Prep Books

If you don't have it already, I highly recommend getting either the Princeton or Barrons review AP exam book. There are often also prep books that align themselves with the AP textbook - look for those to study that use information that you explicitly learn through the textbook.

If you don't already have one or are not already using it regularly, start using the review book to prepare for unit tests. It'll come in handy at the end of the year, because you've been exposed at home to AP style questions as you study.

Practice Essays

Set aside time every other weekend to take a practice essay - challenging yourself and trying units that you have already done would expose you to the randomness of the exam and seeing how truly cumulative your knowledge is.

Divide your time 2 months in advance

2 months before the exam, divide your weeks into units you want to cover. Say you have 7 units; set one week per unit, and make sure you take/find quizzes for each unit and do one FRQ per unit. Use your last weeks (depending on when you started studying) to take actual past exams, randomly select FRQs, and only review what you know you struggled on. With a spread out schedule, your studying will be more relaxed and easier to absorb than it would if it is crammed into the last few weeks before the exam. By the last few weeks, you'll be confident in what you know and be able to spend your time perfecting your testing skills, having already mastered your informational skills.

Master the College Board's testing trends

As brand new AP students, you will see a lot of types of questions you have not been previously exposed to in the past on this exam. If it's a stimulus - read the questions first, then the text. A huge thing is understanding the time period of the stimulus - if you know what events were happening in the period, or even the specific event being discussed without even having to understand the stimulus itself, it'll be a huge help in answering the questions and eliminating the ones that don't pertain to events surrounding or causing/resulting from the event in question.

Testing skills

Timeline - timelines are super helpful within units and especially for the exam - understanding where events go/belong in the overall scheme of the course and government's history is crucial in understanding stimuli, understanding the relationships between policies and people and government actions, and understanding the progression of government.

Read through all of the answers first - often times there will be a better answer.Study skills as you near the AP exam and harder, increasingly cumulative unit tests

Think ahead - you know that you'll need them in the future, so take good notes and learn as you are going. Once you get to the days before your test, you can focus on "teaching" the material instead of having to waste time re-learning it (if you've already learned it as you took notes on pace)

Create an organization system - if you make test corrections, make a file for all of those so that you can easily come back to them at the end of the year. Planning now is arguably more important than planning before your exams, because, if you begin now, you'll set yourself up for success.

Have organized notes - label them by time period, unit, chapter, etc, so you can easily go back to them and understand where they fit in the overall course of the class and the overall course of the events that you discuss and learn.

What to expect ON the exam

Political cartoons! I'm sure you've talked about them in class, but they are a big tool that the College Board uses to test students on the AP US Government exam. Understanding the tone of the cartoon is just as important as understanding the information within it.

Time period/events going on around the time of the issue/legislation/action in question: know an event's relative location in regards to other events, and be aware of any civilian mobilization, rising interests, movements, affiliation switches, or new issues to combat. Doing that is key in order to critically think about the topic at hand and understand the deeper meanings and connections between two things, or one thing and its hidden, less-surface level causes and effects.

Court cases! Court cases are always covered on the exam. You need to understand the background, the ruling, and how the results affected American society (did it motivate them to adamantly protest against a legislative action, did it quell their anxieties, did it go against the constitution, did it take away civil rights or liberties from a certain demographic, etc). These are the types of things you should always be looking for, analyzing, and associating with major legislative events.