University of Texas at Tyler Advanced Placement Summer Institute

Course Offerings

Pre-AP Math MS

Victoria Jackson

Mrs. Jackson graduated from the University of Arkansas at Monticello in 1970 with a B.S.E. in Elementary Education. She has a Masters in Gifted and Talented, which she received in 1989, and a Masters in Educational Administration, as well as Middle School Math Certification. As a College Board Pre-AP Middle School Math consultant for the past 8 years, Mrs. Jackson has presented at College Board Conferences, Summer Institutes, and several Vertical Team Strategies workshops. She has worked for the Pulaski County Special School District for the past 14 years and has taught Math in grades 3-8. At the present time, she is a Gifted and Talented teacher/facilitator at Maumelle Middle School and works with grades 6-8 in Pre-AP Math. She lives in Monticello and has been blessed with a wonderful husband of 42 years, 2 grown children-a boy and a girl- and 2 granddaughters, both 6 years of age.

Course Description: This course will focus on the importance and relevance of mathematics prior to Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry as well as emphasizing the language of Algebra, solving equations and inequalities, linear functions, non-linear functions, data interpretation and probability. Critical thinking skills will be explored and participants will use multi-representational approaches to look at problems analytically, graphically, numerically, and verbally. They will explore internet websites and various forms of technology to increase comprehension and be introduced to hands-on activities that will supplement and enhance their teaching techniques. There will be discussions about best practices and strategies to successfully implement inquiry-based learning activities.

What to Bring:  Please bring the

• A favorite project, lesson, activity or website to share

• A graphing calculator (will be provided if you do not have one)

• The Participant’s Manual: Pre-AP: Topics for AP Vertical Teams in Mathematics (if you have one)

Pre-AP Math HS

Melanie Nichols

Melanie Nichols is a graduate of the University of Central Arkansas (BSE) and Arkansas Tech University (MEd). She taught mathematics for 24 years in Arkansas, including 14 years at Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts (ASMSA), before becoming the ASMSA Dean of Academic Affairs in 2006 and retiring in late June, 2010. Melanie was awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Secondary Mathematics Teaching, the National Milken Educator Award, and the Mathematical Association of America Teacher of the Year Award for Oklahoma and Arkansas. Melanie continues to work with the College Board as a mathematics consultant and with the Arkansas Advanced Initiative in Math and Science as a calculus instructor. She has presented both Pre-AP Mathematics and Calculus AB workshops for the past 20 years and served as a College Board AP AB Calculus Exam Reader. Melanie served on the board of the Arkansas Council of Teachers of Mathematics as President, Vice-President for High Schools and as the ASMSA representative. Melanie lives in Hot Springs, Arkansas with her husband and enjoys traveling, sewing and spending time with her mother and grandchildren.

Course Description: This course will emphasize an understanding of core mathematics concepts and will focus on preparing students for the AP Calculus course and AP Calculus exam through the Algebra II and Trigonometry/Pre-calculus curriculums. We will work through hands-on activities that can be used in the classroom to introduce or reinforce concepts. Participants are expected to share activities and lessons that have worked well in their classes. The importance and value of vertical teaming will be discussed. Throughout the course, AP style expectations will be incorporated into problem solving, the writing of solutions and explanations.

What to

• At least one hands-on classroom activity, written in copy-ready form
• At least one strong mathematics lesson you have used, written in copy-ready form
• A mathematics textbook that you have taught from
• A graphing calculator (will be provided if you do not have one)

Pre-AP English MS

Amanda Burgin

Ms. Amanda Burgin, a native El Pasoan, has taught Pre-AP, academic, and inclusion classes at Valley View Middle School since 1992. She has also worked with the campus’ Gifted and Talented class for the past ten years. She earned both a Bachelors Degree in Liberal Arts and a Masters Degree in British and American Literature from the University of Texas at El Paso. She began presenting for College Board in 2005. Since joining the district, Amanda has worked the district’s Scope and Sequence committee and served on several Benchmark committees, and she has been a mentor teacher for several VVMS teachers. She was selected as one of the District’s Top Ten Secondary Teachers of the Year for the 2007-2008 school year. She had her first story, “Snow Bound” published May 24, 2007 in Chinook Volume 7 by Blackfly Press.

Course Description: This course will provide strategies and activities that encompass AP concepts and skills for the middle school English classroom. Topics and activities for the week will include: Pre-AP strategies in Close Reading, grammar, composition, and the rhetorical analysis of fiction and non-fiction excerpts, speeches, and poems. Lessons are hands-on and may include visual, audio, and video connections. Time has been allotted to allow attendees to develop their own lesson based on strategies learned throughout the week. A comprehensive resource list is provided as an appendix.

Participants should bring:

• Highlighters
• Post-it notes or tabs
• Writing materials
• Textbook
• Novel, non-fiction piece, and poem
• Flashdrive (for electronic copy of binder materials)

Pre-AP English HS

Sandra Coker

Sandra Coker teaches AP English Language at Westlake High School. She is a veteran AP teacher and a College Board consultant for AP and Pre-AP English. Sandra is also a faculty consultant for ETS as a Question Leader for the AP English Language Exam. She is author, along with fellow writers John Brassil and Carl Glover, of Analysis, Argument, and Synthesis and Writing the Synthesis Essay. She has also contributed to College

Course Description: This workshop is designed for high school teachers of Pre-AP English. During the week we will focus on preparing students for the AP English courses through practice in critical thinking strategies in reading, strategies for analysis, and strategies for constructing argument. We will also look at sample essays from the 2011 Reading and examine recent changes in the English Language exam. The workshop includes practical activities and teaching units.  Participants should bring two or three nonfiction selections they consider suitable for their classes. These selections can be essays, arguments, speeches, letters, or any similar text.

Pre-AP Social Studies MS

Marsha Gray

Marsha Gray currently teaches AP United States History at Carroll Senior High School in Southlake, TX. She has 30 years in education, including 13 in Advanced Placement. Ms. Gray has  been an AP exam reader for the last nine years, the last four years serving as a Table Leader. Ms. Gray additionally serves as a consultant for Vertical Teaming for Social Studies as well as Pre-AP Strategies for History and the Social Sciences. She is a graduate of North Texas State University (BA) and Southern Methodist University (MLA). She has been honored in Who’s Who Among American Teachers and was granted a summer of study in India as a Fullbright-Hays scholar.

Course Description:

• What works in the classroom
• What are the expectations for Pre-AP?
• How to prepare students for writing the historical essay
• Hands-on activities with proven success records
• Content-specific lectures
• Lesson planning ideas
• Advantages of vertical teaming
• Valuable resources
• This course will appeal to both middle and high school teachers, new as well as experienced.

What to Bring: Participants are encouraged to bring copies of “best practices” that they may share with the group.

Pre-AP Science MS

Lisa Tobias

Lisa Tobias has a BS in Biology and History from Bates College and Masters in Education from Barry University. She has been teaching Middle School Science since 2000. She currently is working at Saint Mary’s Hall in San Antonio Texas teaching 8^th grade Physical Science and 6^th grade Robotics. She has been consulting for College Board since 2007 in Pre-AP Science, Inquiry-based Laboratories, as well as Science Vertical Teams, and is currently a Consultant Mentor.

Course Description: The Pre-AP Science Workshop will use Physical Science concepts as the lens to highlight the advantages of a Pre-AP program, discuss content and curriculum, address the challenges of meeting the academic needs of all students, bring inquiry into the classroom, and modify instruction with Pre-AP skills in mind. Participants will perform and modify labs, discuss interdisciplinary and non-traditional projects, and look at traditional and alternative forms of assessment. Since one area of focus will be modifying labs currently in use to be more inquiry-based, it is requested that participants bring copies of their current labs to work on. Technology will be emphasized throughout the week. By the end of the week, participants will have a Pre-AP skills list, classroom-ready labs, and project and assessment ideas to integrate into their classrooms.

AP English Language and Composition

Becky Cox

Rebecca Cox has been teaching AP English Language and Composition at Fayetteville High School for twenty years.  In 1990, she was appointed a reader for the AP Exam and has been serving as a Table Leader since 1998.  For the past twelve years, she has served as a consultant for the College Board, conducting one and two day conferences in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Texas.  She has been presenting materials to teachers in summer institutes for the past ten years.  During the school year, she scores essays that students have written for the SAT online.  Ms. Cox is also the sponsor of her high school’s literary magazine, Connotations.  Since she evaluates literary magazines and yearbooks from across the country, she serves on the Board of Judges for Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the National Scholastic Press Association and Southern Interscholastic Press Association.  In her state of Arkansas, Ms. Cox served on the Arkansas Rangefinder Committee for the End of Course Literary Exam, which she helped develop.

Course Description:  I have organized my materials by types of essays on the AP Exam, and participants can expect to spend about a day per question.  We will begin looking at how to begin the year and how to give students a solid foundation by looking at the value of summer assignments, exposing students to the essay as a genre, reading some of the first essays by Plutarch, Seneca, Montaigne, and Bacon, and writing a summary paper.  We will spend the rest of the day analyzing the multiple-choice section of the exam.  Participants will take an exam, score their responses, and discuss the reasons for answers.  I will explain strategies that I use in class to help students who are weak in this area.  The second day, we will tackle the rhetorical analysis question by spending time discussing devices that students must be familiar with.  Participants can read and bring copies of the following essays (some of these will be in the texts provided by companies):  Virginia Woolf’s “Death of a Moth”; E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake”; Martin Luther King, Jr.’ “Letter from Birmingham Jail; George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”; and Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.”  We will spend the afternoon reading and scoring rangefinders and anchor papers from the 2010 Rhetorical Analysis Question.  The third day will be devoted to the synthesis question.  We will look at strategies that will help students prepare for this:  writing a research essay.  If participants would like to use the computer lab one day, we will do this in connection with this question.  Again, in the afternoon, we will be reading and scoring the 2010 rangefinders and anchor papers for the synthesis question.  On the fourth day, we will look at argumentation:  strategies, terms, activities, etc and then in the afternoon, we will look at the argumentative question on the 2010 exam.

What to Bring:

 I would like participants to bring either a passage, essay, article, or activity that they would like to share with the rest of the class.  The written piece should be one that they feel would help prepare students or any part of the exam; they should prepare to explain how it could be used in class or bring instructions.  The activity should meet the same requirements.  It will be a challenging and productive week for all of us, and I am looking forward to working with all of these devoted teachers.

AP English Literature

Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown, a graduate of Abilene Christian University and Texas Christian University, currently teaches AP English IV and Pre-AP English II at Round Rock High School in Round Rock, Texas. He has over forty years of professional classroom experience spanning small to large schools, private to public schools, and kindergarten to college aged students. He is AP consultant in English Literature, serves as an AP Literature Reader for ETS and has made numerous presentations throughout the southwestern region at AP conferences and summer institutes. He also serves as a trainer for Laying the Foundation.

Course Description:
Participants will focus on methods and materials for teaching a course in AP English Literature and Composition.

Topics:

• Participants will examine the structure and scoring of the AP English Literature and Composition Exam, including 2011, as well as the skills students need to succeed on both the multiple-choice and free-response sections of the exam.
• Participants will focus on literary analysis, writing the analytical essay, analyzing poetry, and working with stylistic analysis in general.
• Other topics include close reading, annotation of texts, reading and responding to drama, handling the grading load, and teaching full-length works.
• Participants will receive activities that foster student involvement, and will work with a variety of literary texts, new and old.
• Best practice models will be shared to help course participants acquire new ideas and enthusiasm for teaching the course.

AP Calculus AB

Cedric French Galan

Cedric French-Galan has taught math for 15 years and taught AP Calculus at Westside High School in Houston, Texas for 8 years. He has been a College Board Consultant since 2004 and has presented at many AP Calculus workshops and AP Strategies workshops. In 2005 he was awarded Teacher of the Year for all Houston ISD secondary schools. He was an AP Calculus Reader last summer and will be a Reader this summer.

Course Description: This course is for those who teach the AP course or have taught it for years. Topics taught in the AB curriculum will be introduced by lecture and demonstration, problem solving activities and cooperative learning. Group discussions will focus on the issues of teaching an AP Calculus course – such issues will come from the needs and interests of the participants in the institute. Participants should bring a graphing calculator. Incorporating technology in the teaching of AP Calculus and calculator active questions will be discussed. Reading AP Calculus Free Response questions will be explored. Participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences and if possible demonstrate techniques, lessons and software, etc, which they have used successfully themselves.

AP Biology

Gary Earleywine

Gary is a 36 year teaching veteran who has worked for the College Board for 16 years. He has been involved in one day, two day, and APSIs across the country in biology, PreAP, and environmental science. He has received numerous awards including the Presidential Excellence Award in Math and Science Teaching, the Outstanding Biology Teachers Award, Southwest Region Recognition Award for AP Biology, the Siemens AP Science Award for the Southwest Region and the Conservation Educator Award for Arkansas Conservation Districts. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with his wife, Gail, and is proud to announce that they have their first grandchild, Jonas!

 AP Biology will incorporate the use of calculators, LabQuests, and new labs that may be used in the curriculum. We will also look at the new revisions for biology and address questions that teachers may have about the course and audit. We will have time to share favorite activities so I am asking teachers to bring copies of the activity to share with everyone.

AP United States History

Tom Conway

Tom Conway, a native of Beaumont, Texas is an AP US History consultant  and history professor currently residing in Austin, Texas. He received his BA and MA in History from Lamar University and has completed 36 hours towards a PhD in U.S. History at UT Austin. Mr. Conway taught college US History survey courses at Lamar University and was a teaching assistant at UT Austin. Conway has taught survey classes in US History as an adjunct faculty member at Austin Community College since 1988. He has also taught AP US History at Westlake High in Austin, Texas since 1990. Mr. Conway was named a consultant for College Board in 1998 and is an AP US History grader for ETS. His article “Hitler and the Future: A Review Essay” was published in the Lamar Journal of the Humanities in 1981. Conway is also a textbook reviewer for Pearson Publishing Co.

Course Description:

• Structure of the AP US History Exam
• Using the AP central website
• How to prepare students for success on the multiple choice section
• How to prepare students to write quality standard essays and DBQ essays
• Student-centered strategies for teaching the AP US History curriculum
• Strategies for improving student reading skills for the AP US History curriculum
• Using historiography in the AP US History curriculum
• Teaching Jacksonian Democracy and Turner’s Frontier thesis together
• Teaching the Civil War in the AP US curriculum
• The decision to drop the atomic bomb
• A review of the 20098 AP US History Exam

AP Spanish Language

Billie Hulke

Billie Hulke retired from public school teaching in 2003 after having taught Spanish for 36 years.  She taught pre-AP and AP Spanish Language and Literature at Midway High School in Hewitt, TX.  Currently, she is a full-time Lecturer of Spanish in the Modern Foreign Language Department at Baylor University in Waco, TX.  She received her B.A. degree in Spanish from Baylor University and an M.A. in Spanish from the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores (ITESM) in Monterrey, México.  Mrs. Hulke was the Texas Foreign Language Association Spanish Teacher of the Year and received the Embassy of Spain Scholarship for summer study in Salamanca, Spain.  She received the College Board Special Recognition Award for Outstanding Teaching and Participation in the AP Program, the Baylor University Memorable Teacher Award, Midway ISD Teacher of the Year, a Midway Foundation Award, the Golden Apple Award, and is listed in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.  Mrs. Hulke was selected by the Panhellenic Council as the “Baylor University Professor for the Month of November, 2009.” In November of 2010, she was recognized as an outstanding professor by the young ladies of Delta Delta Delta, and she was recently nominated for the 2011 Baylor Outstanding Faculty Member – Lecturer Teaching Award. Mrs. Hulke is past President of TFLA, and her workshop “High 5’s for AP Spanish” was selected “2004 Best of Texas.” She has been an AP Spanish Reader and led numerous AP Language and Literature conferences and institutes in Puebla, México, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, and Arkansas.  She has presented workshops for TFLA and the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching (SWCOLT) in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, California, Missouri, Kansas, Utah and Texas.  She was a guest presenter for the SWCOLT/Arizona Foreign Language Association Spring Conference in Phoenix, Arizona in April, 2006.  She presented at the 2009 AATSP Conference in San José, Costa Rica and at the 2007 ACTFL Annual Conference in San Antonio.  She served on the ACTFL Birkmaier Award Committee at the 2008 Conference in Orlando, Florida and the SWCOLT Teacher of the Year Committee from 2007 – 2010.  This past summer, she was selected by the College Board to present a full-day, pre-conference workshop in Washington, D.C.

Course Description: The AP Spanish course is an activity-based approach which will provide practical strategies and activities for developing, teaching and maintaining a successful program.

Topics:

1. An overview of the AP Spanish Language Program
2. A simulated reading of the 2010 AP Spanish Language Exam with a special emphasis on the free-response items;
3. Recommendations for AP resources and materials;
4. Ideas and discussions for providing vertical alignment;
5. Activities for building vocabulary and integrating grammar;
6. Strategies to help students build language proficiency skills in the three communicative modes of interpersonal, interpretive and presentational and the five C’s: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities;
7. Integration of literature, art, music and technology; and
8. Sharing best classroom practices.

What participants should bring and share:

Copies of favorite lessons, activities, projects, Internet resources, books, and materials to share