Worthwhile tasks:
- Ability to apply knowledge and think critically
- Have an objective or goal
- Able to connect concepts and lessons
A task to me is very broad and can be almost anything; as long as it allows for individual responsibility to complete the task with a goal in mind. This means a task is when students are able to apply their knowledge and learning style to complete an activity/problem. A worthwhile task can be challenging, but do-able, as long as the student is able to connect the lesson plan to it. It has to be engaging and interesting for the students to be motivated or else it's just busy-work.
SCIENCE TASK:
A popular science experiment/activity that was often done in classroom labs were growing bacteria on petri dishes. If you're not familiar with this experiment, what happens is that students are able to swab different surfaces and reveal the bacteria. When I was in high school, every pair of students were given a petri dish. This dish contained a gelatin that bacteria likes to feed and live on. We sectioned off the dish in half and were allowed to wander the school to swab surfaces that we thought bacteria would be living on: door handles, stair railings, bathroom sinks, etc... We would then rub the swab onto the petri dish and let it sit for a couple days in a climate-controlled incubators for it to grow. When the dishes were revealed, there would either be giant colonies of bacteria or small ones. Students would have to draw or discuss what their dishes looked like. I enjoyed this experiment because it puts into perspective the surroundings around us, and why it's important to wash your hands often. Door handles and phones would have a lot of germs growing on the dish, but surprisingly, I remember the bathroom had little bacteria because of how often it was cleaned.