Performance-Based Assessment Tasks

Performance assessment involves giving a student or a group of students, a mathematical task that may take from a half an hour to several days to complete or solve. The object of the assessment is twofold; to look at how students are working as well as evaluating the completed product. As an observer of the performance task process, a teacher may stay with the group or make periodic visits. Often activities are videotaped or audiotaped. In focusing on a particular group of students or a single student, the assessment might take many forms, such as:

• Presenting students with a problem related to what they are already doing in class, and listening to the responses.

• Observing what students are doing and saying, watching for certain characteristics, and taking anecdotal notes about what you see and hear that exemplifies the criteria set.

• Interviewing students during or after an investigation.

• Asking students to write a response directly connected to the problem or in response to an additional question, and then collecting the students' writings and scoring it against a set of performance criteria.