Designing Learning- What is the TASK? Part II

Last post, we looked at the second step in quitting teaching to start designing learning: Determining the TASK. Remember, to move from a teaching mindset to a learning one we have to know that tasks must be designed, not just assigned. Also, the task has some basic, minimal requirements to meet in order for them to be effective in showing that learning happened. Today, we will look at the first two:

• The Ability to “Show” the Learning Target was Met
• Have Qualities Students can Observe

Let’s look at an example together. Choosing a state standard at random, I have a Geography standard: SSWG1 Explain why physical characteristics of place such as landforms, bodies of water, climate, and natural resources act as contributing factors to world settlement patterns. By following the first step in the designing learning process, a learning target for a lesson is constructed. The learning target for this lesson in student friendly language will be: “I can explain why physical characteristics of a place affect where people choose to live.” So, what does a teacher do now to design a task?

First, examine the nouns and the verbs of the learning target. This will drive what the students will need to KNOW (the nouns) and will need to DO (the verbs). Students will need to know the various types of physical characteristics, like landforms, bodies of water, climate, etc and how to locate them on a map or through research. Students will need to use this information to construct some form of explanation. It is clear that in order to EXPLAIN something, students need to be able to create a reason of some kind and provide evidence that their reason makes sense. In this case, their reason for a settlement’s existence needs to be tied to some type of physical land characteristic and a connection made between the two. Taking all of this into consideration, the teacher chooses this as the task for students to show they have met the learning target: “Using a map of ____________, label the physical characteristics and human settlements and explain why these settlements exist.” This task is rooted in the learning target, which was based on the standard. In future posts, the differentiation of the task and other elements will be addressed, but for now, let’s just stick with the basics. This task will result in a product that will show that the learning target was met by students.

Onto the second quality, a task should have qualities that students can observe. What that means for designing learning is providing concrete, visible measures of success that a student can “see” in their work in order for them to take ownership in their learning and seek to move upward in the master of a learning target. What this is called is a Success Criteria. Here is the Success Criteria for students to use on this task:

As you can see, the Success Criteria uses the language of the learning target while also supplying concrete, observable qualities for students to check for in their work in order to self-assess to find out if they mastered the learning for this lesson. For purposes here, Level 3 is meeting the standard level of mastery. How do teachers develop a Success Criteria? By clicking HERE, teachers can utilize a tool walking them through the process. In essence, once a teacher has decided on the TASK to provide for students, then the identification of what a good quality product would look like versus a poor quality one is next. Then, using the elements of the identified good quality work, teachers can list the concrete, observable aspects the student task product should have in order to be successful at meeting the learning target.

This is the basics of teacher clarity and the three questions all teachers and students should be able to answer at any given time in the lesson:

What am I learning?

I’m learning about physical characteristics and human settlements.

Why am I learning it?

So I can explain why people choose to live in certain places.

How do I know I’ve learned it?

When my explanation meets the qualities of the Success Criteria.

Tasks are arguably the most important aspect of lesson design. If teachers find they cannot develop Success Criteria for their assignments, then chances are the assignment is not worth giving because it does not really SHOW learning happened. It may show that students were compliant and did as they were told, but how do we know they learned anything?

We’ve just started on this discussion of the TASK. We have a lot more to cover. Please feel free to write in with any comments or questions. See you soon.