|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Exam Tips: Environmental Science
|
|
| |
Suggestions from the Chief Reader
- Give students problems during the year that help them increase their facility with calculations. It would also be especially helpful if students had facility with scientific notation.
- Encourage students to explain technical terms when they use them in an answer. Dropping in terms like "bioaccumulation" without demonstrating an understanding of the term will not earn any credit.
- Provide students with more practice in marshalling good arguments in favor of, or against, a particular position on an environmental issue. Make sure your students understand that restating the question is a waste of time in a timed test, and doing so will never earn any points.
- Students need to work on their critical reading skills, i.e., knowing what the key words are in a question. Give your students practice in carefully reading questions and responding appropriately. When questions ask the students to "describe," "discuss," or "explain," they should go beyond listing and identifying. Students who use outline form, or one- or two-word answers, do not demonstrate the depth of their knowledge.
- Work with students on age-structure diagrams so that they better understand what information can be derived from them.
- Students should have the experience of designing a laboratory or field experiment, and understand the components of such an investigation. They should practice formulating hypotheses, and deciding whether a particular experimental design will test a stated hypothesis.
- Students should have experience describing spatial patterns of environmental change and the stepwise sequence of ecological events that accompany such changes. Teachers also need to help students interpret data sets scientifically.
Call for Submissions
AP Central welcomes submissions of exam tips. If you have tips you would like to submit, please email them to ExamTips@collegeboard.org.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Course Home Pages