Goldie’s Toolbox: A Deep Dive into 2024’s AP CSP Create Performance Task

Jan 9, 2024

Hello teachers!! The 2024 AP Computer Science Principles exam and Create Performance Task has some new components this year, so to help everyone out, I’ve created a series of lessons and guides to help you and your students navigate this project. Best part? I’m making this all available FOR FREE, no strings attached. I am an advocate for compensating teachers for their valuable time spent creating resources beyond contract hours, simultaneously, I am a proponent of ensuring that resources are accessible to fellow educators at no cost, fostering a collaborative and supportive educational community.

In this resource, you will find the following:

Three lessons (in PowerPoint) teaching students all about the Create PT, taking them through an example PT (in Python), and writing sample responses from that example PT to prepare for the new written component of the AP exam.
Student handouts to accompany each lesson
A PowerPoint presentation that has daily agenda slides for each day students are completing the Create PT
A Create PT Timeline Guide that helps students pace themselves through the Create PT, while remembering the important components at each phase.

Lesson Breakdown

Day 1: Understanding the Create Performance Task

Objectives

Understand the requirements of the Create Performance Task.
Understand how to use AI ethically to help you with your Create PT

Overview

Pass out “Lesson 1 – Create PT Guidelines from CED”. This is the official handout from the College Board you should give your students.
The slides go through and paraphrase the information in the handout. Students should follow along, make notes on the handout, and ask questions for clarification.
Discuss the structure of the Create Performance Task.
Explore the specific components of the task, including the written responses.
Discuss the ways that students can use AI to help with the Create PT and ways that they shouldn’t use AI to help (with example prompts)
At the end of the lesson, and for the rest of class, I have students go through example Create PTs posted on the College Board website: https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-computer-science-principles/assessment/2021-create-performance-task-pilot-samples
I remind them that these do not follow the current guidelines (for the new 2024 Create PT), and that many are done in languages we do not know, but starts to give them a good idea of what they can do.

Day 2: Complete Create PT Example

Objective: Walk through a complete Create PT (coded in Python) from beginning to end.

Overview

Provide the details for the step-by-step creation of the Create Performance Task
The teacher will walk through the development of a Create PT while students code a sample Create PT in their IDE and on the handout “Lesson 2 – Walk Through Create PT”
Sample Create PT in Python: Download the document to check it out!

Day 3: Practice Written Responses and Prepare to Start Create PT

Objective: Walk through four sample written responses from the new 2024 AP CSP exam.

Overview:

Pass out Lesson 3 – Practice Written Responses. As you go through the slides, students will have time to answer each of these prompts before discussing a sample solution.
The prompts in this lesson come from the CED and are publicly available.
After the Create PT is submitted as “final”, we will practice additional written response questions for their specific code

The Create PT

Teachers are required to give 9 hours of instructional time to students to work on the Create PT. Teachers can give more time than this, and, students are able to work freely on their project outside of class.

You will want to breakdown the 9 hours to fit into your own schedule, with the amount of time you have available each class period. For myself, this looks like:

9 hours = 540 minutes

540/50 minute class periods = 10.8 class periods

Students will therefore get 11 class periods to work on the Create PT

On the first day, I will pass out “Create Performance Task Timeline Guide”, to help them get started planning. Again, this timeline is based on my 11 class periods, so adjust it if you need to. I take any last minute questions and then they get started! From this point forward, I take a back seat and have them work on everything independently. I do my best to make sure they stay on task, but ultimately, it is up to them to decide to work on it.

Each day, they come in, check the agenda on the board, and get started. By the last class period, I really want them to submit their projects as final, so that we can get started with the sample written responses specifically for their Create PTs. We are not allowed to practice written responses for their Create PTs until they have submitted their Create PT as “final” in the digital portfolio.

After the Create PT

After the Create PT is finished, we will begin working on multiple choice question practice and practice written responses for the AP exam. Resources to help you on this will come, be sure to sign up for my email list to get notified when these resources will be available!

I hope this resource can help all you educators out there, so I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback! You can always message me at goldiesmathemporium[at]gmail.com, or comment on the blog post below.

Thanks for reading and happy teaching!

Kayla aka “Goldie”

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Interested in more? Be sure to check out my other AP Computer Science Principles resources below. The links take you to the product in Goldie’s Emporium, but if you would like to get these through TPT, check out my store here.

Goldie’s AP Computer Science Principles Curriculum