AP Seminar: November 13-26

Wow! This fall is going at warp speed. I blinked and we are days away from Thanksgiving. I will be out Thursday and Friday of this week presenting at the National Council of Teachers of English conference in Houston, Texas. I wanted to give you an update before I leave.

Students are now knee deep in a mock Performance Task 2. This is practice for the PT2 we will do in the spring that will count as 35% of the students’ AP scores.

Performance Task 2 has two main components.

1. An Individual Written Argument.  This is a 2000 word, research-based argument. Students have developed research questions based on a bunch of different thematically linked texts we have studied in class. We’ve spent a number of days researching and refining those questions to make sure they are leading students to solutions.  Their essays ultimately need to argue for a solution to a problem they’ve identified. 

All students should be at the writing stage at this point. They have been encouraged to share their writing outlines or plans with me digitally by tomorrow so that I can give feedback. Please encourage your student to take advantage of that opportunity!!  

I know that if I required that they turn in plans, the vast majority of them would. HOWEVER, this is a great moment for them to practice the academic maturity we talk about all year. We have talked about spreading out work, using time wisely, etc. Now is the time to show that they can!! Please remind them that this type of practice is important so that they can handle these kinds of big projects on their own in college.  

The week before Thanksgiving will be spent in one-on-one conferences about their papers. The more they have written, the better feedback they will receive. Papers will be due November 27.  If you'd like to see the rubric for the scoring of the papers, please ask your student to share the document on Google Classroom with you. 


2. An Individual Multimedia Presentation. This is a 6-8 minute presentation of the student’s solution.  It is very similar to the presentation they did earlier in the year--it’s just solo instead of with a group. Students will work on these presentations when we return from Thanksgiving break. If you can convince your student to practice for you that week, that would be wonderful!


I hope you have a restful Thanksgiving! Please let me know if you have any questions about this large project.