THIS WEEK: GRADING PERFORMANCE TASK 1

It's only October 16th - why are we already talking about grading the Performance Tasks?

Because what I discovered last year is that you can't teach students how to write excellent Performance Tasks unless you understand exactly how they will be graded.

Since most AP Seminar classes will start working on their first Performance Tasks within the next month or two, now is the time to make sure that you understand what the Performance Tasks are to ensure that your students understand what they will be required to produce.  Remember, once the students begin work on their Performance Tasks, you cannot give them any direct assistance.  This includes, but is not limited to:

• helping students to develop research ideas
• providing students with sources to use for their Performance Tasks
• editing students' work
• providing any sort of grading feedback to students

Essentially, once your students begin work on their Performance Tasks, your hands are tied. Admittedly, it's a weird system.  I can't think of any other class where I can't help a student fix a mistake that they're making.  Last year, I was frequently frustrated whenever I saw a student completely misunderstand part of the Performance Task and knew that I couldn't step in and help out. 

According to the College Board, the only way that you can give feedback to your students is indirectly.  

• If you see that a student isn't citing their material correctly, you can't speak to that student directly, but you can go over correct citation procedures with your whole class.  The problem with this method is that the students who most needed to review were often clueless that they didn't know what they were doing.  
• You can have students peer review their classmates' work.  Ugh, what a disaster this usually was!  Students would get conflicting feedback from their classmates or they would get vague feedback like "I liked this paper a lot" or "I thought this paper was weak" that would prove completely useless.  

So this week, we'll  explore each Row of the scoring rubric for the Individual Research Report.   I'll break down the standards that your students have to hit to ensure they get the highest possible score. I'll also  share some reaching tips to ensure that your students become better reviewers of their own and classmates' work.

Here's a link to the official rubric:  2016-2017 Scoring Guidelines for Performance Task 1