is possible with well under 100% of the available points on the exam. This is reflected in the ‘curve’ for our exams, which could result in your Quiz or Unit Exam score being over 100%. If you are prepared to get a ‘5’ on the Exam in may, you’re certainly passing this course. (This means that being well prepared can offset any difficulties you may have had on earlier assignments or assessments, so it’s important to stay in the game, even if you feel behind.)
Each assigned section of the textbook has a homework designed to guide and organize your reading and prepare you for the quiz that accompanies every reading assignment, and to refer to when preparing for the Exams. If you are comfortable with reading the assigned textbook chapters without this support, you’re welcome to use your time as you see fit. Chapter homeworks not turned in will receive the same percentage score as you got on your quiz for that assignment (to a maximum of 100%).
If, after the quiz, you’ve found that your preparations fell short of where you’d like to be, you can go back and review the chapter and submit the notes assignment, which will partially offset a low quiz score.
Only textbook assignments have optional written homework. Written homework for other assigned readings are mandatory. I will always note in Google Classroom if an assignment is optional.
Each unit will include several extra credit assignments. These are worth a small number of points, and come from places I often get information, including interviews, short videos or some articles. Many are in podcast form, which might work for your schedule.
As noted above, you will not need to bring your textbook to class. Chromebooks or similar devices are often handy for in class research or other small projects we do, and are required on quiz and test days, as multiple choice sections are electronic. Plan on taking notes- our class discussions or lecture will cover much of the required material, especially as we look at the required Supreme Court Cases.
I am pretty strict about you not having your phone available to you in class. The phone box at the front of class has a cell with your name on it, and I expect to find your phone in there at the start of class. Research supports this arrangement: when students don’t have phones physically available, we see improvements in anxiety, attention span and cognitive capacity. I have found that having your phones in a visible box in the classroom dramatically improves the environment there. Parents who need to contact their student during class can telephone the school at 842-2634.
Similarly, research supports handwritten notes as the best way to record information during class time, and as a result, I expect that Chromebooks and other devices will be put away when not called for. We will discuss notetaking strategies, including the cognitive science behind them, during class. I am, of course, flexible in unique circumstances for both of these policies, but we’ll need to discuss it beforehand.
The content of this course, by its nature, will touch on current political issues, ideology and party identity. The nature of our nation’s legal and political development touches on many divisive areas, and the requirements of the course reflect that, especially in the Supreme Court cases you are required to know. Race, religion, including religion in schools, abortion, criminal justice, gun rights and free speech are all major themes that we will cover repeatedly.
AP Classes are college level courses. By signing up for this course, you’ve asserted that you are willing to hold yourself to an adult standard of discussion.
As a civics class, this course’s goals include not only becoming informed about this issue, but learning how to talk about them productively, and why being able to do so is a key responsibility of citizenship. As citizens in a republic, we have a duty:
These are both goals for learning, and expectations for your behavior toward your classmates. I am looking forward to our discussions.