By John Eric Vona in AP Seminar — 04 Aug 2025

Talking Points: This Should be Every Seminar Teacher's First Writing Assignment

How to get the point across about multiple perspectives - EARLY! (+vocal variety fun)

Okay, they're not gonna teach you this in APSI. This lesson is a Vona original. I'll spare you the first eight paragraphs of a recipe blog and say simply that my wife had a subscription to a magazine called The Week and I found a recuring feature that serves as an excellent model for students of how to put sources into conservation. Once my media specialist learned I was using a magazine (an actual magazine!) for these lessons, she purchased a subscription. Apparently, she has a budget for periodicals that is going largely unused in the digital age.

The basics of a Talking Points article is a three paragraph summary of reactions to a current event. I'll type that again for the people in the back: it's a summary of reactions, not just a summary of the event itself. In three quick paragraphs, the staff of The Week explore an issue that checks all of the boxes for a good AP Seminar topic, creates context, and explores multiple perspectives on an issue AND places those sources in conversation.

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Getting students to write a Talking Points style article in the beginning of the year is easy (for you and students), isolates a few key skills, and illustrates an important distinction between a Seminar paper and others they may have written.

This lesson sequence was born out of a desire to get students writing meaningfully early in the year and communicate from week 2 (screams into the void): MULTIPLE MEANS MORE THAN TWO!!! From this point forward, I ban any black/white pro/con language from my AP Seminar classroom. I hate the two-party system and this is my small rebellion. There are more than two points of view on any issue.

This is what your students should produce after just a couple days. This is actual work from one of my students that I, stingy grader that I am, deemed a 100. (Also, FYI, this was written during the last presidential administration.)

Yeah, there's some grammar errors and it relies solely on journalistic sources. But this is a writing from the first few weeks of school! Look at that first paragraph with three sources in conversation. Notice how the third paragraph presents a compromise solution! This is high level shit!

And here is an example of student work, with my comments, that I gave a 70. I consider this the minimum acceptable work.

This student clearly understands what we mean when we talk about perspectives, and they've done a great job integrating quotes and remaining unbiased and invisible. They just haven't put those sources in conversation effectively and they are way too broad in their approach.

And because every performance task includes a presentation component, I follow this up with a hyper-focused, low-bar oral task that eases them into the world of public speaking. Just as the Talking Points articles has students focusing their energy on putting sources in conversation, the speaking task focuses students on vocal variety, breaking them early of the bad habit of monotone delivery. Vocal variety is only one of the elements listed in the College Board rubrics for AP Seminar presentations, but I break it down for students into five elements, show them some examples from NPR (because they can't see the presenter, only hear them), and then have them record a quick podcast reporting on what they wrote about in their Talking Points article.

Below the e-mail wall (I am hungry for your e-mail NOM NOM NOM) is a day-to-day break down of how I do this in a week(ish) and my PowerPoint slides. Enjoy and feel free to comment with questions or profuse praise.

AP Seminar Curricular Week 2 - Talking Points and Vocal Variety

AP Seminar Curricular Week 2 - Talking Points and Vocal Variety.pptx

2 MB

Day 1 involves introducing students to the Talking Points format by letting them see multiple (I give each student a different magazine because I have a year's subscription lying around) and ask them to work with their groups to identify the patterns. The slides provided below include two different ways to grade it. (I use the first, but the second is more conventional. You're welcome.) Then there's a quick demonstration on searching media sources that builds on what students learned during the week prior.

Day 2 gets into the nuts and bolts of embedding quotes. When I taught sophomore English to a diverse range of students, I would spread embedding quotes into sentences over a week of a mini-lessons. With my AP Sem kids, it's a crash course. You do you.

Day 3 is a day to write.

Day 4 introduces the assignment of the Controversial News Brief with an example from a current NPR story where the host interviews the reporter.

On Day 5 we play three vocal variety games and I let them work on preparing their briefs (hehe).

After that it's a matter of teacher preferences. You can give them time in class to rehearse and record, or you can make them do it for homework. I've also had them just present it in front of the class instead of recording them, but that does eat class time.

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