Teacher implementation guide

Run a Boomerang Projects classroom in a week

A plain-language walkthrough for the AP® Seminar teacher setting up Boomerang Projects for the first time. Built by a department-chair teacher, not a startup PM.

Day 1 — Quick start (15 minutes)

1. Sign in at /welcome.html and choose “I'm a teacher.”
2. Create a class. Name it the way it appears on your school schedule (e.g. “AP Seminar — Period 3”).
3. Copy the join code on the Teacher Dashboard. Hand it to students on a slip of paper, project it, or post it in your LMS.
4. Choose a studio. The “AP Seminar (PT1 + PT2)” studio is loaded by default. Each deliverable is aligned to the current College Board rubric using an original-voice paraphrase written by an experienced AP Seminar teacher; the official rubric language lives on AP Central and we link there from each deliverable.
5. Have students join at /join. They enter the join code, first name, last initial. No email, no last name, no password.

Set up your class and join code

Each class has its own join code. You can revoke and regenerate a code at any time from the Teacher Dashboard. Codes are six characters, case-insensitive, and only accept first-name + last-initial roster entries.

What you can configure per class

• Class name — shown to students and on exports.
• Active studio — the research-project template the class is running. Default: AP Seminar PT1 + PT2.

Pick a studio (AP Seminar by default)

A studio is a research-project template. It tells the app which deliverables to surface (IRR, IWA, TMP, annotated bibliography, team presentation, individual presentation), which rubric criteria apply, and what student-facing language to use.

The AP Seminar studio uses original-voice paraphrases of the current College Board rubric criteria, aligned deliverable by deliverable. For the authoritative wording, we link directly to the AP Seminar Course and Exam Description and the current Performance Task rubrics on AP Central.

Don't teach AP Seminar? Open All studios from the sidebar and pick a generic research-project studio, or build your own from the Studio Detail page.

Walk students through the deliverables

Show students the sidebar once. The flow is the same research workflow they'll see in your class anyway:

You don't have to teach every tool the first week. Start with Research journal + Notecards + Weekly sync. Add Team workspace once teams form.

Student research portfolios & questions

Open My classes → your class → Student research portfolios & questions, then choose a student. You can also choose Open research portfolio beside a student in the roster.

• Research writing: read complete shared research questions, thesis statements, lines of reasoning, forward and reverse outlines, and full drafts. Earlier shared versions remain available.
• Shared Parking Lot: read the individual ideas the student chose to share.
• Submitted work & research: review complete curriculum evidence and assignment submissions, including earlier revisions. Research notes and sources appear when submitted through their learning steps.
• Questions: read and answer student questions. The class queue can show questions waiting for you, answered questions, or resolved conversations.

Under a shared writing version or Parking Lot item, enter feedback and choose Comment, Return for revision, or Approve, then save. Your feedback stays attached to that version. In a question, enter Your reply and choose Send reply; choose Mark resolved when the conversation is complete.

Assign writing practice

Open Student Help → Writing practice, or choose Assign writing practice in a class. The six writing tools each have an original lesson, a worked example, two guided activities, and links to university writing resources. You can preview the activity before assigning it.

1. Choose Assign beside an activity.
2. Select one of your classes, edit the title and directions, and optionally set a due date.
3. Choose Assign to class. Open the confirmed assignment to review submissions.
4. Students open it from My work, complete and review their responses, then choose Submit to teacher. You can comment, affirm, or return the work using the existing assignment review controls.

Students can also practice independently. Their unfinished and independent responses remain private; you receive the version they explicitly submit for an assignment. Completion records practice and student self-review, not an automatic writing grade. Returned work requires revised responses and an explanation before resubmission.

The sidebar keeps daily class/work links and Help visible. Planning, Research & Sources, Writing & Revision, Papers & Presentations, and Teaching & Setup expand when needed. The section containing the current page opens automatically; sidebar search also finds tools in collapsed sections.

Feedback Studio & rubric scoring

Feedback Studio is a teacher-only tool that generates a shareable feedback link from a rubric. There is no per-student account to manage — you fill the rubric, click Generate share link, and the URL itself carries the feedback (encoded into the URL fragment so nothing transits a database). Paste the link into the student's LMS comment, an email, or a class chat.

The Scoring Rubrics page lists every rubric available in the active studio. For AP Seminar that means paraphrased PT1 and PT2 rubrics aligned to the current College Board criteria, with links to the official rubrics on AP Central. You can also build a custom rubric for in-class work that isn't a Performance Task.

Collaboration accountability (Team Health)

Team accountability is the part of AP Seminar that traditional project tools (Trello, Notion, Google Classroom) handle worst. Boomerang Projects is built around the question: How do I know a team is in trouble before they tell me — and without asking students to inform on each other?

The Team Health panel surfaces three signals, each calculated from work students are already doing in the app:

• Contribution timeline. Each team gets a stacked timeline of who contributed what, when. Not a leaderboard — a balance check. If one student's bar is 90% of the timeline and another's is 5%, the panel flags the team for a check-in.
• Weekly peer pulse. Once a week, students answer two questions in 30 seconds: “How is the team feeling?” (1–5) and “Anything I should know?” (optional text, visible only to the teacher). No ratings of individual teammates. No public scores.
• Teacher Team Health panel. A single screen that ranks your teams by risk, highlights teams trending down, and surfaces individual notes you should follow up on. Designed so a 30-second glance tells you which team needs a 10-minute conversation.

You'll find Team Health under the TEACHER section of the sidebar. Students see only the peer-pulse prompt — they do not see contribution timelines or rankings.

Privacy, FERPA, and the College Board language

The short version:

• We collect the minimum needed: teacher name + email; student first name + last initial. No student emails. No behavioral tracking.
• We do not sell data, do not share with advertisers, and do not use student writing to train AI models.
• Under FERPA, your school is the data controller. Boomerang Projects operates as a school official with a legitimate educational interest under a service agreement with your school or district.
• “AP” and “AP Seminar” are trademarks registered by the College Board. We use them descriptively to identify the course this product supports. The College Board does not endorse and is not affiliated with this product.

Full posture: Privacy & FERPA. Trademark detail: Trademarks.

FAQ

Do my students need email accounts?

No. First name and last initial only. The teacher manages the roster.

Can I export grades?

Yes. From the Teacher Dashboard, you can export the roster, gradebook, and student work as CSV anytime. Archiving or deleting a class removes all related student data.

Does this replace my LMS (Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom)?

No — and it isn't trying to. Boomerang Projects is the place where AP Seminar research and team-project work happens. Your LMS still owns announcements, grade book of record, and parent communication. Most teachers paste a feedback link or a deliverable link back into the LMS.

What does Boomerang Projects look like for IB Diploma classrooms?

The IB Extended Essay studio is in development. The underlying research-project workflow (journal, library, notecards, bibliography, team accountability) already supports IB-style research and is used in pilot. IB® and the IB logo are trademarks of the International Baccalaureate Organization; Boomerang Projects is not affiliated with or endorsed by the IB.

Where do I report a bug or request a feature?

Email drew@boomerangclassroom.com. This product is built by a working AP Seminar teacher; feedback from real classrooms shapes what ships next.