Welcome to the future of your education.
I know, that performance task was pretty difficult. It made ISTEP look like an afternoon stroll in a warm spring while eating an ice cream cone. But it is very similar to what we have been doing all year. What's the difference? You don't have fellow students to bounce ideas off of. You don't have me asking questions to help guide you. It's not a small group analysis or a class discussion. It's you and the material and your need to figure things out. Problem solve. Make assumptions. Step outside your comfort zone. Is it hard? You bet! But that's what we've been scaffolding to all year.
One of the goals of the Common Core State Standards is for you to be able to work independently. You need to be able to work through stories, poems, assignments like this one on your own.
This performance task was fiction based. Next quarter (starting later this week) will focus more on nonfiction material. Instead of looking for themes in stories, we'll be analyzing central ideas in articles. Instead of looking at characters for motivation, we'll be looking at arguments for support. We'll still analyze an author's purpose, but we'll look more at what baggage the author brings with him/her to the writing.
Tomorrow you'll have 25 more minutes to complete the performance task. That time is locked in so you can't waste any time if you haven't yet started the essay. Focus, have a plan, and start writing.
After the performance task is complete, we'll do a couple debates (enriched) or presentations (standard). We'll try to stay on schedule so that we can finish by the end of the week at the latest.
See you tomorrow.
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