What Are Task Cards?
They are pretty much what they are called. They are cards that have tasks for students to complete. The tasks could vary greatly, ranging from identifying a definition, to drawing a graph, to creating a weather instrument. Students can record their answers or complete the tasks in their notebooks, on a pre-created answer sheet, on whiteboards, and more. The possibilities with task cards are truly endless, and I personally have an obsession with them!
How Can Task Cards Be Used in Your Classroom?
Around the Room/ Scavenger Hunt
This is the option that I choose to do most of the time and that I feel is one of the easiest ways! You can take the task cards and place them all around the room. It could be on desks, taped to the wall, on the counter, wherever! Your students can start at any point in the room, if you have a pre-made answer sheet, and go around the room until all of the task cards are complete. You can have students work as individuals or in partners. This is a great opportunity for you to walk around the room and help those students in need, or stick around where the more challenging questions are placed. My students LOVE to get out of their seats to do their work. They almost forget they are learning. To make it even more engaging, you can hide a few cards that they will have to search for. Make learning fun!
Centers/Stations
This is a fairly simple way to use task cards and is great when you are looking for activities to place in your centers, whether it be a science center or a math center. It’s very easy to set up, and students love to sort through cards. You could choose to place task cards at one center/station, depending on what else you have, or you could have stations all around the room with 4-5 task cards at each station, and students can rotate around the room until all centers/stations are complete.
Differentiation
There are multiple things that you can do to use task cards to differentiate. One thing you could do would be to sort your task cards by difficulty level and have the students work in levels. Once they finish the first set of task cards, they can move on to the next level. You could also use them as formative assessment, or as a pre-test, to determine your students' individual needs. From there, you can differentiate your lessons.
Early Finishers
This is a super-easy way, and a super useful way, to use task cards. If you have an “early finishers” section in your room, you can set task cards up for students to complete when they finish their work. They are great for extension and extra credit! I like to laminate mine and place them on a binder ring.
Test Prep
I personally have created my math task cards to cover every single standard for my state. We use the Common Core Standards. For science, we have the NC Essential Standards. If I align my task cards directly to the standards, I know that I am not missing a single thing that my students need to learn in order to be successful by state standards. Using task cards for test prep is awesome! I know that, in the past, I have been in a panic about what I needed to do to review all of the standards that I covered for A WHOLE YEAR before the test. Task cards are a great way to do this.
Spiral Review
Don’t like to wait until the end of the year to begin reviewing? Me neither! Task cards can be used for a spiral review. You can have students complete task cards throughout the year, covering different standards, so that the content stays fresh on their mind. They will not even realize if you use the same card twice!
Partner Games
Make a game out of it! You can set students up into partners, have students complete a task card individually, and then have them compare their answers. If their answers are different, they are able to discuss it. This is great for many reasons. First, it is self-checking. If students do not get the same answer, they are forced to go back and figure out what they did wrong. Second, research shows that when you teach someone, the material sticks better. It’s a win-win situation. Who doesn’t love a game? Set a timer, play some music. Make it fun!
