AP Seminar: Sept.11-15

We had a great first week and did a lot of things to get us ready for the year ahead. If you’d like more information about the AP examination and performance tasks your students will be preparing for this year, check out this link to the College Board. You can also learn more by coming to see me at Curriculum Night on Wednesday! I’d love to meet all of you.

This week we will continue our conversation about Wealth and Poverty and the many questions students have raised. Here’s an example of the questions your students are coming up with:

• How can schools better help prepare students to be financially literate?
  
• How much impact does advertising have on spending habits?
  
• How is money valued differently in different cultures?
  

I have a whole stack of questions from the students on my desk, but I wanted you to see an example of how they are already using their own interests to drive their research. This week we will start digging into research and practicing the skill of identifying a source’s argument. Students will read several different pieces with different perspectives and will practice identifying the text’s argument, articulating the line of reasoning, and evaluating the quality of evidence used in that reasoning.

Students are also beginning to blog this week. The goal of these blogs is to help the students collect information about the world around them as they go through their daily lives. Every week they’ll do at least one post about a news article they’ve read, something interesting they learned in another class, a political cartoon they saw that made them think--the possibilities are endless as long as they’re letting their curiosity lead them! This is also great practice for learning how to create a positive digital footprint.  I’d encourage you to listen to this short NPR piece about how students can begin to think about their online identity and talk about it with your students.  Hopefully in the next few weeks we will have some blogs to share with you.

Finally, students are beginning book clubs to deepen their thinking about wealth and poverty. They had the opportunity to choose their book on Friday and chose either Hillbilly Elegy, Nickel and Dimed, or Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Make sure you ask them to tell you about their books!

Have a great week and hopefully I’ll see you on Wednesday!

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