I am a new AP CSP teacher and have not yet completed a practice PT.
The question I do have as I start to plan ahead is how do you all recommend administering the practice PT? The pacing guide gives them 3 days/lessons to complete the practice PT. The two options I see is
Option 1: Allow students 3 days, which includes 3 class lessons and if they work on it at home that is also fine.
Option 2: Allow students 3 lessons and only 3 lessons, disallow them from continuing work at home. (I can think of a few ways to do this)
Just wondering what was recommended by the community, especially to ensure parity/fairness for all.
I don’t see a problem with option 1 because the real PTs do not restrict students from doing additional work at home. Some will be more ambitious and will want to put more into these things and others will simply take a bit longer to complete their work. If you are concerned that some students won’t have equal access to internet or computers then perhaps you can provide extra lab time outside of class or encourage them to answer question prompts at home in writing.
I also don’t see the problem with Option 1, although to give more context I am at a high achieving International School. My worry is more that the students will do TOO much work at home (which I know they could do in the real Explore task), so worried more for their sanity, and my idea was partially to restrict the time limit to help they stay focused on the topic, not go into too much depth (overthink).
I will probably try option 1 this year, but encourage and remind them that the amount of time they have in class is sufficient for the amount of work they are required to do.
I know all of that sounds strange but the unfortunate reality of the situation is that students here will spend 10 hours on a task that is designed to take 2.