5 Quick and Easy Ways to Use Task Cards in the Classroom

I’m a big fan of task cards. If you’re not familiar with the term “task card”, it’s just a card that has a question on it for students to answer. Can it get any easier than that??

An example of a task card from a set about Cells, Tissues, Organs, and Organ Systems

For some reason I only discovered them a few years ago, but I keep coming up with new ways to use these simple question cards. Here are 5 of my favorite options:

1) Post them around the room or hallway

I’ll often post a set of task cards randomly around the room at the beginning of a unit, making sure some are strategically peeking out from behind posters to grab their attention. Students will naturally start to check them out and ask and answer questions.

Then, towards the end of the unit I’ll give students a period to move around the room to answer the questions. They write #1-60 on a piece of paper to keep track of their answers, and then check the the answer key when they’re ready.

Easy peasy review! We’ll often gather as a class at the end and go over topics they found challenging.

2) Use them in a Teams Tournament

One of my favorite activities EVER! In a nutshell, you create study groups at the beginning of a unit and have them regularly meet after lessons to go over what was learned together.

At the end of the unit, you have a tournament where each member of the study group competes against one member of each of the other study groups.

The task cards become your questions in the tournament. Boom! For a full breakdown on how to run a Teams Tournament, check out this blog post. (Note: Task cards make this even easier than the description in the blog post because students simply pick a card and keep it if they get the right answer!)

The above page can be used as a placemat during the Teams Tournament to keep everyone organized.

3) Use them with a “Heads or Tails” Board Game

This simple board game can be used with any set of task cards, and all you need is the board, a couple of trinkets to be game pieces, and a coin!

Player 1 picks up a task card and answers a question. If they get it right, they flip a coin. Heads means you move 1 space, tails means you move 2 spaces. First player to make it to the end wins!

This is also a really easy option to make into a station.

Task cards + Heads or Tails game boards are an easy way to fill extra time at the end of class or to set up as a station activity.

4) Make them into a self-checking Google Form

This is a nice option when you want all students to have access to the cards for their own independent review and you don’t want to make 30 sets! You can insert each card as a picture into a Google Form and then create multiple choice options to choose from. If you assign point values and make it self-checking, you can even turn it into an assignment grade. Do it once and use it over and over again!

The self-checking task cards on Google Forms are a great way to get in some individual review as well as a quick assignment grade.

5) Students sort them based on their confidence

I love this option as an early finisher task or during a work period. A student can work through the cards and then make 3 piles: Very confident, Somewhat confident, Not at all confident. This can guide them in their studying going forward.

What do you think – did I miss any of your favorite task card strategies?

Send me an email at bigredscience@gmail.com to let me know what I should add to this list!

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