Your AP Lit Open Essay Shortlist: A Free Lesson

Every spring, I prepare my students for the AP English Literature exam in a variety of ways. One of my longest traditions has been creating study guides for five novels or plays in preparation for the AP Lit open question. I usually roll this out in April and give students 2-3 weeks to get their study guides ready. However, I decided to change things up this year.

I’m writing this in early February, a time I’d typically call too early to start thinking about the open question. But I spent a whole day trying to plan lesson for AP Lit and couldn’t think of anything, so I thought I’d roll out open question prep a few months early. Looking back, it worked really well to start getting students thinking about a reading strategy well before the exam. February is my new go-to month for Q3 prep, and this is my new standard lesson. Here’s what you’ll need to do it with your students.

Q3 Question Prep Lesson

What You’ll Need

• List of released prompts
• List of titles from past open questions
• Inventory of titles taught in ELA classes at your school (see my example below)
• Student Shortlist Document (file included below)
• Optional: Slideshow with instructions (my editable version is included below)

A Note on Text Selection

AP Readers are instructed to read whatever is written for an AP Lit open question essay, regardless of the text chosen. It doesn’t matter if they choose a movie, libretto, children’s tale, short story, poem, or even make up a story. If they write it, we read it. That being said, there are strategies that will serve students better than others. Choosing a title outside the box can make for a memorable essay, but not always in a good way.

I’ve always been of the opinion that students should analyze complex books that they loved reading. I am fairly relaxed with what my students can read for independent reading, because I’d rather they find a title they love and will actually finish.

My slideshow for this lesson includes a very basic chart. It has length running along the bottom and difficulty running up the side. Basically, the harder and longer the text is, the more appropriate it will be for the AP Lit exam. Before I got into the lesson, the students and I spent a few minutes charting choice reads and 9^th and 10^th grade texts on the chart. There were only a few we weeded out as being potentially too simple (Animal Farm was one of them), but I didn’t say it was off the table completely.  

1 – Examine the Reading Inventory

Pass out your school’s reading list for 9-12^th grades. If you don’t have this, make a list on a whiteboard with the help of your students. Once a list is populated, ask students to circle all the books that they read. Then, ask them to add any book they read for independent reading or pleasure in the past four years.

2 – Examine the List of Titles

Pass out the list of titles from past released exams. This can sometimes overwhelm students, which, to be honest, is kind of my goal here. We spent a few minutes highlighting the books we have read from the list. The highest number from students in my class was 24 and the lowest was only 8.

I don’t do this to make them feel unprepared. I do it to show that the list is faulty. Imagine if students were expected to read from this list to prepare? I’ve been teaching the course for 20 years, and I’ve read just over 100 of them!

After highlighting, I asked them what books were on their reading inventory that weren’t on the list of released titles. Some popular books that were absent included Room, The Martian, Anxious People, and Remarkably Bright Creatures.

Spend a few minutes differentiating between “classics” and “literature.” This could also be a great chance to talk about the problems with the literary canon (if you’re brave). Ultimately, the goal is for students to recognize that the suggested reading list on any Q3 essay is irrelevant to a student’s overall preparation.

3 – Studying Prompts

Pass out the list of released prompts from past exams. I selected five of my favorite prompts (including the years of my and my student teacher’s graduation, when we took the exams). Ask students to read each prompt and make a list of what books could work for each. They should use their reading inventory for this list.

4 – Create a Shortlist

Students should make a list of 5-10 titles that would best serve them to write about for the open essay. In my experience, students tend to find a genre they like and stick to it. However, if you only read books in one genre, you can find yourself underprepared if a different prompt is on your exam. For this reason, I recommend that students create a diverse list of titles.

Things they should consider are:

• Including at least one play
• Including at least one classic (pre 20^th century)
• Including at least one female author
• Including at least two contemporary texts (1980 or later)
• Including diverse voices (from other countries or of different ethnicities than your own)

If you want, you can pass out this document, which includes these tips on the top of it. Otherwise, just ask students to write it on a sheet of paper.

Going Forward

I collected these sheets to hand back again in April when we start doing much more test prep. I also recommended that students reread any books or plays from other their previous reading experience if details have gotten fuzzy over the years. Some have already decided to reread a title for their quarter 4 independent reading.

I usually discuss this question in April, but I get the sense that students are too burned out to reflect on anything they read more than six months earlier. With three months before the exam, students have time to reread any novels or plays they loved in the past. This is definitely a new staple lesson for my students in February!