Rigor in CCSS

Rich Tasks for Real Kids

Aligning Performance Tasks to the Common Core State Standards and NC Essential StandardsThe information in this presentation is based on information received from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) at the Urban District Leadership Network (UDLN) convening attended by the CMS Deputy Superintendent, STEM, and Humanities Departments in Tampa, FL in May, 2013.

Please remember to document attendance for this state required half-day PD session. This session completes the five days of CCSS/ES training required by the NC waiver day plan for the 2012-2013 school year.1Session GoalsTo deepen our understanding of performance tasks aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and NC Essential StandardsTo explore how performance tasks impact a students journey toward college and career readinessTo consider the research on effective assessment practicesTo understand how aligned assessment practices can raise rigor and expectations for all students2Review goals for this part of the training.

As we know, and as the research has shown, the assessment practices our students encounter in school the means by which we indicate and inform the quality of their learning send incredibly strong signals to them about whats important in education: about what kind of skills they should seek to master and about the kinds of things they should seek to know and understand about the world.

For better or worse, the kind of assessment practices that our kids encounter in school are the lens through which they develop a sense of what they are capable of doing and what kind of value they bring to their own lives and the lives of others.

As we continue to implement the Common Core and the NC Essential Standards, we aspire to empower all students with the knowledge and skills they need in the 21st-century. It is critical that we succeed in aligning assessment practices with both the spirit and the substance of the Common Core.

Today, were going to talk about rich tasks for real kids.

2Lets talk about MiguelMiguel begins kindergarten this year and will graduate from high school in 2026 and from college in 2030. What will Miguels world be like in 2030? We cant know for sure, but a few things are certain:Its likely the career Miguel chooses doesnt exist today.Advanced technology will be more central to Miguels life and the life of his peers than for any previous generation in human history.Miguels generation will grapple with the impact of global challenges using understandings not yet achieved and with technologies and solutions not yet invented.The exponential pace of change means the world in which Miguel lives today will likely bear little resemblance to the world he will know in 2030.3When you think about it, there is probably a Miguel beginning kindergarten in every one of our elementary schools this fall. For our purposes today, Miguel represents the tens of thousands of students who will begin school this fall and who will graduate from college in 2030.

We cant say for certain what the future holds, but we can say some things about what Miguels world will be like.

(Quickly read four sub-bullets. Advance to next slide.)3Miguel and the CCSSWhile school cant prepare Miguel for every challenge he will face in the future, a quality and inspired CCSS-aligned education can empower Miguel to:Demonstrate independence and self-directed learningValue evidence, reason logically, and think conceptually and abstractlyAnalyze and use dataComprehend as well as critiqueConstruct and present viable argumentsUse media and technology strategicallyPersevere in making sense of and solving problemsUnderstand and appreciate different perspectives and culturesDevelop the skills and dispositions necessary to the responsible exercise of citizenship in an advanced democratic republicThese capacities, developed in the context of a well-rounded education, will ensure Miguel can engage with and contribute to his world effectively and with purpose.

4While school cant prepare Miguel for every challenge hell face, a quality education aligned to the Common Core can ensure that Miguel heads into the future being able to, among other things:

(Read three or four sub-points.)

Miguels best chance for the future is a high-quality, well-rounded education enabling him to engage effectively with his high-paced and ever-changing world.4Miguel, the CCSS, and Assessment TasksEnsuring Miguel and all students are able to acquire 21st-century knowledge, skills, and dispositions require the development of aligned assessments that:Raises instructional rigor and empowers every student to become college and career ready.Develops deep content knowledge and literacy across the curriculum and deep mathematical understanding across topic areas.Focuses primarily on assessment for learning and thus provides timely and meaningful feedback, support, and the opportunities for practice and improvement necessary to master the CCSS.Integrates into the daily instructional experience of teachers and students, thereby enabling students to transfer and apply knowledge and skill to novel and complex challenges.5But how will we know that Miguel is preparing for that future? What kind of assessments can signal not only how well Miguel is learning but also how best to improve and accelerate his learning?

The Common Core offers important clues that can help us consider some key principles when it comes to what a Common Core-aligned assessment system should be designed to do.

Assessments in all content areas designed to prepare Miguel to meet new learning expectations:

(Read sub-points.)

5Turn and TalkTake a few minutes to discuss your thoughts about the following question:

How do your current classroom assessment practices compare and contrast to the previously mentioned assessment components?

6Encourage discussion and analysis.6What does the CCSS say about assessment?While the Standards delineate specific expectations in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language, each standard need not be a separate focus for instruction and assessment. Often, several standards can be addressed by a single rich taskThis means that students can develop mutually reinforcing skills and exhibit mastery of standardsacross a range of texts and classrooms.CCSS ELA & Literacy, p. 5

Mathematical understanding and procedural skill are equally important, and both are assessable using mathematical tasks of sufficient richness.CCSS Math, p. 4

The CCSS ELA & Literacy standards also stress the following:

The Standards insist that instruction in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language be a shared responsibility within the school.CCSS ELA & Literacy, p. 47Now, lets get a little more specific and lets dive into the Common Core and investigate what it says about assessment.

In ELA and Literacy, the standards say that: (read quote with emphasis)

In mathematics, the standards say that: (read quote with emphasis)

(Read the remainder of the slide.)

I want you to keep the notion of a shared responsibility in mind, because well reflect on that in just a little while.

The paradox of what the Common Core says about assessment is that it says very little and a whole lot at the same time.

7What does the CCSS say about assessment?From the CCSS, we can infer that assessment aligned to the CCSS:Should balance assessment of discrete standards with assessment of multiple standards within rich tasks or tasks of sufficient richness.Is a shared responsibility, which creates opportunity to ensure coherent instruction across subjects areas and topics.Is less about testing and more about the kind of instructional practice that supports student mastery of the CCSS.

8From the little the Common Core says about assessment, we can infer three overarching principles of Common Core-aligned assessment:

(Read/paraphrase sub-bullets.)

8What are rich tasks?9Assessment through rich tasks or tasks of sufficient richness can drive focus and coherence in the daily instructional experience for teachers and students across all disciplines.

Rich tasks address multiple standards sometimes across subject areas or topics and can provide students worthwhile and cognitively challenging opportunities for feedback and deeper learning. What are rich tasks?

IMPORTANT NOTE: In CMS, the C&I team has included sample performance tasks in curriculum guides for all content areas for next school year! We use the terms rich tasks and performance tasks interchangeably.

Fundamentally, rich tasks can take many diverse forms, as youll see, but at their core, rich tasks address multiple standards (as opposed to focusing on discrete standards) sometimes involving content across subject areas and mathematical topics and can drive the kind of focused and coherent instruction that is both worthwhile and cognitively challenging for students.

What the Common Core is suggesting is that through rich tasks students can make the critical link between the standards and whats worth knowing and mastering in this world. Rich tasks can be the vehicles through which we can engage all students in more effective learning.

9What does a rich task look like?Smarter Balanced Sample 4th-Grade Math Performance Task: Planting Tulips, Part 3The class finds a bag containing bulbs that are each 1 inches wide and decides to use them in their rectangular planter. Following the planting guidelines, answer the questions and show your calculations.This picture shows a tulip bulb that is 1 inches wide. Use your ruler and mark an X where the next bulb could be planted.Using your drawing, calculate the total length of space that is needed for each bulb with a 1 -inch width. Your answer should include the width of the bulb shown.How many tulip bulbs with a 1 -inch width can be planted in a single row that is 5 feet long?How many tulip bulbs with a 1 -inch width can be planted in a single column that is 2 feet long?How many total tulip bulbs with a 1 -inch width can be planted in the 5-foot by 2-foot rectangular planter? Explain or show your reasoning.10

What makes this a rich task? Student will need toSolve real-world problems involving measurements.Construct chains of reasoning that will justify or refute propositions or conjectures.Select and use appropriate tools strategically.This is a grade 4 example. Use with teachers as appropriate. It may be beneficial to display all three tasks so teachers can experience the progression in skills and rigor our students will experience.

Read prompt.

At your table, take three minutes to review and discuss this task and identify evidence that this is a rich task.

(Solicit volunteers to share their analysis. Encourage evidence.)

Remember when I asked you to consider the notion of shared responsibility called for by the Common Core? How does this task represent shared curricular and instructional responsibility at our school?

10What does a rich task look like?Literacy Design Collaborative Sample Middle School Task:Are the financial gains of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, worth the environmental risk? After reading informational texts and viewing multi-media, write a letter to your state legislator that addresses the question. Support your position with evidence from the text(s). Be sure to acknowledge competing views. Give examples from past or current events or issues to illustrate and clarify your position.11What makes this a rich task? Students will need toRead multiple, cross-disciplinary complex texts, including non-print media, to develop content knowledge.Produce clear and coherent writing using textual evidence to analyze a real-world issue and support an argument.This middle school literacy task comes to us from the Literacy Design Collaborative. Use with teachers as appropriate. It may be beneficial to display all three tasks so teachers can experience the progression in skills and rigor our students will experience.

(Read LDC prompt.)

At your table, take three minutes to review and discuss this task and identify evidence that this is a rich task.

(Solicit volunteers to share their analysis. Encourage evidence.)

Remember when I asked you to consider the notion of shared responsibility called for by the Common Core? How does this task represent shared curricular and instructional responsibility at our school?

11What does a rich task look like?Smarter Balanced Sample 11th-Grade ELA Performance Task: Nuclear PowerPart 1: After you have reviewed the research sources, answer the questions below. From the sources you have reviewed, summarize 3 major arguments that support, and 3 major arguments that oppose, the use of nuclear power for generating electricity. For each of the arguments, cite at least one source that supports this fact or point of view.Evaluate the credibility of the arguments and evidence presented by these sources. Which of the sources are more trustworthy and why? Which of the sources warrant some skepticism because of bias or insufficient evidence?Part 2: Write an argumentative report that recommends the position your congresswoman should take on the plan to build a nuclear power plant in your state. Support your claim with evidence from the Internet sources you have read and viewed. You do not need to use all the sources, only the ones most effectively and credibly supporting your position and your consideration of the opposing point of view.12What makes this a rich task? Students will need toProduce clear and coherent writing using textual evidence to support an argument.Evaluate the credibility of claims.Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English.This is a high school grade 11 task. Present to teachers as appropriate.

Read prompt.

At your table, take three minutes to review and discuss this task and identify evidence that this is a rich task.

(Solicit volunteers to share their analysis. Encourage evidence.)

Remember when I asked you to consider the notion of shared responsibility called for by the Common Core? How does this task represent shared curricular and instructional responsibility at our school?

12Turn and TalkTake three minutes to discuss your thoughts to the following:

What are some primary advantages of assessing students through rich tasks versus more conventional classroom assessments?13Weve just spent time reviewing some sample tasks that could be considered rich tasks. They ask students to engage in cognitively challenging work, across multiple standards, and some even have application outside of school, thereby increasing the opportunity to engage students in work that is worth doing.

Take time now at your table to reflect on the following questions:

(Read question.)

(Solicit volunteers to provide reflective answers.)

13In other wordsIf Miguel and his peers are to demonstrate mastery of the CCSS, they should engage in authentic intellectual work that:Addresses multiple standards within a subject area and across the curriculum.Is cognitively challenging and intellectually rewarding for students.Is informed by educator expertise and student interests.Deeply engages educators and students in work that is worth doing and has value beyond school. 14Working to meet the rigorous expectations of the Common Core and NC Essential Standards means students, like Miguel, need to be engaged in authentic intellectual work that:

(Read/paraphrase sub-bullets.)

14What does research say about authentic intellectual work? Authentic [intellectual] experiences should, to the extent possible, not be contrived and will often involve multiple measures across time to provide a comprehensive picture of students knowledge and abilities. (McAlister, 2001, p. 23)Participation in authentic intellectual activity helps to motivate and sustain students in the hard work that learning requires. (Newmann, Bryk, and Nagaoka, 2001, p. 30)Meaningful, contextualized experiences tend to promote better learning. (McAlister, 2001, p. 31)Evidence indicates that assignments calling for more authentic intellectual work actually improve student scores on conventional tests. (Newmann, Bryk, and Nagaoka, 2001, p. 29)

15Engaging all students in authentic intellectual work will represent a tremendous shift for schools, teachers, and the students themselves. Some of the work we ask of our students may not be authentic, in that students, especially our most struggling, understand a clear connection between what theyre doing, what theyre learning, and how they can apply that learning to new and novel situations.

What does the research say about the impact of authentic intellectual work? (Highlight bullets)

Teachers may feel tension between engaging all students in classroom learning and designing authentic intellectual experiences that challenge all students. The CCSS and solid research suggest that, in fact, it is through authentic intellectual work that all of our students will have the best chance of demonstrating their capacity to achieve at the highest levels.

At the end of the day, what we know is kids meet our expectations .

15Now, back to MiguelPerformance tasks should prepare Miguel, and every other student, for success in college and/or a career of their choosing. When it comes to these tasks for students, they should be:Less like a test and more like a valuable challenge worth tackling.About getting useful feedback to improve and refine their work so they come to know what quality work is.A seamless extension of daily instructional experiences, with application beyond the classroom.Technology-enhanced and personalized when appropriate.An opportunity to demonstrate knowledge, logic, ideas, values, insights, creativity, imagination, convictions, and passions through multiple modes of expression.16Lets summarize this part of the session by thinking once again about Miguel and all the Miguels we have known and will know in our school. The Common Core presents a special opportunity to afford him a quality and inspired education. In order to achieve the promise of the Common Core, going forward, assessment for Miguel should be

(Read/paraphrase bullets.)

This is hard work! Its fulfilling work for us and for our students, and, ultimately, its the work the Common Core and Essential Standards demands in the service of all of our students.

16Looking AheadCMS district-wide expectations include the teaching and analysis of performance tasks in all grades and content areas. A focus of professional development next year will include creating, teaching, and analyzing content-specific performance tasks. Remember performance tasks are part of the CMS non-negotiables for all grade bands next school year in CMS. 17How can I find out more about CMS performance tasks?Attend subject-specific sessions at the CMS Teacher Institute June 19-28, 2013.Look at your specific curriculum guides for sample performance tasks.Work with your PLC to design and implement tasks at your school.Encourage teachers to attend PD sessions this summer (and Curriculum Day next school year) to examine their new curriculum guides which include aligned performance tasks. Also encourage teachers to create additional performance tasks for their students. Next year, PD will include analysis of student work samples based on content/grade specific performance tasks.18Next StepsWith your colleagues, explore opportunities forperformance task development.Consider the following:

Interdisciplinary connections between CCSS and NC Essential StandardsReal-world contexts to broaden student perspectivesResources (texts, technology, format)

In the remaining time, teachers may opt to begin planning based on todays information. Locate course/grade specific curriculum guides and examine the rich performance tasks included. Discuss possible resources and instructional timelines. 19Table TalkTake a few minutes to discuss your thoughts about the following:

What are some of the practical curricular and instructional implications for you and your students of assessment through rich performance tasks?20ReferencesCommon Core State Standards, Common Core State Standards Initiative, May 2010. http://www.corestandards.org/

McAlister, Brian. The Authenticity of Authentic Assessment: What the Research Says Or Doesnt Say, in Custer R. L., Schell, J., Scott, J. S., McAlister B.K. & Hoepfl, M. (2000) Using Authentic Assessment in Vocational Education: ERIC Monograph (Information Series No. 381). http://www.calpro-online.org/eric/docs/custer/custer4.pdf

Newmann, Fred, et al. Authentic Intellectual Work and Standardized Tests: Conflict or Coexistence? Consortium on Chicago School Research, 2001. http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/authentic-intellectual-work-and-standardized-tests-conflict-or-coexistence

Orland, Martin and Janice Anderson. Assessment for Learning: What Policymakers Should Know About Formative Assessment, WestEd, 2013. http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/rs/1306

Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, Item and Task Prototypes, 2012. http://www.parcconline.org/samples/item-task-prototypes

Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, Sample Items and Performance Tasks, 2012. http://www.smarterbalanced.org/sample-items-and-performance-tasks/

21The information in this presentation is based on information received from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) at the Urban District Leadership Network (UDLN) convening attended by the CMS Deputy Superintendent, STEM, and Humanities Departments in Tampa, FL in May, 2013.

21The Story of Our Work22http://youtu.be/Hms3XPw6wkIBe sure you are connected to the Internet. Click the link to show the video. Use this as a springboard for reflection and celebration of our implementation journey. Consider reviewing the specific professional development you have provided for your staff. Celebrate your accomplishments!22And the Survey Says23CCSS/NCES Professional Development Survey Direct staff to complete the CCSS/ES survey. This information will assist in assessing understanding and implementation levels and in creating next steps as a district. Information is NOT reported by school OR individual! Encourage all certified staff to participate. 23