Classroom Spotlight
Erin Balfour
McNeil High School
With Advanced Placement (AP®) exams right around the corner, AP Seminar students at McNeil High School are working hard to put the finishing touches on their AP Portfolios and prepare for the AP Exam. This week, we are working on final submissions of Individual Written Arguments and Individual Multimedia Presentations.
Sixteen AP Seminar students at McNeil are working on projects derived from the AP Seminar stimulus packet. The stimulus packet is a range of sources gathered around a shared thematic topic. The sources vary in genre (article, peer-reviewed research study, art piece, short documentary clip, historical documents, etc.), but all represent different lenses (ways of looking at a topic) and different perspectives (arguments about a topic). Students read the stimulus sources and had to derive a theme. They then create a question about that theme, and off they go to research.
The process culminates in a 2,000 word research paper and an eight minute presentation that they orally defend. We are completing these components this week, and submitting the final copies to the AP Portfolio for scoring by May 2.
Students then sit for the AP exam on May 5. The AP exam consists of article analysis and a synthesis essay. This is a very busy time of the year in AP Seminar, but we have been working hard and are excited to complete the final stages of our year-long process.