As AP exams begin, students are starting to review concepts gone over throughout the school year. In order to help her class study, AP Human Geography teacher Jessica Kelly is conducting virtual meetings on Saturdays to review.
“My number one thing is fun which we have in our Saturday sessions,” Kelly said. “Number two, is knowledge, to go a little more in depth into some of the things we talked about. It gives me an opportunity to remind students to ‘Watch this documentary,’ ‘Read this article,’ and give students extra stuff. If anything, I am really happy with all our time we have together.”
During these sessions, students are taught using in-class methods such as slideshows, articles, and games to review.
“In the sessions Mrs. Kelly goes over several presentations from earlier units,” sophomore Anika Aller said. “She asks us questions, we answer, and it’s mostly just like how she teaches normal class. We also play review games like Quizlet Live and Blooklet that test our knowledge on vocabulary and country names. Listening to the presentations and playing the review games helps us remember what we learned.”
Many students have been enjoying the meetings and appreciate the different studying tactics used to prepare as opposed to simply listening to lectures.
“The Saturday sessions allow me to reflect on what I’ve learned in past units, and reminds me what I need to study before I take the AP test,” sophomore Malorie Schwartz said. “I really enjoy the Kahoots and Quizlet Lives we do while studying.”
With this year being more fast-paced than others, many students in Kelly’s class feel that coming together on the weekend is a good way to absorb and comprehend information presented in class.
“Online classes come with their own difficulties, especially AP ones,” sophomore Blen Teka said. “It is difficult for me to focus due to all that’s going around me and all the factors that easily distract me. On top of that we have such a minuscule amount of time to cram in all this information and it can become increasingly difficult through the year to keep up and remember it all. Saturday sessions with Mrs. Kelly is exactly what I needed.”
