Teaching Tasks for the Right Reason
How to design tasks that develop transferable skills and move away from product checklists
One of the more fun parts of teaching is task design. This is where we get to pour all of our creativity. Tasks are the things we share with one another. They are often the ‘products’ students do for us which we then evaluate.
My thinking of tasks has evolved over the last several years. Before, the task was the thing. That is what we were learning about and working towards. Now, I see tasks as being in service to learning a skill. We are not doing science labs for the sake of a lab report; we are doing them so we can learn to ask questions, gather relevant data and make logical conclusions, etc. We are not writing essays to show our content knowledge about something but instead to show that we can generate relevant and specific ideas and that we can present explanations or arguments and supporting details that are relevant and specific and all logically connected.
I used to spend too much time on the ‘recipe’ for the task and not the learning outcome I should have focussed on. Part of the reason for that is I might have asked students to write an expository essay and I would have provided them with a detailed outline but I never really would have gone deep into how to write strong explanations. Presenting an outline and going over it is not the same as developing an understanding of the underlying skill at the heart of the task.
Also, when we lead with skills as the fundamentals of what we teach and not tasks, the idea of ‘most recent and most consistent’ grade, makes far more sense. I will now give my students multiple opportunities to explain over the course of the year - essay writing might just be one way or ‘unit’ I used to do that.
Once we have identified the skill or skills you want to develop, we can use effective task design to support students in deepening their understanding and competency with the skill. Think about how you learn. If dribbling a basketball was new to you (or even if you are an experienced player) you still need time to practice dribbling, in various ways and with feedback from your coach. Effective tasks for dribbling might look like this:
Watch an expert dribble
Co-construct what good dribbling is (success criteria)
Watch your coach model dribbling in front of you while noting the success criteria
During all of the remaining tasks, you would get feedback from your coach and targeted instruction when you need it
Practice dribbling on your own or with a partner coach so you start to improve
Dribbling in a drill
Dribbling in a modified game
Etc, etc.
This is how we should think about task design. Consider all the ways we can allow students to ‘play’ in the skill we are trying to teach while all the while we provide feedback and give targeted instruction to anyone who needs it - all based on the success criteria. If you haven’t identified correct spelling in your success criteria, don’t worry about it!
We can still use all of our favourite activities. We just need to use them more purposefully and with the goal of developing a skill. The skills are what are transferable. All those years I taught poetry without letting them know that what they were really learning to do was develop strong word choice and how to draft and revise.
If you want to dig in a bit more, here is a very specific example of how my practice has changed. Here is an outline for a Geography Inquiry project I used to give my students. It could have been a really great project. You can see how clearly it is laid out. However, I ask students to do things I never taught them how to do. I just asked them to do it.
Instead, I needed to support students through each part of the inquiry by supporting them through the process with specific success criteria for each part of the inquiry and with specific tasks designed to help them do that. Here is a science example of how I might support teaching students to formulate questions. In the geography example, I had a lesson or two on developing questions but they were not based on any success criteria and students did not have the opportunity to get feedback from me. Also, students should get multiple opportunities to work on developing questions over the year. The inquiry would be a great final task because at that point in the year we would have practiced with each skill within the inquiry process.
Ugh. It’s a lot. I know.
Science - Formulating Questions
In a nutshell, when you assign tasks or topics to students, ask yourself Why am I teaching this? Once you have identified the skill or skills it connects to in the curriculum, develop the success criteria for that skill and then ensure that all of your tasks are supporting understanding of that skill or skills.
Bye for now!
Lori
Let’s chat in the comments…
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