AP Research - Capstone

The AP Capstone program is composed of two courses. The first year is called AP Seminar and the the second year course is called AP Research. Crestwood was the 2nd high school in Michigan to pilot the AP Capstone program. I worked closely with our principal at the time to select the initial students and promote the program to the student and parent population at Crestwood. The focus of the AP Capstone program is to help students develop skills in research, analysis, evidence-based arguments, collaboration, writing, and presenting.

I have spent the past 4 years teaching AP Research, the 2nd year portion of the Capstone program. AP Research allows students to develop a research question on a topic of their choosing and pursue that research question over the course of the year. They conduct a review of the current literature, find a gap in their field of interest, develop a research question on the topic, plan out their research method with support from their body of knowledge, and then they conduct their research. It is an amazing class that allows students in high school to participate in big R research. Their literature review, method, results, and conclusions are summarized in a 5,000 word paper and a 20 minute presentation at the end of the year.

Below you can see several of the papers and presentations from students over the past several years. These samples have been included with the the students permission.

AP Research Syllabus Link