Calgary Board of Education: High School Task Design and Assessment for Intellectual Engagement
English Language Arts & Social Studies
Website –

October 7, 2013

8:30 – 3:00

Focus:

Designing tasks and assessment practices for intellectual engagement

Learning Outcomes:

  • Build capacity for designing intellectually engaging tasks and effective assessment practices for high school students in the four core curricular areas
  • Develop clear images of effective teacher and student learning reflective of Alberta Education Inspiring Education directions
  • Mobilize evidence-based practices and sponsoropportunities for making teaching and learning more visible
  • Develop processes for providing teachers with timely, specific and constructive feedback about effective teaching practices

Time / Process / Expected Outcomes
8:00 / Coffee and Conversation / Connect with colleagues
8:30 / Welcome and Introductions / Common expectations re professional learning
8:45 / Personal Reflection (page 1 of working docs)
David Perkins (2009) Making Learning Whole
  1. What is one thing you understand really well?
  2. How did you come to understand it?
  3. How do you know you understand it?
Table discussion part 1
  • Take turns sharing responses
  • Identify and record common characteristics on chart paper
Discussion part 2 - Deep understanding and evidence of learning in schools:
  1. How do students come to understanding something deeply?
  2. What constitutes “evidence” of their understanding?
  3. How does deep learning for students compare to the learning experiences you described earlier?
/ Establish common understanding about how people learn and what constitutes evidence of learning
9:15 / Moving towards a competency-based curriculum
The following competencies, have been identified as contributing to the vision of students becoming engaged thinkers and ethical citizens with an entrepreneurial spirit:
  1. Critical thinking, problem solving and decision making
  2. Creativity and Innovation
  3. Social, cultural, global and environmental responsibility
  4. Effective communication in a variety of contexts
  5. Digital and technological fluency
  6. Self-knowledge of how to learn and manage personal well-being
  7. Collaboration and leadership
Small group discussion (choose a recorder and spokesperson for the group)
  • Discuss what you think your assigned competency means and what it might look like in action
  • Generate a list of learning tasks you have done with students (or seen someone else do) that you believe would develop this competency
  • Choose the learning task that your group feels most strongly exemplifies the competency. Why? What ideas or suggestions could you offer to help strengthen this task and emphasize the competency even more?
  • Prepare to present the competency & task to the large group.
/ Review the shifts in educational policy within Alberta
10:15 / Break
10:30 / Introduction to Discipline-based inquiry through a case study
  • Identify characteristic(s) of Discipline-based Inquiry Rubric that the Word on the Street case study exemplifies
  • Table groups discuss features of DBIR identified in the case study presented
/ Explore the features of task design that reflect contemporary views of teaching and learning
11:15 / Providing Feedback to Colleagues
Use the Discipline-based Inquiry Rubric (DBIR) as the lens to guide your discussion about effective task design and suggestions for improvement
  • English teachers examine the design of the novel Mash-up
  • Social teachers examine the Historical Globalization example.
Small group discussion:
  1. In what ways would this task develop deep understanding of either important English Language Arts or Social Studies concepts and/or ways of thinking?
  2. Which competencies (Alberta Education) would be developed through this task?
  3. What suggestions or ideas do you have for strengthening this task?
Identify a design topic or area of interest
Think about a topic youwould like to explore with your classover the next few weeks and that you would like to designin collaboration with colleagues.Consider topics that truly matter to you and you think are worthy of your students’ time and attention. / Strengthen professional relationships
Establish practices for working and learning together
12:00 / Lunch (30 minutes for 3:00 o’clock finish or 60 minutes for 3:30)
12:30 / Form design teams around common interests
Explore topic and generate task possibilities
Chart the topic to generate ideas related to the significance of the topic and key learning outcomes you want to address
  1. Answer the question, “What do you want students to understand deeply and be able to do?”
  2. Identify a learning task or sequence of challenging activities that students will be asked to undertake
  3. Examine task (and sub-tasks) against the Discipline Inquiry Rubric and competencies outlined by Alberta Education. How might you further strengthen the task being presented (remember ALL ideas are improvable and meant to be built upon)?
Think about assessment FOR learning and design an assessment plan to reflect these principles
Consider the following in designing your assessment plan:
  1. What do you want students to understand deeply, and/or be able to do?
  2. Identify key criteria upon which student performance (and/or products) will be evaluated. Consider how you will help students understand what high quality and beginning level work looks like?
  3. Working backwards, list all of the subtasks that would have to be developed to enable ALL students to successfully accomplish the larger task.
  4. What opportunities will be created for students to receive timely and specific feedback so they can improve and refine their work before it is graded?
  5. What opportunities will be created for students to become more reflective and take greater responsibility for their learning i.e. self assessments; feedback and time to improve their work based on that feedback; providing and receiving peer feedback using specific, descriptive criteria to guide them etc.
/ Strengthen professional relationships around common work
Deepen collective understanding of discipline-based inquiry through application of task design and assessment principles
2:15 / Feedback
Take thinking to another group to obtain feedback / Foster a supportive learning community
2:45 / Next steps and Critical Reflections
Next session
  • Prepare to bring forward your discoveries, problems of practice, ahas and oops to examine in the company of colleagues. Include:
  • the task as outlined to students
  • assessment plan
  • 3 pieces of intentionally selected student work to illustrate the story of learning that unfolded in your classroom (bring artifacts in a format that can be shared in small groups of 4-5 colleagues).
Critical Reflections
3:00 / Adjourn

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Prepared by Galileo Educational Network, University of Calgary for

CBE High School Learning Leaders, 2013