Episode #13 Show Notes and Links

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00:00 Intro 

01:30 Introduction of Jake

04:18 How Jake became a teacher and the alternative credit recovery program

05:20 Adapting his teaching personality despite his shyness

09:00  Alternative credit recovery school and Tony’s Uncle that worked at a library in a county jail

12:13 Commending teachers that work in difficult environments

13:25 Jake’ current public high performing school and teaching to Freshmen

6:00 The logic of offering AP classes to Freshmen

17:15 The two studies about optimal number of AP classes a student can take

  1. Beard, J., Hsu, J., & Ewing, M. (2019). Studying the Relationships Between the Number of APs, AP Performance, and College Outcomes. (The College Board & Princeton University, Eds.).Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 38(4), 42–54. 
  2. Kretchmar, J., & Farmer, S. (2012, November 30). How Much is Enough? Rethinking the Role of High School Courses in College Admission. Journal of College Admission, n220 (SUm 2013),  28-33.

24:50 Contextualization of Multiple Choice Questions in APWH overtime and applying Bloom’s Taxonomy to the question types

26:40 Creating test questions for Freshmen World History and the discovery of “RTF” or “Rich Text Format.”

28:00 The limited amount of practice exams (2002, 2007, 2009 and 2011) before 2013

30:00 The importance of test security and protected integrity of certain posted APWH questions

31:00 Changes from 2017 to present on MCQ on APWH exam

35:30 Types of APWH MCQ and the Instructional Planning Report and the importance of the APWH themes SPICE

38:00 How we choose specific MCQ, “exam fatigue/hitting the wall,” and students using their time well

48:00 How some students can struggle on Image/Map based questions

51:46 Go to images in APWH MCQ - The Mosque of Timbuktu, the Taj Majal, Angkor Wat, the flying corners of temples in East Asia

54:50 MCQ Jake’s strategy of Source First, Question Second, Answer Third but allowing students to be individuals with their strategies and finding what works best for them.

58:50 Elements of the MCQ tips slideshow from Tony

  • How will you use your time wisely to maximize your score?
    • Do not just jump in and start the exam…….first look over the entire exam 
      • Do you see any questions that look easier than others?  
      • Now choose wisely and work fast/efficiently to finish the entire exam.
  • Now...that you must answer the difficult questions:
    • Rephrase the question in your own words
    • Try to eliminate at least two incorrect answers.
      • Smart guesses can increase your score - You now have it narrowed down to 2 options….take a 50/50 guess OR Skip it and move on again.

1:01 Jake’s interesting story of “cracking the code strategy”

01:06:00 The advantage of using paper MCQ tests at the beginning of the year and the issues of using AP Classroom

01:09:00 Jake’s version of curving the MCQ portion of his exams via The Square Root Curve 

Jake's Square Root Curve = Click HerePDF • 108KB

1:10 Tony’s curving of the MCQ Exam 

Curving and Scales that Two Veterans on APWH Uses = Click HerePDF • 515KB

01:14:00 How many MCQ Exams to give during the year

  • Timing per question and using MCQ to your advantage at struggling schools

01:18:30 Jake ends with a positive story