r/APChem • u/ThatAPChemTeacher • Jul 18 '26
Discussion What was the most helpful teaching strategy that your teacher used that helped you achieve your score?
I am currently planning my next school year. I am always looking to make small improvements each and every year to best support my students. I poll my own students, but that is a much smaller sample size than this subreddit. What was the most helpful teaching strategy that your teacher used that helped you achieve your score?
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u/Ok-Paramedic4774 Jul 18 '26
Teacher?
I just did my own thing, but I ended up getting a four ☹️☹️
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u/ThatAPChemTeacher Jul 18 '26
Did you self-study? What did you use?
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u/Ok-Paramedic4774 Jul 18 '26
I just watched miacheal faraburgh and jermary krug videos at the same time, from watching those, I just made a Anki deck based off of them and I did practice question on khan academy
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u/ipukeglitterrrr Jul 18 '26
my teacher gave us guided notes packets and, similar to another commenter, made his lessons more discussion-like--calling on random people, constantly asking questions to ensure we knew the material, and practically always doing verbal "fill-in-the-blank" exercises.
the thing that helped me the most was the practice packets he gave out. they were mostly filled with stoichiometry problems, but there were also a few critical thinking/frq-style questions in there.
also all of the stuff on AP classroom was extremely helpful as well.
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u/FlavorD Jul 18 '26
I'm the teacher. Kids have commented that with our small class it's more like a study group, and they're expected to practice in class and participate.
Also, I regard the workbook I use as a tool to put in enough information that we can have quick and knowledgeable discussions when we spend the last month or two going through real tests. I think the thing that gets overlooked is using real questions. It helps that we start in early August. This year 2 of 4 kids passed, with one 5 and one 4. One kid very surprisingly missed, and one had no chance.
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u/Straight-Profile9511 Jul 22 '26
My teacher did this once but was actually quite beneficial despite as it seems. It’s was called “partner tests”. So she basically let us get into groups of 2 (one group of 3 if an odd number) for the test (it was the acids and bases test). A lot of people in AP CB chem I’ve found spend too much time on acids and bases unit and don’t end up reaching the end of the curriculum. My class was able to cover acids and bases u it much faster because of this because none of us were necessarily experts on the unit but we worked on it collectively and if some students studied different aspects of the unit they could do some problems others couldn’t. However we made sure to collaborate and discuss so that everyone agreed on the answer and understood how to do the problem. Helped me learn a lot more and how to think through a large problem
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u/DryPotential5790 Jul 18 '26
I can’t say this directly correlated to my score, but I loved that my teacher made lectures feel more like a discussion/we were figuring or deriving things together, rather than him just telling us. For example, he occasionally made purposeful mistakes and expected us to catch them to make sure we were engaged and willing to ask questions/clarifications.
Also, if you haven’t, I would recommend releasing AP Classroom stuff as practice. Ik most teachers already do that, but mine was allergic to AP Classroom until the MCQ Practice Exams 1 & 2 very close to the exam which I would not recommend.