Thursday, February 09, 2012 By Tanya Tanya Mardirossian [ArticleImageHyperLink] Advertising Alternative Finals (Feb. 9, 2012) -- Seniors have been working hard finishing college applications and keeping up with classes. In assigning performance and alternative finals, teachers have allowed themselves and their students some welcome relief before second semester. Senior Effieana Irianto was one of many students who dressed in costumes, wielded props and memorized lines for Stephanie Sajjadieh’s AP English final last month. Sajjadieh had been busy reading and grading senior project research papers and annotated bibliographies based on Hamlet. “I couldn’t read another paper,” Sajjadieh said. Instead, students presented a Shakespearean play.  “I liked not having written finals because I don’t need to study a whole semester’s worth of material,” Irianto said. Some students and teachers found these alternative finals exciting and new, but they also had a downside as well. Irianto formed a group with five of her friends and chose to act out Macbeth. Together, they cut down the original play and narrated certain acts in modern English. Irianto found that working with her group was fun, but somewhat difficult as well. “One thing that is a down side to group projects is finding the time to work with everyone in the group,” Irianto said. Another senior class that had a performace final was Lauren Childs’s psychology class. “Students are more interested with a project as a final instead of a boring written final,” Childs said. “I just give the guidelines and the students decide how they want the final to flow.” Her students researched a disorder and educated the class by presenting a poster, acting out a skit, or making a book. Different classes had different topics and grading rubrics. Senior Nairi Dulgarian said that the freedom the classes were given to decide how the project would be graded was an interesting way to change things up for each class. “The grading system for the final may have been different for all classes, but I think everything is fair,” she said. Advanced Placement History and Government teacher Nick Doom did not assign a traditional final for his seniors either. Instead of a final, students took a practice AP Government test consisting of multiple choice questions and two essays which will not affect semester grades. Senior Bellen Avelar said that she would rather take a final that made a difference to her grade. “I find it pointless taking practice tests because it doesn’t count,” senior Bellen Avelar said. “It should be worth something.”

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