Using Culminating Activities to Assess Learning

Toni Enloe
Feb 21, 2011

How can culminating activities be used to assess student learning?

You’ve planned assessment prompts for each lesson and some common assessments to be used throughout the unit.  It’s now time to design one more common assessment, the one that will let you know if the students “learned it”- the evidence that they “got it?”  Culminating activities are designed to collect this information while providing students with an active way to demonstrate what they know through an authentic performance or product.  The culminating activity pushes students to the third level of learning, meaningful use and mastery allowing them to go deeper by extending and refining their thinking.

Why should teachers use them for assessing student learning?

Stenmark identified 10 reasons why student products make good assessment tools.

  • They provide students with an opportunity for originality.
  • They allow students to demonstrate knowledge effectively.
  • They can reflect growth in a way that pencil and paper does not allow.
  • They can motivate the unmotivated.
  • They can make learning more memorable for students.
  • When authentic, they can demonstrate to the community in a concrete way what students are achieving.
  • They encourage the integration of reading, writing and speaking skills with other subject areas allowing students to make connections.
  • They can provide students with the opportunity to work that is both thoughtful and purposeful.
  • They encourage students to work collaboratively,
  • They can encourage creativity.

What are the characteristics of an effective culminating activity?

An effective culminating activity:

  • Connects student learning directly to the state standards
  • Is developed from the K-U-D
  • Reflects the Key Learning
  • Calls for an application of knowledge and skills (Learning Level 3)
  • Requires students to answer the unit essential question
  • Is developed before the instruction as one of the common assessments (Decision 2)
  • Is written in a language that is understandable to students
  • Engages and motivates students
  • Encourages the use of key vocabulary in the appropriate context
  • Utilizes scoring methods that provide comprehensive feedback for students about their strengths and weaknesses
  • Utilizes scoring criteria that are clear, concise, and shared with students prior to starting the activity.

How do we design effective culminating activities?

When designing the culminating activity we want to make sure that activity provides strong links among curriculum, instruction and assessment.  This is not the guest speaker or field trip at the end of the unit but an activity that requires students to demonstrate their understanding of the targeted concepts.

When designing a culminating activity it is always wise to return to the K-U-D.  Look at the “Understand”.  Ask yourself, “What product, project, or performance might be used to have students demonstrate this ‘Understand’?”  Remember that the Culminating Activity should reflect all of the components of the K-U-D. 

With that in mind, look at the Extending Thinking skills. Which of these strategies could you have the students use?  It may not be just one skill but a combination.  The culminating activity will have students apply their knowledge and skills to answer the unit essential question.

Steps in designing a culminating activity

  1.  Decide what needs to be assessed.  That should be easy.  Look at the “Understand” on the K-U-D and determine the desired level of factual and conceptual understanding.

  2. Identify the thinking skills that you wish to assess.

  3. Ask yourself, “Will this be an authentic assessment of student learning?” When students have a “real” audience for their work they can become highly motivated to participate.

  4. Will the work be done during class?

  5. Write a detailed student friendly description of the task.

  6. Brainstorm the criteria that will be used to evaluate the task and focus on the targeted skills and concepts.  Remember to use the K-U-D as a guide.

  7. Develop a rubric based on your brainstorming that assesses the quality of the work and not the quantity and gives students constructive feedback.

  8. What resources will be needed for the task and does every child have equal access?

  9. Write step-by-step directions for the task.

  10. How can this task be differentiated?

NOTE: Make sure that the task is worth the time.  Ask yourself, “Is it something that could more easily and effectively be measured with a pencil and paper test?”

Culminating or not?  You be the judge.

  1. Create a scale model of an important object or artifact from the text.

  2. Draw a map of where the events in the text take place.

  3. Create a mini-comic book or children’s book for third graders simplifying information learned in the unit.

Answers:

  1. Probably not unless students are working on a ratio and proportions unit. 

  2. What will students do with the map?

  3. This would be an authentic assessment that would require student to synthesize information from the unit.

Many projects that are called culminating activities are really just activities and while they may be “fun,” have no real value.

Remember:  “The most crucial skills a school can impart to students are the abilities to apply and analyze new information with respect to a given situation, not simply the ability to memorize a fixed body of facts.” – Doug Reeves

Find additional ideas for culminating activities in Learning-Focused: Differentiated  Assignments K-5 or 6-12.