Performance Assessment Blueprints
Quality Performance Assessments are opportunities for learners to practice their values in authentic scenarios and see how others engage with their community. Creating a performance assessment may sound like a daunting task, but with the help of teamwork and guidance from some of our assessment design tools, any teacher can create a performance assessment for use in their classroom.
If you're looking for a good place to start, look no further than these performance assessment blueprints. Our blueprints provide essential questions, learning goals, and a detailed task summary that follow our quality criteria, which you can customize to your own classroom and community context. Once you have modified the task and connected to a strong rubric, complete the QPA Design Cycle with validation and calibration with a team of educators.
Ask Your Mayor
You are riding the bus when your city/town mayor sits down across from you. They ask you if you have any thoughts you would like to share with them. You only have a minute and 30 seconds until the bus arrives at your stop. Choose an issue within your community that you are passionate about and create a one-and-a-half-minute speech explaining its importance to the mayor and lending them a potential solution.
ELA, Any Grade
Are You a Composer?
Music can be a very important part of storytelling, especially when listening to audio books. Your task is to create the first twenty bars of a musical composition to be used at the beginning of a recording of an audio book storybook. This composition should be connected to the overall message of the story, the setting, or the characters. Your reflection at the end will show that you understand the connections between music, math skills, and storytelling.
Math/Music, Grades 3-5
The Life Cycle of Plastics
There have been a plethora of news stories lately that share the negative consequences of plastics on our environment. The library has jumped into the debate and is hosting an event called, The Story of Plastic. They have asked community members to tell a story of the life cycle of a plastic from its origin to its final resting place. Stories will be delivered orally and each storyteller will also create a model to help them tell the story.
Science, Grades 6-12
Social Media and Social Movements
You have your own regular podcast where you talk about social issues with peers your age. During your last episode, there was some debate about whether or not social media is helpful or harmful. In preparation for your next episode, you and your podcast mates have decided that you will discuss this question, “Do the benefits of social media outweigh the potential negative costs?”
Social Studies, Grades 6-12
Public Meeting
There is a controversial decision being voted on in your town (for example: building shelters in neighborhoods as a temporary solution for affordable housing, investing money in a new park, etc.). At the public meeting, you may share your thoughts before the public officials vote. Working with two classmates, prepare three one- to two-minute statements explaining your views that will also address contradictory perspectives in your community.
Social Studies; ELA, Grades 6-12