Written Responses

On the end-of-course exam, 60 of your 180 minutes are the written-response section: two questions, four prompts, about your own Create program. You answer in Bluebook with your Personalized Project Reference (PPR) open beside you. Every prompt asks you to point at a specific line in your PPR and explain it. You wrote the code — this section just checks that you can say so, precisely.

Prompt	Category	It asks about
WR1	Program Design, Function, and Purpose	Your program's purpose, what it does, its inputs and outputs, and how it was developed (the design decisions)
WR2(a)	Algorithm Development	An algorithm in your program that uses sequencing, selection, and iteration — how it works, step by step, and why it was needed
WR2(b)	Errors and Testing	A bug you found in your program, how you found it (the test or input that exposed it), and how you fixed it
WR2(c)	Data and Procedural Abstraction	Your list (how it stores data the program uses) and your procedure with a parameter (how it manages complexity, and where it is called)

What graders read for

Rubric rows are binary: the response either contains the specific thing or it does not. For each prompt, that means:

Point at your PPR. "Line 2 of my procedure" or "theforeach in my PPR's second capture." A correct answer with no reference to your own code earns nothing.
Name the exact behavior. Not "it checks stuff" but "the if on line 3 selects the larger of the two values so the loop always removes the lower card."
Selection must be an if. Iteration must be a real loop. Sequencing must be more than one statement in order. If your procedure lacks one of the three, you cannot write your way around it — fix the code before Apr 23.
Real bugs only. "I had no errors" earns zero on WR2(b). Keep a note of one genuine bug you hit and fixed during the build days — the turret's cooldown firing every frame, the double jump counting three, the shuffle that lost cards. You will have plenty; write one down.

Drills (we run these May 3 and May 11)

Clinic~25 min

Drill 1 — The line tour. Open your PPR. For each of the four prompts, say out loud (then write, in 3 sentences) which line of your PPR answers it and why. You will use all four segments.

Drill 2 — The bug diary. Write WR2(b) as a story in four sentences: what I expected, what happened instead, how I found it, how I fixed it. Then cut every adjective. Graders want facts.

Drill 3 — The abstraction argument. For WR2(c), write the argument that your procedure "manages complexity": name what would be worse without it (copy-pasted code, repeated logic, unreadable Update).

Timing

60 minutes, four prompts: 15 minutes each, hard stop. Practice with a timer on May 11. If a prompt is not done at 15 minutes, bank what you have and move — all four prompts have equal weight, and an empty prompt scores like a wrong one.

How long should each answer be?

Aim for about 750 words total across the section — the College Board caps you at 850, and shorter is fine as long as every rubric row is in there. That is roughly 185 words per prompt: a solid paragraph, not an essay. Padding costs you time you need for the fourth prompt, and graders are reading for specific phrases, not prose. Write until the row is satisfied, then stop.

Trap: answering from memory instead of from the PPR.Your PPR is open the whole time — there is no reason to recall a line number when you can read it. Every answer should name a segment and a line ("in my first capture, the foreach on line 4"). An answer that is true of the program but does not point at the reference in front of you scores the same as a wrong one.