AP™ Literature and Composition authorized syllabus (color-coded)

This file includes a comprehensive Advanced Placement™ Literature and Composition syllabus, authorized by the College Board for use within my AP™ classes. It is the lifeblood of my course and illustrates the breadth and depth of text that this course requires. It is also color coded to match the AP™ Literature curricular requirements per the College Board's AP™ English course description, which I've included as the last page. You can personally match up each required component with the course plan to ensure course approval.

(It is an editable .pdf so you can customize it to your own classroom, but I recommend changing all colors to black and deleting the curricular requirements page before distributing to students.)

This plan is akin to birthing another child (as any AP™ teacher can attest to), and part of me winces at sharing it, but enough people have asked to use it that I now feel validated doing so. I've taught this course for nearly a decade and also serve as an AP™ Reader for this exam, so I'm confident this syllabus and course accurately reflects the fantastic capabilities the College Board offers.

I've categorized this course by thematic unit that incorporates 1-2 main texts (novels/plays from ranging genres/time periods) and a variety of correlating short stories and poems that help teach devices, techniques, and essay drafts and final submissions. Texts include (but may be changed to any thematically connected text): Oedipus the King/The Death of Ivan Ilych, Wuthering Heights (may be substituted for Pride and Prejudice or any other Austen novel, honestly), Doctor Faustus (may be substituted for Frankenstein or even One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), A Doll's House, (can also use The Awakening, The Color Purple, Hedda Gabler, A Thousand Splendid Suns, etc.), The Importance of Being Earnest, Hamlet (may be substituted for Macbeth or King Lear), Ethan Frome/The Metamorphosis, 1984/The Things They Carried (may be substituted for other dystopias or war fiction such as Brave New World or A Handmaid's Tale).

Disclaimer: this syllabus was approved as is, so any modifications/changes may alter the correlation to the College Board AP Lit™ requirements. Please be sure that what you submit under your own name still correlates with these requirements in order to obtain approval.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.