AP Seminar: 9/24-10/5

Hello!

We have been incredibly busy in AP Seminar, and I wanted to catch you up on what we are doing. The more you are “in the loop” the more you can (hopefully) help your students think through these big projects and how they might best manage their time.

This week students have been finishing up their independent research for their first project. I have been blown away with the quality of thinking and research from the students! They are pushing themselves and each other to break down some incredibly complex topics. I encourage you to ask them about their research.

Students met with me one on one for a research conference. They shared their annotated bibliographies with me and talked through their research process. These were graded conferences and you will see those grades reflected in MiStar by Friday afternoon.  A score of 100 means the student was prepared with multiple, high quality, academic sources and was able to speak thoughtfully about how those sources addressed their research questions. Students with lower scores should be able to explain to you what they need to do to improve. If they can’t, please encourage them to speak to me.

Next week we will be diving into turning that research into an Individual Research Report (IRR).  Students have seen a sample, high scoring essay. I’ve also posted a screencast of me reading and explaining the key points of that sample on Google Classroom. This is a big writing task and I have encouraged students to think about how they might break that task apart into manageable pieces. This is often very difficult for students because their natural inclination is to wait until the night before it is due!! We talked about schedules and commitments and Homecoming and I encouraged the students to think about how they might balance everything and still stay sane!! Please ask them about their plan. I am hopeful that constant reminders will keep them from having long nights of writing at the last minute.
Research essays will be due next week Friday, so you should see consistent writing all week long. If you're lucky, you might get to read a draft. 

Have a great weekend!