3 Teaching Tips for AP CSP Performance Tasks

3 Teaching Tips for AP CSP Performance Tasks

Use Sample Responses & Scoring Guidelines to Help Students with their PTs

The College Board has released the 2019 sample responses and scoring guidelines for AP CSP Performance Tasks! On this page, you will find 10 Explore Performance Tasks and 10 Create Performance Tasks completed by actual students this past spring for the CSP Exam!

The table also includes each of the 10 sample student written responses and documents with the number of points earned and commentary from the AP Reading leadership team.

You can use these samples and guidelines to help your students succeed on their PTs! Here are some activities that can help your students understand and perform better on the Performance Tasks (PTs). These could be done in class or as homework depending on time.

Activity 1: Students as AP Readers

Split students into small groups of 2–3 and have them use the scoring guidelines to evaluate either an Explore or Create task. Don’t let them look at the scoring commentary and final scores just yet! Then show them how they were actually scored using the final scores and commentaries and have them note any discrepancies.

Activity 2: Students Assess Their Own PTs

​Have students use the scoring guidelines to evaluate their own practice PTs before submitting to you. Not all scoring guideline criteria may apply with earlier practice PTs, but many will.

Activity 3: Scoring Guideline Row Analysis

Have students use the actual scores and scoring commentary to analyze which rows of the scoring guidelines were most problematic for students and which rows seemed like many were successful on. Have them come up with reasons why for each case. Ask them if any of the commentary surprises them. Students often don’t realize that the AP Readers are people just like their teachers — so it’s helpful to remind them that someone like YOU will be looking at their artifacts!