Just as MITA helps faculty engage students’ brains actively, MITA assessment tasks ensure that students tap their diverse backgrounds to understand and apply complex facts. MITA provides assessment tasks that engage diverse students in their own learning in meaningful ways.

After posing a good question, setting objectives and identifying specific criteria expected through rubrics, students choose an assessment task to explore lesson topics.

Phase four of MITA provides assessment tasks that: a). match related learning approaches; b). cover content; c). enable students to develop their interests and abilities; d).involve authentic events; e). solve real world problems; f) create meaningful challenges to students; and, f). motivate students to explore and probe related knowledge. MITA assessments ensure multiple approaches to any destination by creating choices along converging highways. These tasks might include mock TV interviews, created software programs, experiments, designing learning centers, performing original lyrics, creating a business proposal, presenting ideas to parent groups, or photographing natural patterns and comparisons. The main goal for students is to express their ideas and understandings through various ways of knowing any topic.

Students and faculty, through multiple assessment possibilities, become learning partners. The book, Student Assessment that Works: A Practical Approach, (Allyn & Bacon, 1999) lists many specific examples of student tasks that will springboard your own ideas and act as segues into your own possibilities. For instance, you may wish to consult page 91 for ideas about assignments for a unit portfolio, page 152 for a chart that helps students identify what they already know about your topic, or page 119 for ideas to create learning contracts. .

When specific standards for all work is decided ahead, students can select diverse approaches to explore lesson topics. They can better achieve your established benchmarks. Assessment tasks as simple the vehicles to transport students from the known to the unknown and then on to journeys of discovery. If we choose the theme, "Inuit in the Canadian Arctic," and the unit question, "How do Arctic peoples and homelands resemble ours?" assessment tasks might include the following:

LINGUISTIC DEMONSTRATION –

Create a story
Write a research paper
Interview an expert
Interpret a chapter of text
Write a poem
Design a book of comparisons
Lecture peers
Read chorally

LOGICAL-MATHEMATICAL DEMONSTRATION -

Graph climate and temperature changes
Design a web site using scientific principles, laws and theorem
Interview a scientist
Outline a chapter of text
Create a business proposal for an Arctic enterprise
Create schedules
Create hidden messages
Use values to find solutions

SPATIAL DEMONSTRATION -

Create a mockup
Design a building to survive permafrost
Paint
Draw
Build 3-D objects
Create posters to illustrate two sides of an issue
Display bulletin boards
Create a software program

BODILY-KINESTHETIC DEMONSTRATION -

Choreograph a dance
Create a tableau
Build MITA learning centers
Travel to museums
Design outdoor learning site
Produce a play
Use body language
Recreate Arctic games and sports

MUSICAL DEMONSTRATION -

Create a melody
Integrate music and learning
Demonstrate musical vibrations
Interpret Arctic life through music
Write a song
Create an Arctic music video
Prepare musical backgrounds
Perform solos, duets or trios

INTERPERSONAL DEMONSTRATION -

Create a shared story
Interview peers
Team teach a concept
Collaborate with a teacher
Describe Arctic characters
Illustrate ethical choices of leaders
Create an Arctic marketing scheme
Proofread a peer’s essay

INTRAPERSONAL DEMONSTRATION -

Create a journal from perspective of an Inuit your age
Write personal reflections on an Arctic issue
Illustrate your personal ethics on a controversial topic
Write personal stories
Design personal portfolio of Arctic projects
Illustrate personal goal-setting strategies
Create an Inuit scrapbook
Publish a personal book

NATURALISTIC DEMONSTRATION -

Compare and contrast Arctic environment to your own
Demonstrate research about natural Arctic problems
Complete experiments from nature
Communicate with Arctic environmental specialists over internet
Illustrate Arctic natural phenomena
Sort and categorize information from geographic sites
Write a naturalistic response to a common climactic problem
Compare Arctic hunting patterns today with the past

Similar tasks can be adapted to your lesson topics to ensure that students draw from multiple domains to express knowledge. You will note that learning and assessment tasks are at times similar, or even the same in some cases.

Your students will also come up with excellent ideas for tasks, which could become the segue to excellent discussion about their work, their cultures and their background experiences. The 1999 text, Student Assessment that Works: A Practical Approach, Allyn & Bacon, provides many examples of learning contracts which guide student choices for relevant assessment tasks built to encourage and enhance diversity.