Aimed at the growing number of educators who are looking to move beyond covering the curriculum, Designing Authentic Performance Tasks and Projects provides a comprehensive guide to ensuring students' deeper learning—in which they can transfer their knowledge, skills, and understandings to the world beyond the classroom. Readers will learn how to * Create authentic tasks and projects to address both academic standards and 21st century skills. * Apply task frames to design performance tasks that allow voice and choice for students. * Design and use criterion-based evaluation tools and rubrics for assessment, including those for students to use in self-assessment and peer assessment. * Incorporate performance-based instructional strategies needed to prepare students for authentic performance. * Differentiate tasks and projects for all students, including those needing additional support or challenge. * Effectively manage the logistics of a performance-based classroom. * Use project management approaches to facilitate successful implementation of tasks and projects. * Develop performance-based curriculum at the program, school, and district levels. Authors Jay McTighe, Kristina J. Doubet, and Eric M. Carbaugh provide examples and resources across all grade levels and subject areas. Teachers can use this practical guidance to transform their classrooms into vibrant centers of learning, where students are motivated and engaged and see relevance in the work they are doing.

Performance-Based Assessment for Middle and High School Physical Education, Second Edition, breaks down the complex topic of assessments and shows you how to develop assessments that will help you and your students work together to enhance the instructional process in physical education. The authors describe the various types of performance-based assessments and show how to integrate assessments into fitness education and physical education, using numerous models that can be adapted to your own situation. The authors provide a wealth of tools for assessing students according to local, state, and NASPE standards while helping students reach their goals. The text is supported by a Web site that includes a test package, a presentation package with PowerPoint slides, an instructor guide, and a CD-ROM that includes additional forms and assessments.

Authentic Assessment combines performance tasks that are relevant to students' lives with the need for accountability. The book explores common mandated language arts expectations and shows teachers how to choose meaningful activities that will guide students toward achieving important learning outcomes. This practical approach to task design includes suggestions for planning through evaluating and generating a mark, as well as sensible ways to use assessment results to improve instructional practice. The book presents: a thorough, constructive background for authentic assessment of student work; clear definitions of terms related to assessment and evaluation; a step-by-step process for developing performance-based tasks; strategies for relating tasks to goals and expectations; numerous activities that can be used as is or adapted for specific needs. Designed for the busy teacher, the book includes ready-to-copy and use planning sheets, rubrics, and student surveys. Excellent samples of student work based on performance tasks complement this timely book.

Writing a rubric that can accurately evaluate student work can be tricky. Rather than a single right or wrong answer, rubrics leave room for interpretation and thus subjectivity. How does a teacher who wants to use performance-based assessment in this day and age of educational data and SMART goals find a way to reliably assess student work? The solution is to write clear rubrics that allow the evaluator to objectively assess student work. This book will show classroom teachers not only how to create their own objective rubrics, which can be used to evaluate performance assessments, but also how to develop rubrics that measure hard-to-assess skills, such as leadership and grit, and how to empower their own students to create rubrics that are tailored to their work.

Project based learning (PBL) is gaining renewed attention with the current focus on college and career readiness and the performance-based emphases of Common Core State Standards, but only high-quality versions can deliver the beneficial outcomes that schools want for their students. It’s not enough to just “do projects.” Today’s projects need to be rigorous, engaging, and in-depth, and they need to have student voice and choice built in. Such projects require careful planning and pedagogical skill. The authors—leaders at the respected Buck Institute for Education—take readers through the step-by-step process of how to create, implement, and assess PBL using a classroom-tested framework. Also included are chapters for school leaders on implementing PBL systemwide and the use of PBL in informal settings. Examples from all grade levels and content areas provide evidence of the powerful effects that PBL can have, including * increased student motivation and preparation for college, careers, and citizenship; * better results on high-stakes tests; * a more satisfying teaching experience; and * new ways for educators to communicate with parents, communities, and the wider world. By successfully implementing PBL, teachers can not only help students meet standards but also greatly improve their instruction and make school a more meaningful place for learning. Both practical and inspirational, this book is an essential guide to creating classrooms and schools where students—and teachers—excel.

Performance-based assessments can provide an adequate and more direct evaluation of teaching ability. As performance-based assessments become more prevalent in institutions across the United States, there is an opportunity to begin more closely analyzing the impact of standardized performance assessments and the relationship to variables such as success entering the workforce, program re-visioning for participating institutions, and the perceptions and efficacy of teacher candidates themselves. Performance-Based Assessment in 21st Century Teacher Education is a collection of innovative research that explores meaningful and engaging performance-based assessments and its applications and addresses larger issues of assessment including the importance of a balanced approach of assessing knowledge and skills. The book also offers tangible structures for making strong connections between theory and practice and offers advice on how these assessments are utilized as data sources related to preservice teacher performance. While highlighting topics including faculty engagement, online programs, and curriculum mapping, this book is ideally designed for educators, administrators, principals, school boards, professionals, researchers, faculty, and students.