Performance Tasks and Rubrics for Middle School Mathematics

Book excerpt: Performance tasks are highly effective tools to assist you in implementing rigorous standards. But how do you create, evaluate, and use such tools? In this bestselling book, educational experts Charlotte Danielson and Elizabeth Marquez explain how to construct and apply performance tasks to gauge students’ deeper understanding of mathematical concepts at the middle school level. You’ll learn how to: Evaluate the quality of performance tasks, whether you’ve written them yourself or found them online; Use performance tasks for instructional decision-making and to prepare students for summative assessments; Create your own performance tasks, or adapt pre-made tasks to best suit students’ needs; Design and use scoring rubrics to evaluate complex performance tasks; Use your students’ results to communicate more effectively with parents. This must-have second edition is fully aligned to the Common Core State Standards and assessments and includes a variety of new performance tasks and rubrics, along with samples of student work. Additionally, downloadable student handout versions of all the performance tasks are available as free eResources from our website (www.routledge.com/9781138906914), so you can easily distribute them to your class.