Good luck to all on the AP CS A Exam and on the alternate exam in a few weeks!

I did my last big review this morning at 6 am with my crew and here is what I went over with them in prep for the FR part of the exam.

1.  ArrayList of Classes / References –  You gots to know how to write code to manipulate an ArrayList<NeverSeenThisClassBefore> as it is on the exam every single year going all of the way back to 2006.  This question type involves lots of drilling down to get to the various pieces.  You must be comfortable with abstraction to handle this type of question.

2.  Make a Class from scratch – Every student should know how to make a class and possibly implement an interface or extend an abstract class.  The abstract / interface type of question went away about 5 years ago, but may come back so you better be ready.  Be prepared to override some methods and make something new from something old.  Critter has been very popular and we have only had one Bug ever.

3.  Processing an Array –  I reviewed the Horse[] question this morning as I like that question.  2012 was the first year the AP exam had an array of classes / references.  Most of the time the array question just involves some algorithmic stuff with numbers like finding smallest, largest, difference between smallest and largest, etc.

4.  Matrices – I told my troops to be ready for a matrix of classes as that would be a really cool question.  I predicted a matrix of classes FR question last year and I was wrong so I am holding out hope that I will be right this year.

I will post follow-up comments after I see this year’s Free Response questions in a few days.  Hopefully, my predictions will be right on this year.  I have been pretty close in the past.

If you want to see slides I have used as AP Exam review slides in the past, I have some of those posted that you can download.

If you like my humor and want to spend a week hearing more about how I prep students to rock this exam, check out my workshops over the summer.