Performance Tasks

Some teachers seem to be unclear about the Common Core performance tasks. These are not going to be some kind of in class long term activities. In fact, they will be computerized assessments that require extensive writing and take two sessions to complete. To get a better idea of what your students will be expected to do, check the sample performance tasks here.

It's important to think about what this means for your classroom instruction. A traditional writer's workshop model tends to be very open ended, allow for extensive student choice, and to involve a wide variety of genres. Personal journals and creative fiction tend to dominate. Whatever you think about this more traditional format, it is not what will be expected for the Common Core performance tasks.

To help your students succeed on these tasks, you will need to begin with the end in mind and design your instruction backwards from that end goal. By the end of the year, your students will need to plan an essay using multiple sources, take notes from those sources, cite their sources by title, type up a well organized multiple paragraph essay using a word processor, and wrap it up in two days. This level of expectations begins in the third grade. Tough, you bet. This is why, as I have mentioned in previous posts, you don't have a minute to waste. If your students are to reach their target goal, you must start getting them ready from the very first of the year.