AP Program Updates

Advanced Placement Program Revived with Addition of Four Classes

St. John’s Northwestern Academies revived its Advanced Placement program during the 2020-2021 school year with four classes: Computer Science Principles, English Language and Composition, European History, and Physics 1. For the 2021-2022 school year, the Academies added an additional four classes: Chinese Language and Culture, Environmental Science, Human Geography, and Physics 2. These classes represent a wide range of academic subjects, which will provide our student scholars with the opportunity to engage with college-level content.

During the first semester of the 2021-2022 school year, students in these classes were assigned a wide array of tasks and engaged with many challenging concepts. These skills and concepts build and spiral throughout the year-long curriculum. During the second semester, AP students continue to learn the new content of their particular course in addition to revisiting test-taking strategies and study skills learned during the first semester that will be essential for the successful completion of the AP exams in May.

An overview of the four new classes

this year: In the AP Chinese class, students studied in an immersive language environment, which provided them the opportunity to explore Chinese culture and improve their ability to communicate in three modes of communication, including interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational.

AP Human Geography students spent the first semester studying issues surrounding the concepts of physical geography, population and migration, culture, and political geography. During the second semester, they will examine agriculture, urban geography, and development and industrialization.

The AP Environmental Science curriculum is centered around four big ideas including energy transfer, interactions between Earth systems, interactions between different species and the environment, and sustainability. This class is interdisciplinary and embraces topics from geology, biology, environmental studies, environmental science, chemistry, and geography.

Students in AP Physics 2 continue their studies of the laws that govern the physical universe, consisting of motion, energy, electricity, and magnetism. AP Physics 2 emphasizes the study of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, electricity, magnetism, and quantum mechanics. This class relies heavily on the use of algebra, and is a good example of how closely related STEM subjects are.