Developing a Successful AP® Art & Design Curriculum

When the College Board transitioned from AP® Studio Art to AP® Art and Design, it happened to coincide with the year the world shut down due to COVID-19. Not only was I faced with the challenge of adapting to an entirely new version of the AP® Art curriculum, but I also had to find a way to teach it virtually, practically overnight.

Up until that point, our school had maintained a strong pass rate with the original AP® Studio Art exam. Since taking over the program, I have grown it from just 12 students to nearly 70. I had also expanded our offerings from Drawing and 2D Art and Design to include the 3D Art and Design portfolio as well. 

Yet suddenly, I found myself grappling with the dense and often confusing language the College Board used to outline the new exam structure. At the same time, I was scrambling to build a virtual curriculum that would support students through this massive shift. It was a trial by fire, but also a turning point in how I approached teaching AP® Art.

Now that the AP® Art and Design exam has been around for several years, I can confidently say, “I get it.” After plenty of trial and error, attending a few week-long training workingshops (like AP® by the Sea), sitting through painfully dry training videos, and seeking out advice from countless Facebook groups, I’ve found my rhythm with this exam. I truly feel like I have mastered the ins and outs of the test and am confident I could guide any dedicated student to success.

Over the past two years, I’ve also had the privilege of serving as an AP® Reader, which has given me a firsthand look at the common struggles teachers face while navigating the course and supporting their students. This experience has deepened my understanding of the exam structure, the scoring rubric, and what sets successful submissions apart.

If you’re looking to better understand the grading process and gain insights into how to more effectively teach AP® Art and Design, check out our post: How to Be an AP® Reader. It offers a behind-the-scenes look at the scoring process and takes you to important College Board links. 

These days, our time with students is often limited and every teacher’s schedule looks a little different. Some of us are lucky enough to have our students for the full year, while others only get a single semester. Some teachers manage full sections of all three AP® Art and Design portfolios (Drawing, 2D, and 3D), while others might have just a few AP® students mixed into their regular classes.

No matter your teaching situation, it’s important to develop a system that doesn’t place all the burden on you. The goal is to create a structure where students clearly understand the expectations and can work independently, with your guidance and feedback along the way.

A clear schedule with firm deadlines is key because, let’s be honest, students procrastinate, and the timeline for portfolio submissions sneaks up fast. So what’s the solution? Start by grabbing your school calendar and counting how many instructional days you’ll have with your students. Then, decide how many projects or artworks you expect them to complete. Use that to create a pacing guide that aligns with the AP® Art and Design portfolio requirements and helps keep everyone on track.

Here is what our Pacing Guide Looks Like:

(please note that the dates change every year according to the school calendar)

As I mentioned earlier, when the College Board revamped the AP® Art and Design course, I had to quickly figure out how to digitize the curriculum to meet the needs of virtual learning. That’s when I developed Digital Sketchbooks which became a flexible and organized way to keep students engaged and on track.

I structured these sketchbooks by both weeks and units. Depending on the focus of the unit, students were given anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks to work before hitting a deadline. This approach allowed me to pace the class more effectively, encourage deeper exploration, and give students a clear timeline to follow, while also allowing space for feedback and revision. This curriculum also allows me to easily teach all 3 portfolios in the same class period, because they all use the same structure.

Here is how I break my AP® Curriculum into Units: 

• Unit 0: Intro Work
• Unit 1: Sketchbook & Experimentation
• Unit 2: Mini SI (practice for the SI)
• Unit 3: Inquiry Proposal
• Unit 4: Starting SI
• Unit 5: Continuing SI
• Unit 6: Middle of SI
• Unit 7: Finishing SI
• Unit 8: Final Edits- Sustained Investigation
• Unit 9: Final Edits- Selected Works
• Upload week(s)
• Unit 10: Party & Post Test Assignments

The Digital Sketchbooks served as a structured guide for students to collect and organize evidence throughout their Sustained Investigation (SI). Students are required to provide written evidence that clearly identifies the inquiry driving their SI, explains how their work developed through practice, experimentation, AND REVISION, and demonstrates visual relationships among materials, processes, and ideas.

One of the key goals of the digital sketchbook is to help students consistently document their materials, processes, and ideas in a way that highlights synthesis, the intentional connection and evolution of their work. By emphasizing this documentation early and often, students gain a better understanding of how to communicate their artistic thinking and meet the expectations of the AP® rubric.

Here is an example of how we organize our digital sketchbooks:

Alternative Resources for the AP® Classroom:

If all this information and College Board expectations seem overwhelming, and you are interested in a tried and true COMPLETE Year-long AP® ART and DESIGN Curriculum, CLICK HERE. This is the exact curriculum we use with our classes and we have found it to be extremely successful. Additional AP® Lessons/ Resources on our TPT:

• AP® ART and DESIGN Digital Sketchbooks: for documenting the SI process. → CLICK HERE to watch a video on how we use the AP® Digital Sketchbooks
• Mini SI Unit: 3 mini projects based on an inquiry question that allows students to practice the SI process through experimentation, practice and revision. 
• Sustained Investigation Student Proposal: Through research, sketching and experimentation, students create a slideshow or video that presents their SI ideas to the class. Additionally, this student will then receive teacher and peer feedback before officially starting their Sustained Investigation projects.
• SI Process Image Templates with Examples: 5 different student examples of suitable process images and ideas of how to organize photos as collages and templates for students to make their own.

For all the above in a bundle→ CLICK HERE

Student Critique Slideshow: This critique format is perfect for sharing and receiving feedback on a MINI SI unit, or can be adapted into a progress critique on students actual SI’s.

And as you begin your planning and AP Classroom organization, I want to leave you with a few takeaways from our most recent AP Reading experience (June 2025). These are areas we noticed that students struggled with, and so we would suggest you really strive to emphasize these with your students. 

Our AP® Art and Design Reader Notes:

What not to do: 

• Too much writing on the process slides
• Finished projects in slides with process (Finished piece should be stand alone images)
• Post all 15 images as finished work (Readers need to see examples of Practice, Experimentation and Revision)
• AI (not allowed in any capacity!)

What to do:

• Pick an inquiry that can be researched and that can be visualized and that will make sense to the grader. Keep it simple!
• Clearly state inquiry in question form! 
• Explain HOW the inquiry developed through research, exploration, discovery. (The question is not enough!)
• Put process first, then finished piece after and alone
• Connect the idea to materials in SI process writ up space. (the why, not just the how)
• Explain how you practiced, experimented and revised
• Write about revision and have a visual example! (without this, they cannot score high)
• Cite everything. If it isn’t cited, and it is recognized, it gets flagged for plagiarism.

And finally… Make sure to review your students portfolio before submitting! Sometimes files need to be larger, sometimes the orientation is not correct. Sometimes important elements are missing. 

Thank you for reading! We’d LOVE to hear from you! If you have any additional ideas, questions or comments, please feel free to reach out and/or leave feedback! For more  on our curriculums, check out these blogs on our Art 1 and Art 2 Curriculums.