Learning and Assessment Tasks
Tasks can be used during various parts of the lesson cycle: to build background knowledge and activate prior learning (scaffolding tasks), to pose a problem which students want to solve (constructing or practice tasks), to apply skills and knowledge to solve a problem (practice tasks), or to demonstrate learning (performance task). Common formative assessments are developed when teachers work together to develop assessments which show the learning process and use the results together to inform instruction and intervene to help all student learn.
A great place to begin when thinking about learning tasks is with materials from Dan Meyer. In addition to his wonderful Ted Talk, Dan Meyer has written a great article on designing engaging math tasks. His site 101 Questions has some great starter ideas.
Other resources worth checking out include:
A great place to begin when thinking about learning tasks is with materials from Dan Meyer. In addition to his wonderful Ted Talk, Dan Meyer has written a great article on designing engaging math tasks. His site 101 Questions has some great starter ideas.
Other resources worth checking out include:
- Georgia has written full units which include scaffolding, constructing, practice, and assessment tasks for K-8.
- Howard County has assessment tasks written for all the math standards
Kinder
1st Grade
2nd Grade
3rd Grade
4th Grade
5th Grade
- Tennessee has a great description of how to write/select great tasks.
- Illustrative Mathematics has a great collection of assessments tasks and the teachers at Core Academy have been putting together their own collection as well.
- Problems of the Month organized by grade level and standards or by mathematical domain can be found at Inside Mathematics or at MARS.
- Additional tasks are available from Exemplars.
- The Mathematics Assessment Project offers great tasks for middle school and high school.
- Balanced Assessment is a great resource for assessment tasks.
- New York has created a variety of learning tasks which can be searched by grade level.
- Great teaching tasks for each grade level and math domain are available from CCSS Math.
- Illuminations provides great assessment tasks.
- The Mathematics Task Centre offers hundreds of teaching tasks.
- More tasks can be found at NRich.
- Catch is a great project on common formative assessment.
- Research, Development and Accountability has tasks available with teachers guides.
- North Carolina teachers have developed a set of problem solving decks for a variety of grade levels as well as a newsletter to send home with students to try out some problem solving at home. They also have a problem solving program called Superstars Math III.
- Ohio has a search engine to find tasks from around the web.
- Prince George's County had provided some some key ideas for using learning tasks.
- Emergent Math has provided this graphic illustration of the process of using a learning task.
This from the Teaching Channel is a great example of how we can help students build their understanding through learning tasks.
