The Explore performance task is a historical AP Computer Science Principles component. It is not a task students submit for the current exam. A preparation plan should use the current Create directions rather than an Explore scoring checklist.
What to prepare now
The current assessment combines the multiple-choice exam with Create-related assessment. Your programme code, demonstration video and Personalized Project Reference serve different purposes: the code implements the programme, the video shows it running, and the reference provides the selected code material used for exam-day questions. Check the official directions for exactly what may appear in each submitted component.
Practise explaining your own programme
Choose a small programme whose input, processing and output you can explain. A quiz, for example, can take an answer as input, compare it with the expected response, update a score and display feedback. Test both an expected answer and an unexpected input. Explain why a list or procedure is useful in that specific programme instead of asserting that every abstraction automatically earns credit.
For practice, identify the purpose of a procedure, trace its algorithm, explain a test case and predict what would change if a condition were modified. Keep the explanation tied to the actual code. These are teaching exercises, not a substitute rubric or a promise of particular points.
Keep the submission rules separate from practice
Before creating the final submission, read the current student handouts for permitted collaboration, attribution, video requirements and reference restrictions. Follow those rules during the assessed task; feedback that is useful in ordinary practice is not automatically permitted during submission work.
Sources and next step
Use the official CSP exam overview and the student handouts linked from it. Confirm the exam-year submission deadline, then plan separate sessions for programme testing, the video, the reference and practice explanations. Retired Explore materials can illustrate computing ideas but should not be treated as current assessed work.