SBAC Practice Activities: The Park

This assignment is modeled after the first part of an 8th grade performance task released by SBAC called "The Park".  It is intended for students in grades 9-11.  We chose to focus on lower level content to give as many students as possible access to the problem while focusing on using technology to show work and explain thinking.  Our modified Park task asks students to make use of a grant to design a park given certain restrictions.  Students are finding the lowest bid to place benches, lamp posts, and bathrooms in the park.  A copy of the assignment can be viewed here, and screenshots of the assignment will be shown below.

Diagram 1:  Students receive the page below via Google Drive.  All of the information that they need to solve the problem can be found at the various links (shown in yellow, green, blue, and purple), and students will give all final answers/work on this page.  As with SBAC performance tasks, we spend some time together making sure that students understand the relevant vocabulary.  We also walked students through the task and fielded any questions that came up before the work period began.

Diagram 2:  When students open the "Introduction and Park Specifications" page from the yellow box, they see the park below, along with a description of the grant requirements.  The requirements are to place benches all along the three paths in the middle of the park, beginning by placing three benches where the paths meet.  Next to each bench we place a lamppost, and then also we add two buildings that contain restrooms.

Diagram 3:  Students will open the "Work Bids" page from the green box, and view the three bids below.  

Diagram 4:  Students will open the "Interactive Diagram" page.  We give students the choice to either use the interactive diagram to add benches/lampposts, or to draw on a piece of paper.  The important part is that student work will only be scored from the original Google Doc.  This is like the SBAC test in that paper is a tool for answering questions, but all final answers will be inputted on the computer.

The last link on the Google Doc opens up the SBAC calculator.  This is the calculator that students will be using on the SBAC test, so we want to make sure students get a chance to practice using the calculator before the actual exam.

While students work on the problem, the teacher is circulating to coach students on best practices for answering the questions.  We emphasize three key areas, and encourage students to think about each area as earning them 1 point towards a final score.  These key areas are:

• 1 point for showing your work
• 1 point for explaining your thinking 
• 1 point for giving your final answer with units