AP Biology Exam: Teacher In Panic, Students Oblivious

<-------- The teacher feels

like this.....

.....and the students feel

like this! ----->

Sound familiar?

It is the time of the year when the AP Biology teacher (me) begins to panic. There are only "x" number of teaching days left, and there is still "y" amount of material that must be covered! PANIC!

Actually, my students are great. But it is getting on toward spring time in my part of the country. The students are tired....very tired! They have worked hard all year, participated in a ton of extracurricular activities, and they are just worn out!!

It is a difficult time of the year to be sure. I must continue to teach hard everyday to get all of the material covered. At the same time, I need to get my students motivated for reviewing for the exam. It is a fine line to balance. Push them hard, but don't overload them.

I am fortunate to have a 70 minute class period. (Don't kill me....I realize how lucky I am!!) Starting this week, we are going to spend the first 15 to 20 minutes of each class period reviewing. I have written a set of review PowerPoints to use just for this purpose. These are not teaching PowerPoints. They are simply slide after slide of questions and answers. I generally let the students get into groups and make a game out of it. The group getting the most questions correct wins a prize. Little Debbie Snake Cakes are a particular favorite award for my students.

Freebie: Here is the link to one of my review PowerPoints that I have in my TpT store. It is on organic compounds. You can easily delete some of my slides and add more slides of your own.