10 AP Lit Test Prep Activities For Any Time

As I write this, it’s only two and a half weeks before the AP Lit exam. Many teachers are scrambling for test prep activities to fit in, while others integrate those activities all year long. No matter which route you take, there’s room for review at any time. Here’s a list of 10 activities that actively prepare for the AP Lit Exam. You can do these in late April or any stage throughout the school year!

For more day-by-day lesson activities and resources, check out my AP Lit Test Prep Unit on Teachers Pay Teachers. The materials in this resource can be taught as a 2-week test prep unit or pieced apart and integrated all year long. No matter how you use it, it is full of valuable teaching resources and strategies for AP Lit teachers.

Test Format Kahoot

I created this Kahoot a few years ago and return every year to update a few questions. Despite talking about the test format and logistics all year long, my students are always a little surprised by some of these questions. (Last week, one student was absolutely shocked to learn there are five answer options on the multiple choice, despite taking practice quizzes all semester long!) This Kahoot is a great 10-minute activity to kick off any official “test prep” unit you begin.

Rubric Review

Last week I warned my students against a “one-size-fits-all” approach to their essays. Many forget the importance of literary elements in Q1 and Q2 essays versus the thematic application required in Q3 responses. One way to solidify knowledge of the rubric is to do a little scramble activity. Cut out the different boxes in a rubric and ask students to assemble rubrics in the right order, differentiating between Q1, Q2, and Q3 requirements. For an extra layer of difficulty, you could even cut it up by phrase or sentence, but then you should expect them to take quite a while!

Multiple Choice Horse Race

Disclaimer: I did not create this activity, nor do I know who did. But it blew up the Facebook group last year and I finally tried it about a month ago. There are varying ways to do it, so I’ll just explain what I did. I prepared one section of a released multiple-choice test (I found it on AP Classroom). On our whiteboard was a grid and their team’s horses (of course they named them). They were put into groups of three and given the excerpt and the first question. Each group read the excerpt and question and puzzled out the answer through discussion. Once in agreement, they approached me with their answer. If they got it right, they were given the next question and their horse moved forward one space.

The great thing about the horse race is that it promotes analysis but also emphasizes the importance of working quickly. I found that it felt like a no-tech Quizlet live. One thing I anticipated was a group quickly changing their answer and starting to guess the next answer without thinking about it, so I decided to implement a “guessing penalty.” If a group got their answer wrong, they had to move to a different set of desks and assemble a small puzzle. These puzzles only took about a minute to assemble, but it was a time penalty. That means that they discussed each question thoroughly to be as confident as possible that they were finding the right answer.  

Sample Essay Grading

Scoring released essays is an activity I integrate early in the year and return to for test prep season. It’s one thing to study a released rubric, but another to see how it was applied to an actual essay. I love that College Board releases essays each year, including commentary on how it earned each point.

These sample essays are best studied after students have answered the same question. For example, my students recently wrote prose analysis essays on the 2022 prose excerpt from Linda Hogan’s People of the Whale. Once they were scored, we studied the released examples as a group. I read them aloud (since the handwriting can be difficult for other students to read) and they discussed what the student did well. It’s important to emphasize that scorers reward what students do well, rather than penalize what might be missing. Once they’ve established their hypothesized score, we read the released scoring commentary aloud.

Almost across the board, my students score low. They’re always shocked to hear that an essay can get a 4/6 when they might have given it a 3 or even a 2. I find that seeing the rubric applied to real essays gives them a reality check, and sometimes a confidence boost!

Group Claim

This is another activity that we just did recently and my current class really enjoys it. After studying a short story recently, I put every student’s name into the Wheel of Names. Our objective was to write an introductory paragraph that established a strong claim and line of reasoning. Each student selected by the wheel of names had to contribute to the introduction. Then, the next student selected could add or modify the paragraph. It took about 7 rounds (or students) to finish our introduction paragraph and get it to the point where we really liked it.

In my students’ poetry presentations this week, one student led the class in this activity again. I even got to participate! We all like it because it helps to see how other students approach a prompt. Some dive into a claim right away, while others like to build a mood for a sentence or two before getting into it. But the group activity gets them talking about the right strategies, angles, and even words to choose when approaching a prompt. I know this will be in the backs of their minds when they start writing essays on the exam!

Open Essay Speed Round (Picking a title)

Although most students fear the poetry essay the most, I think the essay to be feared is the open question. This question requires you to analyze a text of your choosing, but you have no idea what it’s going to ask. So how can you really prepare a text to analyze? To prepare for this question, we study past open essay questions (without the suggested titles lists) and discuss what book we would choose to study. Many students forget about texts that they’ve read independently or in other classes, so this activity reminds them that there are more to choose from than the 3-6 they’ve read for AP Lit.

This would make an excellent “speed dating activity” to do in the school year as well. I’ve never tried those, but I know they are popular with many teachers.

Apples to Apples

I’ve already written a whole blog post on how Apples to Apples can be used as a fun test prep activity, so I’m just going to link to that. Read this blog post if you’d like to integrate this fun year-end activity. I recommend doing it the day or two before the exam!

Writing a Prompt

Asking students to write a prompt is an easy task that could (and probably should) be done early and often. College Board uses stable wording for their essay prompts, making it easy to create your own or anticipate how it could be applied to a future text. I like to give students the template for the prompt (found here in the AP English Errata Sheet). We play around with this all year. For some homework assignments, I assign students to write an essay prompt rather than an essay, or they partner up and assign essay prompts to each other. By thinking like the assigner, rather than the writer, I have found it gets students thinking broadly and thematically about a text. This hugely impacts their ability to write a line of reasoning later when it comes to essay composition.

AP Pass

Warning: AP Pass can be addictive and dangerous. But I have found it is a helpful tool for students who fret about exam scores. AP Pass allows students to put in projected scores on the multiple-choice section and each essay. Then, they can apply a curve from any year to see how they would score when it comes to the composite grade (1-5).

If I put in how I think I’ll perform on the 2020 exam, it shows me a 5, but if I adjust it to the 2014 exam, I’ll only score a 4. While this activity does not teach students anything particularly, it does show them how the score computes. It also demonstrates how the arbitrary curve (which isn’t arbitrary at all, but it is a math thing so I will never understand it) can change your score and is completely out of your control.

AP Lit Vocab Bingo

Another fun activity leading up to the exam is to review literary terms that students need to know on the exam. Before the 2019 changes, I used to make my students memorize a list of 100 AP Lit terms, many of them quite difficult (like zeugma and anaphora). But the 2019 exam simplified things and now there are only about 40 terms that students really need to know. Most of these are simple, like personification and epiphany, but they can bleed together sometimes. So, we play bingo to keep them all straight!

Bingo is easy to set up. I give students an empty “card” and they put the terms in the spaces as they see fit. As the caller, I read the words’ definitions and they mark on their corresponding boards. We usually play with M&Ms or Skittles, so students get some candy to munch on while they play. You can set this up easily on your own, but if you want Bingo boards with the words included and definitions all set to print, this TpT resource is cheap and offers a no-prep approach to this activity.

Conclusion

I know there are many more activities out there that prepare for the AP English Literature exam. There are even some that I do regularly that I know I’ve forgotten. However, I hope this short list gives you some ideas for this coming test prep season and for the years ahead!