Students and others need to understand your performance expectations and what they need to do to demonstrate mastery. Teachers often find that the easiest way to communicate this is to share their rubrics and anchors (sample products of what each performance standard represents) with students. Often, teachers introduce assignments with an explanation of learning expectations and how their tests, performances, or products will be evaluated. A sample form may look like this:

For example…

1. The standard we are addressing is your ability to organize, analyze, and communicate data.

2. Your task is to construct a graph and write a letter to the School Board to convey what your graph shows. You will get the data for your graph by visiting the National Weather Service website to see how many inches of snowfall in our area during school days in January and February. You will import the data and construct a bar graph representing inches of snow on each school day during those months. From the graph, you will construct an argument to answer the question of whether extra snow days should be allotted to the school.

3. An excellent performance will include a graph that is accurate and easy to read and a letter that is complete, accurate, understandable, persuasive, grammatically correct, and written in appropriate letter style.

4. You have four hours to complete this task.

Questions to Consider

• Have you clearly communicated to your students what they need to do in order to meet each performance standard?
• Have you clearly articulated the performance factors or variables on which student work will be evaluated?
• How can you communicate performance standards and criteria to parents?

To Step 3: Adopt, Adapt, or Develop Assessments That Are Aligned with and Reflect the Performance Descriptions and Expectations