Task cards are a genre of instructional materials that require students to complete and turn in work that is frequently differentiated for rigor and level.
Task cards can be individual, with each student generating her own answers, or collaborative, with students working together to solve the problem.
They can be used for any content area, at any level, and in any subject area.
How To Set Up A Project Using Task Cards
What Are project task cards?
What are project task cards? They’re a great tool for helping to create a shared vision of the project, manage expectations, and clarify what each team member’s role is in the project. And there’s a good chance you already have them.
Tasks cards are used by a wide variety of people, including students, teachers, managers and leaders. They’re particularly effective when used in conjunction with sticky notes.
Task cards are specialized cards with spaces to describe a particular task or deliverable. They are often used in agile and scrum methodologies to help people better visualize their projects and break down big tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces.
Task cards can be small index cards or larger 3×5-inch index cards. The size of the card may depend on what you plan to do with them and how many tasks you need to list at once.
You can buy pre-printed task cards or make your own from scratch. Making your own task cards will ensure that they contain exactly the information you want to convey. The downside is that it takes time to put them together, but that cost is offset by the ability to use them again and again.
What Are Task Cards?
Task cards are often supplied in print-and-go formats that require students to cut out individual cards or sheets of task cards from an included packet.
The term “task card” refers to an assortment of instructional materials (not just one type) that require students to complete and turn in work that is differentiated by difficulty and rigor.
Frequently, there is also a recording sheet included so students can record their answers.
Students then use the recording sheet as they work through the problems on their own or with a partner. They turn in the completed recording sheet and all of the task cards as a single assignment.
Many teachers like task cards because they help students take more ownership of their learning by providing them with something concrete to complete and turn in. Task cards also make grading easier for teachers because they supply multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate mastery of a particular skill or topic throughout an entire unit.
What Fields Does A Task Card Contain?
A task card contains several fields that vary depending on the type of task. The fields include:
Title. The title field is a short description of the task.
The Purpose field is a short description of the task’s use or reason.
Priority. The priority field indicates the order in which tasks should be done, with 1 being the highest priority and 4 being the lowest priority.
Status. The status field indicates where a task currently stands. It can represent information such as “in progress” or “completed”.
Actual Start Date. This is the date on which you began working on a task. Actual End Date. This is the date on which you completed a task.
Assigned To. This is your name or an email address from which you accept assignments. The person who created the task must assign it to herself before she can assign it to anyone else.
Assignment Date. This is the date on which you received an assignment. Start Time. This is the time at which you began working on a task. Description. This section includes any additional details that you want to add about your task but that aren’t part of any specific field.
Audience. You can use this section to identify who needs to see or approve.
Task Cards Project Details
What are task cards?
Task cards are a versatile, engaging way to teach and reinforce skills in a wide variety of subjects. These sets of cards can be used in many ways for many different subjects including math, literacy, and science. Unlike flashcards which are only useable for one-dimensional learning, these task card sets combine multiple skills for students to learn from.
Multiple skill learning is essential for long-term retention. Task cards can be used both in the classroom or at home, giving students the choice and independence in their own learning. The versatility of the task cards make them an excellent tool to use as a center activity, small group activity, or as a whole class activity.
They provide teachers with the tools needed to differentiate instruction and address the multiple needs of all learners.
How are Task Cards made?
Task cards are assembled using various tools including: Graphic Design Software (like Publisher), Computer Applications (like
Four Corners For Multiple Choice Task Cards
This is a technique to help students engage in tasks and think critically about the task at hand. I saw this method used by an experienced resource teacher and was inspired to try it myself.
Types of questions:
4 Corners – light bulb, plus or minus, yes or no
1 Circle – true or false
2 Circles – open-ended question
This all depends on what your objective is for the task. This works best when you have a large number of students (50+). For example, in a math class I was teaching, I had my students create their own class T-shirts. We were going to use the T-shirt as our math warm-up every day. Here’s how we did it:
I created 5 tasks on the board with each having 4 corners, 1 circle and 2 circles. The first question was “What color should the T-shirt be?” The next was “What do you want written on the shirt?” The third was “What size should it be?”
The fourth was “What slogan would you like on the back?” The fifth one was “Should we use glitter?” Students stood in front of their group and were given 1 minute to brainstorm ideas for their t-shirt.
Task Cards Add Tasks To Your Projects
Task cards are a great way to add tasks to your projects. They are often used in classrooms, but they can be equally useful in the workplace. They can be used at any point in a project, but they’re especially good at the beginning of a project, when you’re getting started.
Task cards are typically printed on index cards or on post-it notes, and they can be placed on a wall or individual desk, or put into an accordion file folder.
How do you use task cards?
The first step is to create them. This can be done individually or as a group activity. If it’s the latter, everyone should write their tasks on separate cards and then everyone should work together to group similar tasks together (for example, “write report” and “find statistics”).
Once you’ve grouped similar tasks together, you’ll want to assign a due date for each group. It’s helpful to give each group its own day of the week or month so that all of the groups have due dates (this is especially helpful for recurring tasks).
The last thing that you’ll need to do is decide who is responsible for each task. This might seem unnecessary at first, but it’s important because it helps people stay accountable for their tasks.
Task Cards Assign Tasks To Sprints
A common problem in Agile teams is that team members are not engaged and motivated. In some cases, there is a lack of clear goals and expectations. And when tasks become repetitive, there is a risk of boredom affecting the quality of the work being done.
Task cards provide a solution to these issues. Task cards are used to assign tasks to the next available sprint (or iteration) on the product backlog. When the work is complete, it can be marked as complete or accepted by the customer/stakeholder.
Task cards have 5 sections:
1 – Title: The task title should be short and descriptive, for example “Implement report generator” or “Design reports”. This could be left blank if a card were capturing more than one small task related to a larger story or epic.
2 – Issue number: The issue number should reference an issue ID in JIRA. As with the title, this field can be left blank if you’re capturing more than one related task in a single card but want to link them together via an issue ID later on.
A common practice is to name cards after epics and use the first digit of the epic’s issue ID as a prefix for the card number, e.g. “Report generator”.
Task Cards Move Tasks Across The Board
I’ve been working on a project that involves moving tasks across the board, which has got me thinking about task cards. Task cards are great for getting people to embrace the concept of “getting things done,” but they’re not always easy to implement effectively.
There’s no one right way to use task cards — in fact, I would argue that there are as many ways to use them as there are teachers who use them. However, I’d like to share some of the ways I have used them in my own classroom over the years.
Task Cards and Visual Interaction
In my first year of teaching, I had a class of students who were very quiet and rarely volunteered answers without being called on first. One day, I wanted them to talk much more during class discussions.
For this purpose, I created a set of task cards that asked questions about the previous day’s lesson topics — things like: “What is the name of your favorite dinosaur?” “Why do you think scientists think it died out?”
“Why did the author choose to include…?” By asking these types of questions at an appropriate time, students were able to participate in discussions without being singled out. Because they were only required to answer a question when they felt like it.
Task Cards See Tasks Assigned To Specific Sprints
I’ve been testing out different ways to organize task, and have found that the best way is to place them into one of five categories: New – Unassigned. These cards are still sitting in my “Inbox”. For example, a new sales opportunity may be sitting in my sales queue that I haven’t yet assigned anyone to.
Task – Assigned. The card is assigned to someone, but not yet completed. It’s important that I also track assignment status (e.g. “In progress”) here as well so I know how much work has been completed on a particular item.
Task – Completed. This is the default status for a task card when it’s finished.
This status helps me visually track how much work we’ve completed each sprint or day by just glancing at the board. A task can only be marked as “Completed” once it has been reviewed and approved by a manager or a product owner, which means it’s no longer in scope of further development.
Projected – Completed. This status helps me track items that are not yet completed, but are projected to be completed in the near future; sometimes this means next sprint, but other times this could mean end of quarter or even end of year.
This is a more detailed description of the project management tool, a web based application for managing your tasks and creating schedules. The tool requires you to set up your goals, and assign them to specific sprints.
After that, it helps you schedule and prioritize your tasks so they are completed before the scheduled date. Tasks can be assigned to specific users, so you have more than one person working on the same project.
Task Cards Manage Your Agile Tasks In The Gantt Chart
When planning your agile tasks using a Gantt Chart, you have the option to break down certain tasks into smaller increments. This works great for tasks that can be accomplished in days or weeks. However, sometimes a task is too complex to be refined into such small chunks.
This can make the Gantt Chart difficult to manage because it makes the timeline visually cluttered. Task cards are a great way to break down larger tasks while still keeping them visible in the Gantt chart.
These cards can be used to represent anything from project phases to deliverables. Their use is completely up to you as the project manager. When using task cards, you will need to do two things: define which columns are being used for tracking and enter the task card information into each of these columns.
Simply click on any column header, and then you will see a small drop-down menu appear where you can choose the type of task card you want to be displayed in this column (if your column options include tasks).
Once you have created your task cards, they will appear below your other Gantt Chart columns and will update automatically whenever their parent task is modified. You can also manually update Task Cards by clicking on their row in the column and selecting Update Card from the drop.
