Preparing Students for the AP CSA FRQs

[Music] hello everyone thank you so much for joining we're going to give it 30 more seconds or so before we get started so excited to have you all here with us today as we talk about the apcsa frqs with our expert teacher trainer Joe Thompson so let's give it another 10 or 15 seconds while everybody gets in the room if you would like to access our slide deck I'm going to drop a link to that in the chat you all should have access to both the Q&A and the chat today so if you have a specific question and the chat is really active but you want to make sure that your question gets answered I would suggest dropping your questions about apcsa and these free response questions in the Q&A section so that they don't get lost in the chat if we have a pretty active chat here so I think we're going to have a fairly good siiz group here today and that is wonderful because there is so much to learn from our teacher trainer Joe Thompson so welcome to Joe if you will move on to that next slide for me please and did you want to say anything about your experience while we're getting started here sure I I was in the classroom or have been in the classroom for 10 years I was my students baited the very first Cod HS AP Java class that was interesting and really cods has kind of made my career as a teacher and I think I just want to tell you guys you teachers that I think what you're doing is super important work there are tremendous opportunities that are waiting for your students and as as of March of their second year of high school coding they are way down the road towards amazing professional opportunities so keep on encouraging them and based on my experience you're going to have the thrill of watching your students get incredible opportunities and this is this is a part of that path so I'm thr yes we're so excited to have Joe with us today and Joe if you want to click through to the next slide we'll go over some items here before we get started today what we're hoping to cover is the apcsa exam breakdown we'll spend just a few quick moments on that piece and so we will then spend most of our time reviewing resources that will help prepare your students for the free response questions Joe is going to really help us understand what the free response questions are how they're scored and how you can help encourage your students to get really well prepared for this portion of the test I will make sure that you have access to those slides in just a second not sure what happened there maybe just a little Google Google access so next slide please Joe again we do have the Q&A open if our chat is very active we don't want your questions to get lost so please ask any of those essential questions that you definitely want answered in the Q&A I am going to be stopping Joe with with questions at different timings that seem appropriate for what he's currently discussing and so we'll definitely get everything answered for you today though next slide please Joe if you don't have a Cod HS account you can sign up for one for free Joe will be sharing lots of cod HS resources a day and some other helpful places to go while you're preparing your students for these F frqs and the apcsa exam in general but we definitely want you to have access to the cods resources so if you are not a current member if you don't have an account you can sign up for one at codehs.com signup and if you will go to the next slide Joe we're also going to get you a certificate of completion for spending your afternoon here with us and we like to hand these out so that you just have documentation if you can use that in your state for any l or renew or things like that but you do want to be signed into your code HS account then click that link for the certificate of completion so make sure you're signed in to cods then click the completion link and it will just be a very simple thank you screen there is nothing else you have to do an email will follow with the a excuse me an email will follow with your certificate of completion so simple process there and next slide Joe so if you're not familiar Cod HS is a comprehensive platform form for teaching coding and computer science to elementary schools middle schools and high schools we're here today to focus on high school and all the great web-based tools and resources that we provide for apcsa teachers next slide please Joe our professional license includes things like Gradebook access and lesson plans for an entire Year's worth of curriculum we also have ways to monitor students work exchange feedback and even use AI to provide feedback to students on our platform so lots and lots of great useful tools our aim is to always help students and teachers in their coding Learning Journey and we hope that we are providing lots of useful tools for teachers to more efficiently and effectively teach computer science so check us out if you are unfamiliar and now I will hand it off to Joe who is going to get us all of the information we need to help students approach these AP exam free response questions thanks Joe take it away thank you Stephanie I think I want to start by putting an unhappy or putting a a what I've learned in my experience is that students are intimidated or are apprehensive let's use that word Stephanie apprehensive about the frqs and why are they apprehensive they see four pages of written instructions and it's pretty hard to parse out exactly what is being asked of us so I would begin by saying that when your students are first of all let's just acknowledge that it's a stress stressful test and the rqs are the most stressful part of it to the students when they're starting out but they have been actually doing frqs ever since they started their first cods Java exercise because in every cods exercise there is a set of written instructions and some code that students are being required to write and that code is going to be tested to determine whether they can move on to the next exercise or not so they've actually had quite a bit of practice doing something like an frq now I think let's go on the the exam for 2025 is set for May 7th so we still have two months to go we've got about eight weeks to get ready for this thing and some of your students are going to have a spring break in there it's certainly a good time to throw some practice frqs at your students but again beware of people feeling intimidated I know there's another there's another feeling that a lot of you are going to have which is have I covered enough of the course to to be thinking about frqs and I think that the course the the critical portions of the course for the AP exam are the sections on AP on arrays array list and 2D array so if you're close to module 8 you're in pretty good shape to talk about F frqs and get ready all right section one is a multiple choice portion of the exam and that's it's going to be 40 questions each question is worth only one point and students who are developing a strategy that leans heavily on success in a multiple choice are probably not realizing how difficult each multiple choice question is or how much time it might take to get the right answer out of a couple of Fairly similar looking answers can be very frustrating and so if you have an hour and a half to do 40 m choice questions your students might walk out of that multiple choice section feeling like oh I got shelled you know that I might not have a good chance of success in this exam so that's one reason to stress the F frqs because frqs give you I think a better shot at getting some points out of each of the frqs let's keep going and then so this is section two which is what we're here to talk about today and that's going to be 50 50% of the score the first one has methods is basically the question is going to be write a method section two is going to or the question two is going to be write a class question three is going to have to do with arrays and array lists and question four is going to be 2D arrays so again I I would stress modules six seven and eight of the course because those are going to be key for f frq's three and four and actually it wouldn't be that strange to see one and two have some references to arrays also the let's talk about scores for a second the overall score you have 76 possible points 40 multiple choice and each each frq is worth nine I have in front of me a breakdown of scores that give a three a four and a five and I would suggest to you all that you aim your kids at getting threes and fours some of them will will get fives it's great when some of them get fives a three is a very good score a four is a very good score to get a three you need between 31 and 43 points out of the 76 so if you have a pencil make a note of that and to get a four you need between 44 and 61 points so in your classes you probably want to talk about how do I get get somewhere between 31 and 61 points out of the 76 that are available and to do that and to take some of the pressure off yourself on the mcqs on the multiple choice questions you should be learning to get you know some points out of each frq and it's not that hard to do if you're looking at it as a perfectionist and going how do I get every Point how do I get 76 points it's just not going to happen if you go as a student can I get four five six points out of each frq well if you get five or six points out of the nine that are available on each frq you're looking at 20 which leaves you only 11 correct multiple choice questions away from a three a score of a three so that's success a three or a four is Success on this exam and if I'm telling you that you can get half the points on anq and that would leave you in a great position with respect to the m Qs for a good score on the exam that should make your students pretty interested in doing well on the frqs all right Cod HS has a ton of resources and there are a couple of other ones that are out there too the the most recent course Nitro is the is the course we're currently using correct Stephanie and and then we have these apcsa review courses which is more exercises and some quizzes there's practice there is question of the day which I actually think is really good and then the AP CSA frq Center I also have used in the past AP classroom which has some nice particularly beginning introductory frq type questions and also a resource called CS awesome and that you get to that with cs a w.org all right so at the codehs apcsa Hub there's all kinds of resources there including a digital textbook it's terrific I I there's a ton of stuff there there is all kinds of cod HS practice available and this question of the day I think is is a is a terrific way to get practice with multiple choice stuff some of your kids are going to want to go get review books I I like them I like The Baron's book The Baron book I think is the most popular one I've also more recently like to use the McGraw Hill five steps to a five it's called and that's a nice you know review with a lot of practice questions in it so let's look at the csfq center and there is a fantastic breakdown of previous frqs that are there and let me let's talk about how we would begin talking about F frqs and I I I don't mind you know when you're getting into specific review for the exam saying look this is difficult and intimidating I kind of like to start that way you know put that on the table don't don't sort of act like well what's the matter with you guys you know we're going to we're going to nail this it's it's hard why is it hard why are fqs hard they're hard because the instructions are three or four pages often they're presenting code which is going to be useful in solving the frq but you don't know from first looking at the code really exactly what you're looking at so you actually have to look past the sample code that they give you and sort through the rest of it and go what exactly are they asking me for and you want to look for phrases like write a class or write a method that does this that is such an important question what exactly are they asking me to do not that different from what cods is doing when cods presents you with an exercise you have to you have to in in doing an APF frq you have to give the AP graders exactly what you have to answer specifically what they're asking you to answer you there's you don't have to write the perfect answer but you have to provide code that Sol that answers the requirements all right so here we have in this fq Center some nice canonical Solutions and you can stress to your students that you know no nothing that you write is going to be it's going to be graded by people so you know you you there are lots of ways to answer this this is a way let's keep going here all right so in these frqs this is a good slide actually because you're you see here this is a and b write write a method so you're writing a method called get download and another one called and for Part B you're writing one called update update downloads and so you know right off the bat that you're going to write a method here and you're going to use the parameters that they give you Implement let's keep going here I like this slide read the questions carefully underline the tasks you need to accomplish or Circle them look for those key phrases write a method write a class use these names if you just use specific names for variables that they give you you might very well pick up a point just for that air on the side of writing more don't be afraid to you know write down some stuff you can even make make mistakes and not lose points so I'd sort of air on the side of writing a little more you don't need to write comments but you you can you need to write code that answers the problem read through the preconditions and postc conditions I think is a great bullet point there keep an eye on your time I know that this year for the first time we're doing these exams online we're not doing paper exams this year try to solve all parts I agree with this a B and C are typically a is typically the easiest one and and particularly here we are in early March I would watch out for the idea that students might get that they've somehow failed if they aren't getting them all you know pretty close to right that's not the correct approach to this thing you want to go can I get some points out of each frq and particularly given the scores that I just gave you if we're shooting for 31 to 43 for a three and 44 to 61 for a four if you get four or five points out of the nine available on each frq you are really putting yourself in a strong position with respect to mcqs for a good score on the exam so each each part the question has a certain number of points I think a typically will have two or three points B might have four C might have three but you can get some points particularly on the earlier ones and put yourself in a good position let's keep going Stephanie how are we doing on the chat do I am I missing a question we did have one just come through about test Administration as asking if scratch paper will be available in addition to the online Blue Book I I do not have that information off the top of my head about the administration this year yeah but I can tell you Stephanie that there is a person in your school called the AP coordinator who is going to have the answers to those kinds of things particularly as we get closer to exam day and as everybody knows we're switching to the online exam from a paper exam last year so I would be make sure I know who that AP coordinator is in your school and don't hesitate to go straight to them because they will have answers to questions like that so the key person there is going to be the AP coordinator at your school all right write neatly yes let's keep going only use classes given to you so this would be one thing I would really stress I would maybe even more than in your normal coding in the APF frq you're really trying to specifically answer the specific problem that they're giving you and you don't you don't really want to get off on a track of writing a big long class that isn't necessarily called for you want to write code that answers this and and the way I've dealt with it with my students is to tell them they they will be reassured by this you say listen these F frqs you're going to write maybe nine 10 lines of code to get nine points you know this is not not a big long you know this is not code for an ATM that you're going to write this is relatively straightforward code to get all the points and you can get some points for just writing a couple lines of code I mean there's a there's a an fq I was just looking at where part A has is write a method and the method header is one line and then there are two other lines inside brackets and if you write those three Lin L of code you get three points so as a teacher I would maybe start AP prepping by going to some of the canonical solutions for just section A of a question and say how did we get to this where we've got three lines of code to answer this where did we where was the question that said where did it say write this method that Returns the numerical value of the given letter whatever they find that in the directions for the for the sample question and then they can see how that code how that canonical answer worked so they can sort of see themselves picking up some points for that question and that's that's a whole lot better than oh my God I'm looking at four pages of instructions I don't know what how to even begin here so you want them to go I can get some points here which they can all right so again in part a you you know here's here's part a Four Points Part B Five Points and it's broken down into subsections so if you check for equality between the title from the list object and the title parameter you get a point if you access everything without going out of bounds we all know about index out of bounds problems you get a point Etc so let's keep going I would say you want to be banging on your kids about out of- bounds errors because they're going to see it on questions three and four and maybe in other parts of the frqs too extraneous code you know we're not looking for War and Peace here in code we're looking for fairly simple fairly limited number of lines of code make sure that your students declare local variables before they use them and we want to destroy persistent data let's just keep going here you know I I would almost use this slide which I think is is a useful slide and I would I would apply it in the reverse way and say you know the the if you if you write some code you're better off than not writing code and yeah there are penalties out there if you make a mistake take but in my experience students come back to me and you know tell me how they got a four by writing code not by being worried about whether or not they were going to get some stuff taken away so there are there are there are definitely ways you can get penalized but I the biggest the bigger challenge is to at the now in early March the challenge is to have your students really engage with f frqs have them taking practice frqs and get some points tell them look I am not looking for you to do this question perfectly I'm not looking let's look at part A how do we get the how do we get the three points for part A and once we've done enough of those then all of a sudden look at that we got 12 points by just doing all the part A's of all four questions that's that's sort of my take and look at the list of all the things that don't provide a penalty you know there are all kinds of things you can do that might not be perfect Java that you will not be penalized equals and equals equals signs there are gets and gets gets and equals rather extraneous square brackets there's there are a lot of mistakes that you can make in writing this code that will not incur a penalty so I like this slide a lot this slide is basically telling me and should be telling telling all of you guys that you want to have your students writing code okay the qrg the quick reference guide I happen to think this is super important why because it really helps students feel like this is a fairly limited subset of the ap of java that we're going to be using I mean there is 1 two 3 four five six seven string m methods and there's a guide that they're going to give your students when the when the exam starts that they can use to reference these specific methods from the Java Library so I would actually Xerox this thing pass it out at the beginning of class and make sure that people are using it as we work through various questions and problems so I actually really like this qrg and they should they should be very comfortable with all these before they start the exam and so this is a nice nice thing you can do to go over stuff all right this is a nice PDF I've used it in the past it's a complete description of the entire course some of you may have given it out or had your students download it course and exam description I think it's about 150 pages and there are some nice sample exam questions in there all right in the frq center there are also good way opportunities to practice and a scoring guide so the I would say start your class discussions with the answers you know start start your discussions with a canonical answer and then go what's going on with this code why do what what does this code accomplish how does it work what how could it be changed and then go back into the question and go well how did they just ask us to write this code I'd sort of work backwards from the answer here then you can go to some of these problems that are here I like this all all four of these are good fq Center is good just watch out for for students getting intimidated by the process of you know looking at a four-page frq and then trying to get all nine points out of it in a certain amount of time so i' I'd be go easy on them have them go easy on themselves develop some confidence and get some points out of every frq some points and and look at where that puts them on the way to getting a three or a four these are actual frqs that are in the code HS f frq to AP Central getting back to the course again modules six seven and eight are super important for the third and fourth F frq in in the exam and there are I guess there are various codes that run here too but I would you know I've always told my students that that it's not even that important that the code you write runs it the matters is what matters is writing code that meets the test rubric for getting the points you're more interested on the AP than getting the points than writing beautiful code that runs perfectly all right so here is a very good breakdown of 2013's first FR frq called song list and a runnable version with some nice notes Java docs a little little more than in documentation than most people would see in Java text only new version yeah this is good have students write code for algorithms and F frqs I think that's a great great practice for frqs coding bat you you've all aware of that one as a resource and I would add CS awesome teach them to read the problem just sit there and look at problem and say ask ask them to tell you what the question is and this is actually true with other APS I've I've worked with English teachers and Math teachers about APS and they say the same thing that on the F frqs it is a real challenge to parse out what exactly the College Board is looking for in the frqs and you know you can you can benefit by spending time with the frq questions and saying exactly what are they looking for here and get the students to give it to you in their own language what what exactly do they want us to do and you're going to see that part of one source of confusion is the way that the aps present the sample or helper code that goes along with it sort of before they tell you what they looking for so you're going to have to sort of look back look look past the code that they give you at the beginning figure out what the question is what class or method they want you to write and then look back at that helper code to say see oh there's there's a different method that I'm I can use in writing the answer to this so don't sit there and try to figure out exactly what's going on with this helper code go through the written instructions figure out exactly what they're looking for and then go back to that helper code and use that okay let's see tips for incorporating fq training begin true fq segments and full questions untimed I think that's great don't don't add you know tons of time pressure on you could spend an entire class just doing part A and talk about how that's phrased it's fine and do lots of group work I I found that when my students are working groups of twos and threes they can they can get to a place where they're kind of having an understanding of how an answer comes about and don't hesitate to use Solutions heavily like you might even start by by pulling out a solution to a part and asking your student to just walk walk everybody through that code and what it does and what all the variables are about what all the methods are all right yeah this is group work scoring your own reviewing others is great great thing to do off by one in Loops is a common error forgetting to declare a variable you and that's fine not returning or required value so I like this list of possible errors but the biggest error of all would be being overly cautious about writing code and you want what you really want to do is make sure you're trying make sure you're writing make sure you're answering the question turning a value and AV void method not good changing a constant not good that last one that just came up on the star a lot of the times they will not penalize you for doing that transposition is a typical problem with assignment okay coding to the example let's just keep on going indentation really helps with code in general reread the question and then your answer before moving on I do like that idea I like the idea of you know go through the whole question Circle some stuff underline some stuff then go through it again and always ask yourself to be careful what what the heck are they asking what is the question don't don't write comments as part of your answer let's see don't do fancy I like that guideline stick to the quick reference guide use that quick reference guide know it use it in class have the students have it they seem to have a hard time hanging on to any kind of paper and I've had a lot of frustrations over the years you know telling students you got to have this quick reference guide and then I have to go copy it again for for everybody but if you keep doing that they're going to eventually realize this is a really important way of narrowing down this vast Java language to the things that just appear in the exam and when you realize how circumscribed the AP subset is it's actually a comfort do keep track of your time I yes so Joel I'll do a five minute time call here or I can WP if you have more you want to discuss no I think I've made my point that I wish to make you know I I I'm here doing this because I think fq is super important I think there's a lot of intimidation out there and I'd hate to see your students get sort of intimidated on the exam itself I'd rather put that on the table and and get some points in frqs go ahead Stephanie no thank you so much for sharing all of that I'll give the folks in attendance a chance to put any questions in the chat if you want everybody to see your question make sure that you have just clicked that option in the drop- down menu I have had some questions come through just to Joe and I which is fine I was able to answer those but if you want everybody to be able to see your question then yes thank you make sure you're typing to everybody in the chat there or you can alternatively use the Q&A as we come to the end of our session here so it sounds like some of your tips Joe are resonating with our audience Elizabeth says that she keeps a class copy of that document in her room for tests and quizzes and frq practice so it sounds like folks are on the same page with you good terrific awesome well if you have any remaining questions attendees go ahead and put those in the chat or in the Q&A otherwise I will kind of slowly wrap us up here and I do want to give you time though to ask any remaining questions while Joe is here with us since he is such an amazing resource and experienced educator with this apcsa course so if you are looking for additional opportunities to connect with ap Educators and other computer science teachers we encourage you to join our cods Facebook group follow us on our social media accounts and also we have a certified educator program where you can network with other computer science Educators quarterly and also get some additional perks for becoming a certified educator if you'll go to the next slide Joe again I will put put a link in the chat to our certificate of completion so that you can use that to your advantage if you can in your ler renewal or just any any way you need to account for your time here with us today and Joe I'm going to interrupt myself we have a question where can we find that total possible points are 76 for the exam this year year yeah I'm looking at it in the front of one of my review books the front of my five steps for a five is there it's based on 40 qu 40 multiple choice questions each one gets one point and then each of the frqs is nine points so again so so that adds up to 36 which is a total of 76 and what I have found successful what's worked for me in the past is to say look forget getting all nine points let's see if we can get four or five on each frq and then you show them how they can get a lot of points on part A or some of the points on Part B out of the three parts if you can get four or five see they're not walking into their history class final exam going I need to get a 50 on this exam they're walking in there thinking I gotta get 95 you know and that's not what we're looking for if if they can get half the points on these f frqs they're putting themselves in a very strong position to get a three or a four and they need to shift their expectations and I I don't believe most of your students have successfully have shifted those expectations quite enough at this moment and the intimidation they might be feeling and looking at some sample frqs and thinking how in the world am I going to get nine points out of that is potentially difficult so it's standing in the way of them getting four or five so you you just go look at this four look at this four lines of code that I get four point three points for in part A you can do this Timmy you know that's where I want you guys to be coming from yes good advice and then we did have another question about the logistics for the exam so Denise I would probably again refer you to your District AP coordinator who will have more information about frq's on the computers and how students will interact with College Board in order to complete the test this year since we're all trying out this new digital version of our apcsa test yeah Joe if you'll go to the next slide for me I do want to put in a plug for our upcoming spring 2025 webinars we will have a few more AP focused webinars preparing students for the apcsp create task will be next week then we will also have a general preparing students for both exams sessions so mark your calendars for those you can sign up at code do excuse me codehs.com slf free PDS so I will link that in the chat here if you're interested thank you Mark Mark's already ahead of me we should be paying Mark here for this thank you so much for getting that into the chat and then finally before we sign off here today we would love to get your feedback on this webinar and we always want to hear from you what we can do better and how we can better serve you in the future around apcsa and if we've missed anything today that survey is a great place to indicate that but if you would love to give some kudos to Joe he would appreciate that in the survey also so thank you all so much for being here and we will put a put a ribbon on this I think Joe unless you have anything else you wanted to share your your guys your teachers work is very important and it's great that you're out there doing it absolutely good luck to all of you CSA teachers good luck to all of your students as we head into exam season and we hope to see you again thanks so much Joe we'll see you later okay bye-bye [Music]