Teaching
An AP course has a fixed amount of time in it, so a simulation has to pay for the periods it takes. This page sets out where one earns its place in AP United States Government and Politics and in AP Comparative Government and Politics, unit by unit, and says plainly where it does not.
Read this first. Unit titles, exam weights, suggested class periods, required documents and required cases below are taken from the published course and exam descriptions and are College Board’s. The mapping of simulations onto those units is ours. Neither course framework mentions simulations, mock trial, moot court or Model UN anywhere, and neither publishes pacing guidance for them. Nothing on this page is College Board guidance, and none of it should be represented as such.
AP United States Government and Politics
Five units, five course skills: Concept Application, SCOTUS Application, Data Analysis, Source Analysis, Argumentation. The skill a simulation serves best is the one it is built around, so the right question is not “which unit is this about” but “which skill does the room practice.”
| Unit | What fits | Why, and what it costs |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Foundations of American Democracy 15-22% of the exam, about 16 class periods | A ratification assembly: delegations argue the Constitution against the Articles, with the required documents as their briefs. | The unit’s documents already supply the role sheets, and Federalist 39 and the Gettysburg Address, both added as required reading for fall 2026, give a federalism argument more to stand on than it used to have. One or two periods. Works early, when students will otherwise read Brutus No. 1 with no reason to care who wins. |
| 2. Interactions Among Branches of Government 25-36% of the exam, about 28 class periods | Model Congress, as a committee markup with a vote on the rule and then a floor vote. The anchor simulation of the course. | Largest weight and the most class periods in either course, so it can absorb the time. The vote on the rule is the twelve minutes that teach the unit: students discover the fight was settled before anyone debated the substance. Two to three periods. |
| 3. Civil Liberties and Civil Rights 13-18% of the exam, about 26 class periods | Moot court, on a question that is not one of the required cases. | This is the closest fit in either course, because the SCOTUS Application skill is reasoning from a required case to an unfamiliar one, and that is exactly what appellate argument asks for. Two periods, and it doubles as skill practice rather than competing with it. |
| 4. American Political Ideologies and Beliefs 10-15% of the exam, about 22 class periods | Nothing, honestly. | The unit is about measuring what people believe, and the skill it drills is Data Analysis. A polling exercise or a crosstab does that work better than a role-play would, and a simulation here would cost periods without serving the skill. |
| 5. Political Participation 20-27% of the exam, about 18 class periods | A lobbying round or a campaign exercise, in which interest groups and candidates compete for a fixed resource. | Second-largest weight on the smallest period count, so keep it to one period. The useful version has scarce resources and a real decision at the end; the version where everyone presents a platform teaches nothing the reading did not. |
Model UN, Model EU and Model Arab League have no honest home in AP US Government, and the course is too tight to run one anyway. They are excellent, and they belong to a different course. If your students want that, send them to a competitive conference rather than spending AP periods on it.
Two things much of the internet still gets wrong
There are thirteen required foundational documents, not nine. Four were added effective fall 2026: the Emancipation Proclamation, Federalist No. 39, the Gettysburg Address, and core principles from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. The other nine are the Articles of Confederation, Brutus No. 1, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Federalist Nos. 10, 51, 70 and 78, and the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. A good deal of teacher-facing material still says nine.
There are fourteen required Supreme Court cases, and Roe v. Wade is not one of them. It was removed in 2022; Dobbs appears instead as content within Topic 3.9. The fourteen are Marbury, McCulloch, Schenck, Brown, Baker v. Carr, Engel, Gideon, Tinker, New York Times v. United States, Wisconsin v. Yoder, Shaw v. Reno, United States v. Lopez, McDonald, and Citizens United. Many third-party lists still say fifteen. This matters for a moot court problem, because the whole point is to pick a question the required cases do not already answer.
AP Comparative Government and Politics
Five units and five disciplinary practices, the course’s own term: Concept Application, Country Comparison, Data Analysis, Source Analysis, Argumentation. Country Comparison changes what a simulation has to be designed for. A simulation that produces one outcome in one country teaches less here than the same simulation run twice under different rules, because the comparison is the skill being examined.
The six required countries are China, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia and the United Kingdom, named inside the Country Comparison practice itself.
| Unit | What fits | Why, and what it costs |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Political Systems, Regimes, and Governments 18-27% of the exam, about 22 class periods | A weak fit. The unit builds vocabulary for classifying regimes, which a sorting or coding exercise does faster. | If you want one anyway, the version that works is a single period in which students have to decide, with evidence, whether a described regime is democratic, and discover that the honest answer is a matter of degree. |
| 2. Political Institutions 22-33% of the exam, about 32 class periods | One parliamentary simulation run twice: once Westminster, once presidential or semi-presidential, same issue, same students. | The best use of a simulation in either course. Largest weight and the largest period count, and running it twice makes Country Comparison the assignment rather than an add-on. Students feel why a vote of confidence changes a government’s behavior. Three periods, two for the sessions and one for the comparison. |
| 3. Political Culture and Participation 11-18% of the exam, about 28 class periods | A weak fit, and the smallest weight. Civil society and protest are hard to simulate without trivializing them. | Period count is high relative to exam weight here, so it is tempting to spend time. Spend it on survey data instead; this unit rewards Data Analysis more than role-play. |
| 4. Party and Electoral Systems and Citizen Organizations 13-18% of the exam, about 18 class periods | One election, counted twice: the same ballots under single-member districts and then under proportional representation. | Cheap, one period, and it produces the result on its own: the same votes yield a different government. Again the comparison, not the election, is the assignment. |
| 5. Political and Economic Changes and Development 16-24% of the exam, about 20 class periods | Model UN, Model EU or Model Arab League, scaled down to a single session. | The one place in either course where these formats genuinely belong, because Topic 5.5 is international and supranational organizations. A one-session Council of the EU negotiation shows supranational decision-making in a way the textbook treatment cannot. Two periods. |
Mock trial and moot court are not interchangeable
They are routinely treated as the same activity, and for AP purposes the line is sharp. Moot court is appellate. The facts are closed, the argument is about the law and the standard of review, and it serves SCOTUS Application directly. Mock trial is trial-level. It is about evidence, examination and what the finder of fact is permitted to hear, and in AP US Government it serves exactly one topic, 3.8, due process and the rights of the accused.
If you have time for one of the two in an AP course, it is moot court, and it is not close. Mock trial is the better activity to run as a club, where it has the weeks it deserves.
What a simulation actually costs an AP course
The honest accounting is one period of preparation, one to three for the session, and one for the debrief, which means the smallest useful simulation is about three periods and the Model Congress markup is closer to five. Against unit period counts in the twenties, that is a real bite out of one unit, not a free enrichment day.
It is worth it where the simulation does the work of the skill rather than sitting beside it, which is why the three strong recommendations on this page are all cases where the room practices the examined skill: moot court for SCOTUS Application, the doubled parliamentary session for Country Comparison, and the committee markup for Concept Application on the branch interactions that carry the most weight on the exam.
Do not cut the debrief to buy back a period. The one finding in this literature that holds up on a delayed measure is that the retention comes from the simulation plus a structured conversation afterward, not from the simulation alone. The Debrief has scripts built to run in twenty minutes, and Why Run One sets out what the evidence does and does not support, which is the page to hand a department chair who asks why you are spending the time.
Unit titles, exam weights, suggested class periods, required documents and required cases were checked against the current published course and exam descriptions, both effective fall 2026. Course frameworks are revised. If one of these figures has moved, or a mapping here looks wrong to you, please say so.
