Preparing for the AP Exam

It looks like the AP exam is finally approaching, so I guess I'll focus my blog post around that.  I decided to take the practice exam on Saturday, and I have to admit that I think it was pretty helpful.  Maybe it was just that the passages were easier, but I felt fairly confident during the test.  The only one that I really had any trouble with was the poem about autumn (at least that's what I think it was about).  The rest were pretty straightfoward.  Another benefit of taking the practice test was getting used to writing three essays in two hours.  Although I usually have trouble finishing our in class timed writings, I was able to finish all three essays with about 10 minutes to spare.  I guess the good thing is that the time we save from one essay can carry over to the others.  The most difficult one was probably the open ended, but maybe that was just because I haven't really reviewed the major works very much.  I think that the reviewing that we're doing in class will be very beneficial.  For example, today my small group discussed Invisible Man.  It's been a little while since we read that book, so it was good to kind of refresh the major ideas and plot details.  At first I could barely remember anything, but as the class period progressed I was able to recall more and more about the novel.  In fact, by discussing it with other people I realized things that I don't think I knew back when we were actually studying the work.  I'm glad that we'll be doing these sort of small group discussions for some of the other books because it will definitely help me refresh and remember them.  One thing that has been mentioned in class and that I think would definitely be helpful would be a graphic organizer that contains the major ideas and techniques of the various works that we've read this year.  A way to categorize the works would make them easier to remember in my opinion and would make it less difficult to select a work for the open ended question.  Otherwise, I'm not really sure what else I can do to study for the exam.  Whether or not I do more multiple choice practice will largely depend on the score from the practice exam, and it seems like we will be doing plentty of review of the major works in class.  I think I'll be ready by the time that the AP exam comes around.