Performance Tasks

Performance tasks are open-ended, multi-step problems that require students to apply information, understanding, and previous knowledge to create their own learning activity. These tasks should be designed carefully, both to engage students' intellect and to incorporate sound and significant mathematics. Ideally, performance tasks offer students time to investigate and grapple with a problem and to devise their own responses and explanations for how they arrived at an answer. It may be helpful to start with simpler tasks and work up to longer, more complex ones. Assigning students to work on performance tasks in pairs or groups of four will enrich the teacher's observations and notes about strategy, results, and attitude.

Teachers often evaluate performance tasks using a rubric, which is a hierarchy of performance standards and expectations. Whether task-specific or general, the rubric makes it possible to determine a student's score based on overall performance on a task, as opposed to simply the number of correct or incorrect items. A sample rubric could consist of a scale of three to six points that are used to rate performance. Rubrics can be shared with students to help to engage and empower them in the learning process.