Social Studies Rich Tasks

Whether you are new to the classroom and still establishing your teacher voice, or a veteran who has already seen thousands of students pass through your door, our resources are designed for easy implementation to provide you AND your students with tangible results. Please enjoy our gift of FREE, grade-specific social studies tasks.

Complimentary social studies tasks

This collection of rich tasks is designed for cognitive engagement at each grade level. Each student should participate in the tasks as an active thinker, making sense and applying ideas rather than recalling or restating accepted ideas presented in class by the teacher, the text or the source. Based upon the Powerful Task Rubric for Designing Student Work ©, this task design relies primarily on

• Cognitive demand: Critical and creative reasoning comparing land use and population density.
• Engaging Qualities: Personal Response, Learning with Others, Authenticity in the student reasoning.

Analysis of the TASK Design:

• The Powerful Task Rubric for Designing Student Work© is used for both design and inspection of the learning task.
• The cognitive demand of the partner task should remain at a level 3 Application/Analysis if the students are required to connect their answers to land use and population.
• The visible academic strategy is Summarizing and Notemaking: Making unique decisions about content.
• The engaging qualities are identified in the task rubric.
• The underlying task question has been opened to focus on reasoning rather than just the obvious answer.