To mark the end of the school year, students in AP Seminar and AP Research, collectively known as the AP Capstone program, were tasked with projects that demonstrated their knowledge and ability in research and formed the AP assessments in each course.
AP Seminar students completed the Individual Research-Based Essay and Presentation that formed part of the AP Assessment along with the exam. As part of this research project, students first read seven stimulus sources and found a connection between at least two of them. Then, using this common theme, students devised a research question and wrote a 2,000-word research paper using at least two of the seven sources along with outside evidence. The performance task culminated in an oral presentation, lasting six to eight minutes, summarizing the paper. “This was a large component of our AP score so it was a huge thing off my chest once I submitted my paper to College Board in April,” Adelynne Yang, 11, said.
As the second of the two year-long courses in the Capstone sequence, AP Research served to further develop students’ research skills. Instead of using evidence furnished by College Board for a project as a part of the AP assessment, or even taking an AP exam, students were assessed by their writing of a four- to five-thousand word research paper in a subject of their own choosing. “I decided to do my project on teenage driving behaviors because I wanted to see if law was something that I was interested in, and I already had a passion for human behavior,” Leah Dean, 12, said.
After writing the research paper, students then delivered a presentation in the Webb Theatre, lasting around fifteen minutes, about the research process and findings to a panel of expert advisors, followed by an oral defense in which they were asked three among a list of thirteen questions. “It was a lot of fun and I do suggest the to people who want to pursue research in the future, whether it’s science related or just literature, cause you can do a lot of things in it,” Dean said.
