AP Seminar: Dec. 12-23

Happy Snow Day!  I’m writing a two week post today since I have a feeling I’m just going to get busier and busier as we get closer to break.

Students lucked out with this snow day in a big way. It gave them an extra day to work on their Individual Written Argument essays! Drafts of those essays will be due tomorrow, and we will work on revision in class. Final drafts will be due on Wednesday. I’m seeing some excellent growth in students’ abilities to research and craft an argument. I encourage you to sneak a peek at your students’ essays.

On Wednesday, we will officially begin our first Performance Task Assessment for the AP program.  Students will form research teams and decide on individual research focuses.  We will spend the final week before break working on students’ Individual Research Reports. About a week after break, they’ll reform their groups, share their individual research reports and then begin crafting a group argumentative presentation that synthesizes everyone’s research--the Team Multimedia Presentation.

In the next two weeks, it is important that students engage in the group formation process. I’ve been asking them to share things they’d like to research in the hopes that we can match students up in groups with shared interests. Since the AP score is dependent on this group project, it’s important that they all commit to working hard as a group. This hasn’t been an issue thus far with this class, so I’m anticipating a fairly smooth group formation process!

Enjoy the rest of your day!

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