AP Seminar: Jan.9-13

Hello! I hope you all enjoyed the nice, long holiday break as much as I did.  I spent lots of time reading, playing with my kids, and doing a little work to get ready for the last push of the semester.

Honestly, the semester change will really not impact AP Seminar much at all.  Due to the timing of the official performance tasks, we will be focused more on those than on any type of large midterm.  The midterm will be a one-on-one conference students will have with me about their progress in the four assessment categories thus far:  writing, research, presentation, and reading. Students will talk me through samples of their work, explain the progress they think they’ve made so far, and identify some goals for the coming semester. I do not anticipate grades to change much from where they are right now; the assessments we’ve been doing all fall have been largely focused on multiple opportunities to grow and show progress.

This week, you can expect your students to be digging into the written portion of their performance task one. Groups identified topics, divided the research load and did lots of research prior to break.  Monday we will reconvene as groups, make sure everyone remembers what’s going on, and revisit the rubric for the Individual Research Report.  We will spend the remainder of the week continuing with researching and writing. Students are strongly encouraged to conference with me this week, but, per the College Board rules, I cannot require them to conference with me.  Please, please help me encourage them to use their time wisely. Their Individual Research Reports will be due next week Tuesday.

The other thing students may begin working on this week is the reading for the second performance task. We will not be beginning our work with that reading until February, but the College Board released the texts (and it’s lengthy--93 pages of research) this week. Students can access the texts through the online Digital Portfolio.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the performance tasks as students work on these for the next few weeks!  Have a great week!

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