Biology by the Math Mom: Practicing FRQs in AP Bio In Person and Virtually

Since I returned to the classroom five years ago, I've been having my AP Bio students practice released Free Response Questions from past exams. In the last two years, I've been coupling that with having them grade not only their own responses with the scoring guide, but scoring the student examples that the College Board provides. My students have said that they find this exercise helpful, so I continued this practice even when we were online.

Doing this online posed a few challenges. I didn't want to have to post a bunch of documents (questions, rubric, and student samples) and I didn't want students to see what the actual scores of the samples were. The longer I was teaching from home, the more ways I figured out how to solve these problems.

One way was to print out the pages I wanted and then used the Image Capture app in my school MacBook to scan all of the documents on my wireless printer/scanner into one PDF. I didn't even know I had this app until I found it by accident in desperation while online teaching. My daughter, who was zooming for college, was delighted that I found this. She regularly had to scan documents and upload them for her classes. One benefit of this method is that I could mark out the letters that the College Board had put at the top of the student sample FRQs and put my own letters on them. This is handy because my students quickly figure out that the A example is the best score, B is in the middle, and C is the worst. This method allowed me to just provide students with the original FRQ, the scoring guide, and the three student samples. When they were finished I would then reveal what the actual scores of the student samples were. (Which is what I usually do in the classroom.)

I wasn't keen on printing out that many pages...especially since I knew printouts were sitting at school. The second way I figured out how to take pages from several documents and put them into one was using Notability. I put all of the separate documents into one document in Notability, eliminated the pages I didn't want, and changed the order of the student sample pages. I could also mark out the original letters marking the student samples and add my own.

To keep all students participating even if they are reluctant to share in class or on Zoom, I put together this Google Form for them to report their results in. In the classroom, I'm able to walk around and check on the progress of each student. This was much harder online. And both online and in class there are always students more reluctant to share. Filling out the form allows all students to contribute without putting any of them on the spot.

Here are the FRQs that I've done so far. They are primarily from ecology and human body systems since those are the last two units of the year. I only changed the order and letters of the first question linked here, since this Spring I was working in survival mode and was just trying to get the documents workable.

Human Body Systems

Ecology