Studying for the AP Physics Exam

We are at that time of the year when you hope to be winding up covering new material in your course, and if all has gone as planned you will be entering the final stage of review for the AP Exam itself.  When I plan my online course syllabus and schedule, I try to wrap up my new content and the main exam for my course so it falls two weeks ahead of when my students will take their AP exam.   In my teaching situation, an individual student may be taking AP exams for more than just my physics class.  By having the main exam for my course occur two weeks ahead of the AP exam, it allows my students to get feed back from my semester exam and have a reasonable amount of time for the final push of reviewing for the AP Exam.

My strategy throughout the year has been to at the end of every chapter have a series of 10 to 15 multiple choice questions drawn from old AP exams that I ask the students to work.  Then I also select an FRQ question for the chapter from released previous AP exams, a question that is representative of the chapter, and I also ask the students to work that.  In a follow up online screen share session we then go over both the multiple choice and the FRQ questions. 

I feel that going over the multiple choice questions is particularly helpful, the students often begin physics thinking the course is about how many formulas they can memorize and learning to pull up the right formula at the right time.  Because the multiple choice questions on the AP tend to be conceptual questions, like "how does this change if that changes", for most questions you do not need to be substituting numbers into a memorized formula to get the correct answer.  It is more a matter of, "If A increases, does B also increase, remain the same, or decrease?"  "Will the change be linear, quadratic, or exponential?"  When I go over these problems with the students, they are surprised at how simply the solution can be found by using fundamental ideas with very few calculations.

In the final two weeks ahead of the exam, it is my feeling that the most effective review is going to have to be carried out by the student themselves.  By this time in the year I've spent thirty-two weeks, every week helping them as much as I can to learn this material.  They need to take responsibility for the final push, some students will and some won't.  My recommendation to students for an effective final push is to utilize three resources:

1) The Key Concept documents at the HippoCampus web site.

2) Review the old AP Multiple Choice questions that I have been providing and going over at the end of each chapter.

3) Use the previously released AP FRQ questions and the solutions/grading rubrics provided at the College Board web site.

I find the Key Concepts documents at the HippoCampus web site to be very well written and very concise.  To get to them, after going to the HippoCampus web site: 1. select your course, 2. select the Course View, 3. select the chapter, 4. select Key Concepts.  They will come up as a pdf file that you can then print out.

I can't post the old AP Multiple Choice questions I use with my students here, they are copyrighted by the College Board.  You are allowed to use the questions with your students.  You can get back copies of these released multiple choice questions by attending AP workshops.

The previously released AP FRQ questions along with solutions and grading rubrics are freely available on the College Board's AP web site.