Critical Minds - Improving Performance Tasks

Critical Minds Session December 5th, 2011

Critical Minds met to explore how to improve the 6th grade written performance task.

Nathan and Alex both presented and shared facilitating. The team spent 45 minutes discussing the issue and all members contributed valuable information.

Summary of Problem:

In addition to common exams, 6th grade students are giving several performance tasks throughout the academic year. One of the tasks is a written performance, which is graded based on grammar, accuracy and creativity. Before the task is given, teachers spend one lesson preparing students for the task, which either includes 1) writing a collective story on the board or 2) reviewing relevant grammar structures. After preparing for the task, the teacher selectively gives each student a unique picture - such as a playground picture - and students are given 40 minutes to write as much as they can about their picture.

Both Alex and Nathan believed this approach to be too artificial and didn't reflect the true abilities of the students. They wanted the learning community members to evaluate the task and give feedback on how to improve it. In particular, 1) how to make it more relevant to the students, 2) how to make it more fair, and 3) how to make it more enjoyable so that students would write more creatively.

Main Points of the Discussion:

* Make it more relevant: The group concluded that instead of giving pictures - which many members believed to be too crowded and intimidating to begin with - that a personal object, such as student artwork or a personal item from home, might encourage them to write more purposefully and creatively.

* Story starters: The group concluded that 40 minutes was not enough time to both think about and write a complete story. As a result, the idea of providing 'story starters' was given as a way to encourage direction so that students would spend more time writing and reviewing their work.

* Tasks instructions: The group concluded that the instructions given to students for the task is too formal and focused on grammar. Both Alex and Nathan agreed that listing grammatical structures in the instructions forced students to write unrelated and random sentences that in the end didn't form a fluent and cohesive composition. The group concluded that these should be removed.

* Practice sessions: The group concluded that enough practice time - one lesson - was not enough to throughly prepare the students for the task. In particular, the group felt that because this task happens in the beginning of the year, that most students need more time to prepare. Several ideas were given, and both Alex and Nathan agreed that the idea of including group work as part of the preparation process was valuable. In particular, over the course of several lessons, students could work together in groups to write a composition, therefore learning through peer instruction and gaining confidence in the task. Later, they could move on to more individualized instruction - which could include a homework assignment. In the end, the group concluded that structuring the preparation differently, would greatly improve the content and outcome of the performance task.

To conclude, many fantastic ideas were discussed and both Alex and Nathan felt inspired to change the task and make it more relevant and enjoyable for the students.

Conclusions:

First of all, both Alex and I would like to thank the group for their ideas. I would also like to apologize for posting so late, but we delayed our post because we actually modified our Oral Performance task with the group's ideas. In the past week, we gave our students an oral task, and instead of giving our 'traditional' picture for students to speak about, we actually encouraged students to choose meaningful items from home. We prepared questions for the students so that they couldn't just prepare a standard speech at home. On the day of the task, students brought in baby shoes, first toys, tickets, valuable coins and such other items to show and discuss for their task. We saw two valuable outcomes from this modification:

1. Students were able to excited for the task. As a result, they were more proud and confident to speak in front of the class. It also gave us a chance to get to know the students better.

2. The presentation was more natural. We don't believe this approach made the task easier, but it made it more interesting because instead of random sentences, students tried to produce a cohesive monologue, as if they were sharing their ideas to a friend.


Overall, the sixth grade team is very happy with the results, and although we can always improve the task, we believe making it personal and relevant for the students is the most important change.