Your most valuable resource for the performance tasks is the AP Computer Science Principles Exam page. Look for the section titled Sample Responses and Scoring Information. There’s a rubric for performance tasks, but they’re graded by humans so scoring is somewhat subjective. This page takes the guesswork out of it. You’ll find multiple student responses from previous exam administrations, including scoring guidelines and commentary. Some of the responses are excellent, some are bad, and the rest are somewhere in-between. But they all come with a detailed explanation for each row of the rubric as to why points were or were not awarded. Don’t submit your performance tasks without ensuring that they most closely resemble the high-scoring examples on this page. Teachers are limited in the type of questions they can answer regarding your performance tasks. It has to be your own work. That being said, if you have a… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
As my son comes downstairs for dinner, he says, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune –” I finish it with him: “– must be in want of a wife.” “We spent 45 minutes in class today analyzing that one sentence,” he says. “It’s a very famous sentence,” I say. “The next sentence will probably go faster.” Read more →
An Impersonal Recommendation
I had a 40-percent-off coupon for Borders that expired today so we stopped by to see if they had any good computer books in stock, which they did. At the checkout, the woman asked me if I’d like to get a recommendation for a novel. “Yeah sure,” I said. I was pretty excited about the idea because I thought they’d look at my purchase history and figure out something I might enjoy. Instead she recommended Home by Marilynne Robinson, which was displayed on the counter right in front of me. “Are you recommending that just for me,” I asked, “or you recommend it to everyone?” “We recommend it to everyone,” she said. What a sham! “I’m going to pass on that,” I said. “There really hasn’t been a good female novelist since Jane Austen.” My son, who was standing next to me, added, “And even she was kind of boring.” Read more →
11th Grade Reading List
My son and I went to Barnes and Noble in Irvine this weekend to buy the books on his 11th grade Euro Lit reading list: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, Candide by Voltaire, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and The Stranger by Albert Camus. “Have you read any of these books?” I asked the checkout girl. “I’ve read Candide and Pride and Prejudice,” she said. “Candide is fun. Virginia Woolf is kind of a downer though, isn’t she? Didn’t she kill herself? “She did,” the girl admitted. “Doesn’t that set a bad example for the kids?” The Irvine store didn’t have the edition of Ivan Denisovich that the boy needed but the guy at customer service was able to call around and find a copy at the Aliso Viejo store. The boy was beside… Read more →