March 17, 2023: Designing Authentic Performance Tasks

 Designing Authentic Performance Tasks  (click on the title to get today's slides)

This three-hour session explores strategies for designing and analyzing deep, engaging, authentic

performance-based tasks that are both meaningful and rigorous for students.  We will begin by unpacking

a variety of sample tasks to answer the questions:

• What is this task asking students to know?

• What skills must the students possess in order to carry out the task?

• Does the task measure what the teacher wants to measure?

We will explore strategies for designing ongoing mini-tasks that develop the skills, knowledge, and

understandings required for the larger, more rigorous tasks that require the transfer of knowledge/skills to

unfamiliar (and often “messy”) contexts.

Teachers will receive a toolkit of templates and materials to assist in designing and assessing their own

tasks and will have time to develop an authentic performance-based task. Teachers should come to the

session with materials (e.g. texts, curriculum units, standards, etc.) that might help them in designing either a series of mini-tasks or a culminating unit task.

Sample Performance Tasks

Performance Task Design Toolkit