Finding and Selecting Tasks in ATLAS

1. Starting Your Search from the Homepage

You can begin your performance task search from the homepage. The more detail you can enter into your search prompt, the more likely you are to find the best task for you in just one step. You can include things like specific task content, outcomes, activities, durations, or teaching strategies that you are looking for in a task. You can also filter for your grade band and specific NGSS standards from the drop-down menus in the search window before initiating your search, but remember that filtering will prevent you from seeing tasks that don't match exactly. You will also be able to apply and remove filters on the search results page.

Tip: Be Specific!

A more detailed search prompt will yield more results, and be more likely to list the best task for you at the top of your search results.

• Instead of: "Ecosystem task for fifth grade."
• Try: "Accessible fifth grade ecosystem task about decomposition, where students design an investigation or experiment."

2. Refining Your Search Results

From the search results page, you can refine your search criteria using the search bar at the top of the screen. This search window will be pre-filled with the original prompt you searched for. If you don't think the tasks being shown are right for you, you can edit your search query and try again.

If your search has returned a lot of task cards, you can use the filters on the left of the screen to further narrow down the tasks being displayed. For example, if you didn't include duration guidance in your search, you may now want to limit your results to only show 30-60 minute tasks.

3. Choosing a Task to Review

The task cards on the search results page provide some key information to help you select which tasks to review in more detail. 

• The yellow tag at the top of the card displays the main activity students will do during the task. Most tasks have multiple activities, this snapshot shows the one that students will spend the most time doing or is most important to the task objectives. You can see additional activities when you click through to the full task detail page.
• Below the image are the title and a brief summary of the task.
• At the bottom of the card are task highlights that share some specific features present in this task. Up to four highlights will be displayed here, but some tasks have even more that can be seen in the full detail page. 

When you are ready to review task options in even more detail, click on a task to see the full Task Detail Page.