Do your students understand the task (word)?

When students respond to questions, some tend to regurgitate all the information that they know about the content specified. Sometimes, this information does not answer the question, and when we give student’s feedback we say something like “you needed to evaluate the information, not just list it”. The student will nod, say they understand, and when the same question comes up in a future test or exam, they make the same error again. And again. And again.

The thing is, as teachers, we know what we mean when we give feedback that students needed to evaluate, compare, or justify, just like the question asked. We know that when we ask students to evaluate, what we really mean is that they need to make a value judgement based on the strengths and weaknesses presented. When students are asked to compare, they need to identify similarities and differences. Yet, when presented with a jam-packed year, with exam deadlines looming, we can overlook the time needed to explicitly teach the skills required to address these task words.

Teaching students how to respond to task words, such as list, discuss, explain & hypothesise, must be a part of our curriculum. These task words should be taught alongside the complex discipline specific knowledge and skills that a subject requires. It makes our students better thinkers and it makes their responses more accurate.

Strategy One: Bookmark it.

For each class, I create a custom bookmark with the most used task words for that subject area. To do this, I usually will go through the previous five years worth of end-of-year examinations and note down the task words that were used each year so that I can ensure my students are well prepared for ALL types of questions. A free resource and sample of this bookmark can be found here.

The bookmarks are given to students at the start of the year and they are used literally as bookmarks - but they also function as a learning tool. The bookmarks specify the definition of the task word so that student know exactly what they need to demonstrate when presented with this style of question.

Then, when students are given questions, they are instructed to highlight the task word and then refer to the bookmark before attempting their response. The strength of using this resource is that they are regularly exposed to the meaning of different styles of questions. I still take the time to teach these key skills to students - for example, we may spend a week in class answering only compare style questions, before moving on to a week of justify only questions.

I also colour coordinate the task words are also classified in terms of the complexity required for my subject area (Commerce). If you use this resource, you may need to adjust the colour coding system and mark allocation to suit your subject. For Commerce, one to two marks are awarded to questions in yellow, with task words as classify, define, state, identify and list. Two to four marks are awarded to task words in purple such as describe, comment, summarise and explain. Up to six marks are for green task words, such as compare, apply and outline. The harder questions are in blue (six marks and above) and are task words such as analyse, evaluate and justify. These style of questions on Year 12 exams typically require extended responses that need planning.

You can also use the book mark to differentiate within your class. For example, you may ask students to respond to one question from each colour grouping on the bookmark for a particular task. Or you can ask particular students to focus on one colour area only (this could be an area they are having difficulty with or an area you wish to extend their skills).

Strategy Two: Food for Thought

In my experience teaching secondary school students, the one thing that always gets their attention is FOOD. This, is why when teaching the differences in various task words, food can be your best asset. To prepare for this learning activity you will need to get some M&Ms and Skittles before class, or any other style of lolly that has similarities and differences.

Before you distribute any lollies (or allow students to sight them!) share with students that they are going to be learning about different task words and what they mean. Start with the word “List” and ask students to create a “list” of all colourful confectionery. Hopefully, M&Ms and Skittles will come up in one of these lists.

From here, distribute the lollies, ensuring that each student gets a few M&Ms and a few Skittles. Then, ask the class to:

“List” features of each lolly category.
“Describe” the items they have been given.
”Define” the term “M&M” and “Skittle”.
”Compare” “M&Ms” with “Skittles”.
”Evaluate” the “M&Ms” … and so on.

You can record the students responses to start class discussions about the characteristics that feature in each of the students responses. You can also ask them to write a response justifying which task word was most effective in helping them formulate a response.

Strategy Three: Snowball Effect

I use this activity in class when I have taught a new topic or concept. After learning new content, I ask students to formulate their own exam style questions about the topic. They can use their bookmarks as sentence stems or the teacher can write your own sentence stems on the whiteboard for students to use. For example: “Clarify ________”, “Comment on___________”.

Students are then given five minutes to create five exam style questions about the content that has just been taught. They record their questions on a blank piece of paper or post it note. Once the five minutes has passed, students are asked to create snowballs with their questions by scrunching the paper up to form a ball. Students are to all throw the snowballs into the centre of the class. Once each student has thrown their ‘snowball’ into the centre, ask all students to go and collect a snow ball at random. It does not matter if they receive their own ball back. Students then have to spend time researching and responding to the questions that were found on the snowball.

The can also keep a copy of the best questions and use them in practice exams in the future. Thanks, kids!