
Many places in Alaska heat their houses or saunas with wood. So she started with a picture of a cord of wood showing it is 4 x 4 x 8. Surrounding it were four more pictures, each showing a load of wood but in a different mode of transport such as a boat, a pickup truck, a 4 wheeler with a trailer and a snow machine with a sled. The idea is you include enough information so students can find out that not all cords are the same.
Then she showed us a picture of a water tank from one of the villages she'd visited. There were enough items such as a truck that students can make educated guesses as to the measurements of the tank so the students can calculate the volume.
The discussion made me realized I did a performance task years ago when the high school created a cross curricular unit.
Step one: I had students read an account of the battle of Dunkirk. I had them note the number of men moved from France back to the UK.
Step two: Determine the number of boats they could use from the village and decide how many people each boat could carry.
Step three: Calculate the total number of people who could be carried by all the boats in one round trip.
Step four: Calculate the time it would take for a round trip, including 20 min to stop, load, and turn around.
Step five: Calculate how many trips would it take to move all the soldiers from the next village over to our village.
Step six: Compare the time it would take for the village to move that many people with the time it took originally.
This performance task used a situation they were familiar with so they could picture the operation mounted back in 1940. It turns a historical event into something students could relate to and understand.
Now I know what to do to turn photos, or historical events into performance tasks.
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