3

Identifying Products and Performances What student product(s) and/or performances will provide evidence of student attainment of outcomes? Will students have a choice regarding products and/or performances?

 The activities within a performance assessment task serve as instructional exercises and as assessments of student progresses toward the stated outcome/indicators.

What considerations should be made in determining the products and performances of task activities?

Once the theme or meaningful context has been established (see Step 2), teachers should begin to develop the task activities. Within these activities students will complete a product or performance based upon the task's learning indicator(s). While these activities may include products and performances, teachers should be sure to plan for additional instruction as necessary to assist students in completing the activity satisfactorily. For example, if students were asked to make a presentation on the amount of rainfall over the past ten months, and as part of that presentation students would need to include a graph and illustrations of rainfall measurements for different regions, instruction would need to include, but not be limited to: (1) use, analysis, and construction of graphs for displaying data; (2) gathering information on rainfall and other weather data; and (3) understandings of geographic regions, biomes, and weather patterns.

Activities and performances within a task may lead to a culminating activity or meaningful use task. This final task activity serves as a summative measure of students' understandings, abilities, and competencies as they relate to the task outcomes and indicators. The final task is specifically related to the theme or meaningful context for the task and may be a way to tie together the separate skills from various activities within the performance task.

In designing the task activities, teachers should consider the following:

What is the purpose for the task/activity? What will students need to do?

• persuade

• make decisions

• defend a position

• entertain

• design

• conduct an experiment

• explain

• solve a problem

Who is the audience for their performance?

• other students

• elected officials

• a newspaper editor

• school board members

• parents/relatives

What kinds of authentic products and performances will students be asked to do?

Written	Performance	Visual
book review editorial letter magazine article poem play research report information web page	interview oral report play song/rap teach a lesson	cartoon display model poster videotape web page

Excerpted from Designing Performance Assessment Tasks,
Maryland Assessment Consortium, 1995.

Design Process Steps | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

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