The Scope and Size of Tasks
Anubis Weighing a Heart- The Book of the Dead
Curriculum Weighting
Consider the range of knowledge, skills and understandings outlined in the Unit Specific Goals, Content Descriptions and Achievement Standards.
Determine the concepts and skills most significant to the course and elaborate on those in your program of learning.
The more significant and pervasive concepts in the unit should be given the most weight in teaching, learning and assessment.
Estimating how long does it take students to complete assigned readings and formative tasks
Think carefully about how much a student can read and long it will take students to learn particular concepts and skills in planning curriculum implementation.
The ACT Senior Secondary curriculum is looking for depth over breadth of knowledge understanding and skills.
Spending more time on knowing some things deeply and developing the skills and conceptual understanding to learn the rest is preferred.
Japanese writer, Yoshimoto Banana
Research on Assignment Completion Times and Lengths
The best research on this topic is available below:
https://cte.rice.edu/resources/course-workload-estimator
While the research considers first year university students at a prestigious university in the USA, with thought, it can be used as a reflection exercise for considering how much time it takes students to complete assignment work.
Activity 3.1
Apply the Rice University calculator to an assignment you have set before.
Write about whether you think the calculator is reasonable and if you would set the the same assignment after having considered its asserted time calculations. (At least one paragraph)
Considering Task Weightings
As a general principle, the more cognitive effort, time and effort a tasks takes, the more it should be weighted.
A similar principle is that the more parts of the curriculum covered in a task, the more it might be weighted.
Weight more discriminating and reliable tasks more heavily.
Heavily weighted tasks need strong risk management procedures to ensure academic integrity.
Some schools assemble many small tasks each with a small weighting into single portfolio task with a larger weighting. This has risks and benefits. A risk with many small tasks assembled into a portfolio or summative score, is that the small tasks will not sufficiently differentiate students. Another pitfall is that they might not be of consistent and comparable standard and distort the picture of student capacity. Designing a portfolio of tasks of sufficient challenge and consistent standard in a laborious task, therefore fewer parts are generally better than many parts. To support students and prevent them doing it all at once at the end, it also requires regular grades based feedback to ensure students understand their progress. Another concern with this model is that formative assessment becomes conflated with summative assessment thereby placing too much pressure on students who will not get a chance to learn through trial and error in a low stakes environment. Consider the effectiveness of using assessment as a classroom management strategy.
Estimating Time and Word Length
The best practice in determining how many words or how much time is needed to write an answer is to have a colleague develop part or all of an answer, in prose or dot points
In terms of time, a student will take longer than a teacher. Apply an appropriate multiplier, in terms of A/T/M, complexity etc, to the time it took your colleague.
This will also enable you to see if the question can be answered in the number of words you have set, or if there are problems with the question.
This might also serve as a model answer to support student learning when returning work.
Salvador Dali Detail The Persistence of Memory, 1931, MOMA
Elements to Consider in Setting time limits
There is an interaction between expectations of quality and time limits. Expectations should be made clear in the rubric.
Written Work
Do you want them to draft and redraft? They will need more time for redrafting. Reflect this expectation of accuracy in the rubric.
Will they be typing or writing? Typing take less time and it is easier to edit, so quality expectations will be higher than if they are writing. Reflect this expectation in the rubric.
How complex is the question? If there are several parts to the question, that will require considerable planning time to coordinate a logical response. It will also take more words to answer with appropriate depth
Is the material familiar and the question predictable? They will need less time if the question is expected and the material familiar.
Putting the parts together
Pig parts, media commons
Considerations- Literary Essay
When deciding on the word or time length of a task consider how many words or how much time it takes to make a point in English. You may disagree with the word counts, but consider the parts of a logical point in an English essay and how many words it takes to complete the parts.
Consider the following elements for an 'A' answer in one paragraph. The following estimates of words counts on the elements are suggested for consideration.
Topic sentence (20 words)
Quotation (10 words)
Explanation of quotation (50 words)
Link to the argument (40 words)
Outlining counter argument/ Reference to supporting critical literature ( 50 words)
Resolving the counter points raised by counterargument/critical literature with the thesis of essay/ Explaining alignment with thesis of essay (100 words)
summative conclusion (20 words)
So if one shorter paragraph is 300 words, then the standard five paragraph essay is 900 words plus introduction and conclusion to make three points in an argument.
If more than one text is to be compared and contrasted the structure of the argument will become more complex and require 100-150 more words per paragraph.
topic sentence making an explicit comparison or contrast.
quotation from first text and explanation (60 words)
coordinating clause, or sentence, indicating comparison or contrast (10 words)
quotation from second text and explanation (60 words)
Link to the argument (60 words)
Outlining counter argument/ Reference to supporting critical literature ( 50 words)
Resolving the counter points raised by counterargument/critical literature with the thesis of essay/ Explaining alignment with thesis of essay (100 words)
summative conclusion (20 words)
David. Michangelo, Acadamia, Firenze
Image- Ready for your close-up?, Pixabay.comConsiderations - Creative Tasks
When writing a prose story there are standard elements that might be expected. Consider how many words it might take to do the following:
Establish setting
Establish mood
Establish character
Establish conflict
Develop a crisis and resolution
With an anthology of poetry, consider the poetic form chosen.
More words would be required for a ballad due to its expansive narrative conventions
Forms with set lengths, but greater intensity would require an anthology, e.g. sonnet, haiku, tanka
A clear rubric will aid students in deciding if the poems written meet the requirements of the task
For the rationale, students need a sufficient word length to be able to test their creative work against the assigned criteria or expectations. For example, if they are comparing their work to a stimulus text, they need word length similar to an essay to propose, quote, explain, and link back to the overall thesis. In short, a rationale requires a complex argument and is unlikely to be well made in fewer words than is required in a literary essay.