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Customizing Tasks for Your Classroom

Most ATLAS tasks are shared in editable document formats so you can customize the task to better fit your classroom needs. This resource guides you in aligning tasks to intended learning for specific students to show what they know and are able to do.

Why Customize Tasks?

Customization is not just about adjusting tasks; it's about maximizing high-leverage opportunities for student learning. Principled customization can help you achieve any or all of the following goals:

  • Ensure Equity and Access

    Make tasks accessible, engaging, and equitable for all students, particularly learners that are multilingual and/or historically underserved.

  • Build Relevance and Motivation

    Create relevance, meaning, and motivation for learning by aligning the task's content and practices to your students' local context and interests.

  • Support Instructional Coherence

    Ensure the customized task supports and enhances the coherence of your learning sequence and assessment system, fitting logically within your unit.

Deciding What to Customize

You have identified key assessment opportunities in your unit of instruction and are thinking about them as a system. You found a task in ATLAS that can give valuable information about what students know and can do. You have some ideas about how to ensure it meets the needs of your students. Follow these steps to fully review the task and decide what changes to make:

  • 1
    Act as the Learner

    First, work through the task as a student. This will help you anticipate how students will experience the task and where they might need support. 

  • 2
    Identify the Core

    Identify the driving phenomenon or problem, what students will figure out, and how the three dimensions (SEP, DCI, CCC) work together as the assessment goal.

  • 3
    Review Teacher Guidance

    If available, review the teacher-facing guidance, including any expected student responses and rubrics. This clarifies the task's original intent.

  • 4
    Target Your Customization

    With the core goal in mind, identify the specific customization that will best meet the needs of your students while maintaining the task's 3D integrity.

 

Customization Approaches

There are many ways to approach making principled modifications to a task. Here are three examples of common and effective methods. Click each one to see the step-by-step process.

1. Customizing for More Student Choice

Use this approach to provide more opportunities for student choice to support sensemaking and meet the assessment goal.

View the Steps
  1. Identify 1-3 opportunities where student choice can support sensemaking about the phenomenon or problem. These choices can be embedded in:
    • The data or resources they use (table, graph, video, etc.)
    • The way they respond (drawings, words, audio, kinesthetic)
    • The selection of a task product (model, written explanation, digital recording)
  2. Craft an additional prompt (or prompts) that makes the choices clear to students while still targeting the same learning goals.
  3. Add the prompt(s) to the key places within the task.
  4. Create expected student responses for each choice to anticipate how students might experience the task.
  5. Use the customized task with your students.
  6. Reflect on how it went. What did you learn about how students used the dimensions and what they were able to do?
2. Customizing for Local Context

Use this approach to connect the task to a phenomenon that is more relevant to your students' lives, experiences, and local environment.

View the Steps
  1. Consider the anchor phenomenon and if it assumes background knowledge or experiences that your students may not have.
  2. Consider how a local, student-relevant phenomenon might better motivate student learning.
  3. Replace the anchor phenomenon and adjust task prompts and resources (e.g., data, visuals) accordingly.
  4. Ensure the 3D assessment goals of the original task are still met.
  5. Create an expected student response to anticipate how students might experience and respond to the new context.
  6. Use the customized task with your students.
  7. Reflect on how it went. What did you learn about how students are using the dimensions and what they are able to do?
3. Customizing for Collaborative Sensemaking

Use this approach to provide more opportunities for collaborative sensemaking, which supports all students and gives you more information about how they are using the dimensions.

View the Steps
  1. Identify a key sensemaking moment in the task where discourse would support students in figuring things out or designing solutions.
  2. Craft a prompt that will engage students in discussion and elicit the target dimensions (SEP, DCI, and/or CCC). Example: "How does the solution meet the criteria and constraints? Use evidence to discuss."
  3. Add the prompt to that key sensemaking moment within the task.
  4. Plan for implementation, including how you will prompt students to use discussion supports familiar to them from instruction.
  5. Identify what you will listen for and how you will document how students are using 3D ideas.
  6. Use the customized task with your students.
  7. Reflect on how it went. What did you learn about how students are using the dimensions and figuring things out?

Learn More

Teaching with ATLAS Tasks
What is a Performance Task?
Understanding the CA Next Generation Science Standards