Performance Tasks

At our recent Professional Learning community, my team and I decided to focus on the Wonders Performance Task (P.T.). We chose to look closely at the Performance Task, rather than at the constructed responses and tasks that lead up to the P.T. since, ideally, the P.T. is intended to pull together those skills and concepts acquired along the way.

As we looked at the directions for the P.T., we were all struck with how dense they were with information. In order to be successful on the task, students clearly needed to understand what they were being asked to do. Suffice to say, there were quite a few barriers to understanding (overall English proficiency for ELLs, reading ability, etc.) In an effort to ensure student success, we are tasked with removing as many of these obstacles as we possibly can.

We came up with a to-do list for each member of the team. 1) Each teacher would be responsible for printing out their students' responses. 2) The responses would need to be scored so that all of the allotted PLC time could be used for decision-making and reflection. 3) Teachers would need to be prepared to engage in a conversation focusing on the pros and cons.

In addition to these team-agreements, I offered to create a student-friendly handout that would help students make sense of the directions. In order to do this, I first need to read the directions from the point of view of a student with approximately four to five years of in-class experience.

It's a work-in-progress, but here's an excerpt from my document:

Regardless of the unit, the layout of the Performance Task follows this same basic pattern:

First, you’ll see, in bold print, the title “______________________ Performance Task”

                                                                                                              ↑ The genre will be provided here (i.e., informational).

Purpose: 1) to see if you can answer the three questions about and then 2) complete an opinion, informational, or narrative writing piece (essay) about the two sources provided.

Next, you see the word “Task” and be given a scenario (a little story to help you relate to

           the task (i.e. Your class has been learning about…).

Purpose: Authors who write tests know you’ll understand and do better if you can relate to a familiar situation. You see this strategy used in math word problems all the time: Mrs. “so and so” has 28 “whatchamacallits” and needs to divide them…

Third, you’ll see “Directions for Part 1” and “Research Questions” and directions.

Purpose: to focus all your attention on reading both sources and answering the questions. Being able to read the sources closely and carefully answer the three questions about those two sources are intended to prepare you to write the essay in Part 2.



My hope is that this document will enable our students to improve their understanding of the next Performance Task and their responses to the task.

Lola Jollie
Euclid Elementary School
Proudly serving 3rd and 4th-grade students