Description:

This session explores how performance tasks can deepen student learning by engaging them in authentic, real-world challenges. You’ll learn how to design tasks that promote critical thinking, problem solving, communication, reasoning, and representation—skills essential for academic success and lifelong learning. We’ll examine strategies for aligning tasks with learning goals, fostering student agency, and supporting meaningful discourse. By the end, you’ll leave with practical tools and exemplars to create performance tasks that are rigorous, equitable, and empowering.

Subject Area: Mathematics, Science

Delivery Format: In-Person, Virtual, Hybrid

Target Audience: Pre-Service Teachers, Classroom Teachers, Instructional Coaches, School Administrators, District Administrators

Duration: Workshop (60-90 minutes), Half-Day (3 hours), Full-Day (6 hours)

Facilitators:

Grade Level: Elementary, Middle

Learning Intentions:

• Design performance tasks that promote deep thinking and real-world application
• Align tasks with learning goals, standards, and success criteria
• Incorporate opportunities for reasoning, representation, and communication
• Facilitate student discourse and formative assessment through task implementation
• Evaluate the rigor, accessibility, and equity of performance tasks

Success Criteria:

• Design a performance task that engages students in authentic, meaningful learning 
• Align the task to clear learning goals, standards, and success criteria
• Integrate opportunities for students to demonstrate reasoning, representation, and communication
• Facilitate the task in ways that promote discourse, agency, and formative assessment
• Evaluate and refine the task to ensure it is rigorous, equitable, and accessible for all learners

Key Topics Covered:

• Authentic, Real-World Task Design

• Student Voice, Choice, and Agency

• Collaborative Problem Solving and Communication

• Criteria-Based Feedback and Reflection

• Math Workshop as a Structure for Differentiated Performance Tasks

Expected Impact:

Empowers students to think critically, communicate clearly, and engage in meaningful, real-world learning. Teachers gain practical strategies to design rigorous, equitable tasks that align with standards and foster student agency. At the school and division levels, this work promotes instructional coherence, elevates professional learning, and strengthens outcomes through authentic, performance-based assessment.

Testimonials:

Amazing workshop! The facilitator not only gave us knew knowledge but had us all engaged in what we were learning being an example of what can be used in the classroom.