Biweekly Progress Checks

AP Ceramics Biweekly Progress Checks - Template

An Overview:

Progress checks will account for a significant portion of your overall grade in this course. Submitted bimonthly (every two weeks), progress checks are intended to serve as a regular opportunity to document and reflect on your art-making process. While you might not be accustomed to assessing your art-making in a metacognitive way, this process has great potential to help you develop a sense of self-awareness, which in turn allows you to identify and target pitfalls in the ways that you think about and create art, regardless of the materials and methods you use.

Progress Checks (Every 2 Weeks)

Documenting and reflecting on your work regularly is key to building a strong AP portfolio.
Progress checks help you stay on track, organize your ideas, and prepare for the written parts of the AP assessment.

Each Progress Check must include three slides:

Written Statement – What progress did you make in the past 2 weeks?
Image + Description (Materials, Processes, Ideas) – Show and explain what you created.
Image + Description (Practice, Experimentation, OR Revision) – Example: cylinder drills, glaze tests, altering a rim, trying a new texture, etc.

Submission:

Update your Google Slides Progress Check presentation every 2 weeks.
Submit it to Google Classroom by the due date.
Use the provided template editable copy available in your Google Classroom

Written Statement

Give a brief summary of what you have accomplished in AP Studio Art in the last two weeks, including any work you may have completed outside of class pertaining to AP Art and Design. This report can include investigative and exploratory work (such as sketchbook work and research) as well as instances of actual art-making. Your response should be clear and detailed enough that the thought process and intention of your actions should be explicit: for example, instead of saying “I spent Tuesday and Thursday painting my piece,” your answer might include things like color choice, specific painting media and techniques, or what area(s) of your painting you focused on. Finally, provide an estimate of your progress on a project (i.e. how close are you to being done) and indicate what is likely to happen next.

Your answer can be in bullet pointed list form or paragraph form, and might be structured pictured to the left

Image 1 + Materials/Processes/Ideas

For this section you should include at least ONE image accompanied with a written description that explains the materials, processes, AND ideas used in the two-week period.

Materials refer to the items being used to create your work, including clay bodies and surfaces (e.g. B-Mix/white stoneware, red stoneware, porcelain, coils/slabs, slips/engobes, underglazes, oxide washes, wax resist) as well as any specialized equipment (e.g. potter’s wheel, slab roller, extruder, banding wheel, bats, trimming tools/ribs/calipers, sieves, electric kiln set to Cone 04 bisque / Cone 5–6 glaze) involved in its creation.

Processes refer to the techniques and/or “steps” involved in creating your work. This could describe the specific technique used within ceramics (for example, sgraffito through colored slip, mishima/inlay, slip trailing, carving/chattering, nerikomi/agateware) or a stage of your making (such as wedging, centering, pulling walls, collaring, trimming, score-and-slip joining, soft/slab construction with templates, leather-hard refinement, bisque firing, glaze application by dip/pour/brush/spray, and glaze firing with ramp/hold).

Ideas should draw a clear connection between the work and your Sustained Investigation. You can discuss things like imagery (i.e. “a heavily textured slip field and carved marks create a sense of unease”), surface/color choices (i.e. “matte pastel Cone 6 glazes reference softness and vulnerability”), narratives through form (i.e. “a pinched, constricted vessel with an off-center foot conveys anxiety”), function/ergonomics (i.e. “the thickened lip and lifted foot invite slower, mindful use”), or any other major concept.

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