Assessment of Students Performance April 1997
EXHIBIT 7-2
Examples of Performance-Based Tasks
| An example of a performance-based task at the high school level comes from Crandall High in Oregon. At Crandall, 10th-grade students were required, for a social science project, to weave economics terminology into a story about being stranded on a desert island. Students had to use the terms capital, land, labor, barter, value, and so on, in their stories. In addition, they were required to use a wordprocessor to write their stories and to give a multi-media presentation based upon their stories. However, they could determine the length of their stories and the design of their presentations. According to Crandall teachers, this project enabled their students to acquire and understand basic economic concepts and to write meaningful text. Another example of a performance-based task comes from Cooper Middle School, which is formulating its own assessments and project-based instruction. For a thematic unit entitled "Freedom and Responsibility," students were required to hold a mock trial: Should the United States of America ban the sale, manufacture, and use of cigarettes? To prepare for this debate, students: (1) used a variety of books and other resource materials to research the topic; (2) prepared for a role — such as a judge, a prosecutor, or a defense attorney — in the trial; (3) conducted the trial; and (4) wrote a persuasive essay for or against the ban, based upon the court proceedings. A third example comes from Ann Chester, an elementary school in Fort Worth, Texas. Ann Chester students designed their own playground, working with a budget and a building schedule and taking into consideration their play needs in the playground design specifications. |