Introduction
Assignments
Most lessons will conclude with a Formal Essay Assignment. Each assignment will have different demands, so each lesson will include a detailed description of what you are expected to do, a suggestion of procedures for writing the essay, and special instructions you will need to follow to complete the task. For these assignments, you are expected to submit polished, academic writing that shows careful organization and revision.
To help guide your writing, every formal writing assignment will also include a self-rating and reflection guide to help lead you through the same evaluation questions your instructor will use in grading your essay. Each lesson will also include a guide for peer feedback that you can give to a friend or family member to help judge your paper.
In some lessons, you will also find Response Journal assignments. These assignments represent less formal opportunities to “think in ink” about issues and ideas in the reading assignments. Often you will have several prompts from which to choose. Your response journal entries will be graded on how thoughtful they are—that is, how well they demonstrate your engagement with the issues and ideas in the readings. They will not be evaluated for technical correctness and organization in the way that a formal, revised paper would be.
Response journal assignments often fall in the middle of a lesson. In such cases you will save your work and submit the journal file at the end of the lesson along with your formal essay.
Important: When you submit your work, please use these guidelines:
- 12 point font
- Double space when appropriate (e.g., paragraphs). You may use single space on numbered portions.
- Save in .doc or .docx formats (.rtf format is discouraged, but may be accepted)
- "Save As" your last name plus the lesson number
Finally, in some of the lessons there will be one or more multiple choice quizzes. Some of these quizzes will be tools for you to self-assess how well you understand the readings or other concepts in the lesson. You will be able to check your answers, but these will be for practice only. No grade will be taken. These quizzes will be modeled after the kind of questions you will encounter on the Multiple Choice section of the AP exam.
