A 5th grade mathematics performance assessment task in Delaware's Interim Assessment Program presents the situation of students planning a county all-star basketball game. Students respond to a series of fourteen questions that are organized into four exercises.
Students usually reason out their solutions as part of their answers.
Usually students can answer these questions in just a few minutes, and in that way they differ from some of the performance activities described below. Although performances can involve demonstrations or presentations, most typically they involve students explaining how they would answer the question or solve a problem by writing a few sentences or paragraphs, drawing and explaining a diagram, or performing an experiment. Such tasks may take from 15 minutes to an hour or more and may involve some work with a group of students who think through the answers and later provide their own individually written answers. Students generate problems, consider options, propose solutions, and demonstrate their solutions. Students often work in groups, at least for some of the project, to analyze options and to consider ways to present their thinking and conclusions.