Linky Party at Minds in Bloom - Task Cards

Minds in Bloom is having a linky party about task cards!  Since I am new to the junior grades, I'm also new to task cards because my littlest learners couldn't manage the reading.  So...I thought that I would post an idea that came to mind while I was reading about the task cards created by Rachel Lynette.  Check out her site, she has a free set of task cards to download  for free if you are new to them like me!


Storage is always tough and many times students move a task card and it becomes lost and you have no idea which task card it is until you are packing it all up at the end of the day and you can't find it anywhere on the floor.  So, I thought of these ideas for organizing and using the task cards.

*Put Velcro on the back of all of your task cards and have the students velcro them onto a poster board with the corresponding numbers at the end of the activity.

* Put a little hole in the upper left or right hand side of all task cards and call out the task card number to collect them and store them on a three ring clip.  Then you could hang them on a bulletin board behind your desk using a push pin and students who need to finish one up can easily find the one they need.

* Buy a small photo album and label it Current Task Cards that you can use to display the task cards you are using in that week.  I guess you may need more than one if you use task cards daily, but this gives your students the option of flipping through the task cards for one that they didn't complete and shows off your beautiful cards without further damage.  When you are done using them, simply take them out and store them somewhere and put the next set in.

* Someone may already be using this concept, but for accountability, you could draw a task card number from the completed set out of a bag (when you are sure everyone has had adequate time to complete the cards). You could also pull out just one piece of assessment criteria out of the bag as well (content, organization, complete answer, correct answer, etc.) so that students would need to follow your criteria all the time because they never know which one will be pulled for marking.  This would be sort of like rubric category expectations.  For this idea, you would need to have a list of criteria that you generated with the class for task card work.

For example -  Today you will be handing in task card #13 and I will be checking it for Organization (I organized my answer in a way that is easy for the reader to understand and follow).

Let me know if you like any of the ideas!  Again, I haven't used the task cards, but these are just ideas that came to mind!

Jenn