Restaurant Menus

Performance
Task Overview

Materials

Teacher
Subject
Topic/Focus

Trevor Maekelburger
Grade 6 English Language Arts
Nouns, pronouns, and Adjectives

Students will create a menu for a restaurant with enticing descriptions of the items
including appetizers, main courses, and desserts. Students will describe their menu items
(may be common or proper nouns) with adjectives, comparatives, and superlatives.

Laptops or tablets with internet access

Access to a printer
markers

Learner Outcomes
General Outcomes
Specific Outcomes

Students will listen,

speak, read, write, view
and represent to
enhance the clarity and
artistry of
communication.

6.4.1.D.2 choose words that capture a

particular aspect of meaning and that are
appropriate for context, audience and
purpose

6.4.2.A.3 identify comparative and

superlative forms of adjectives, and use in
own writing

thesauruses

Assessment Criteria
Students provide evidence of their learning as they

Appropriate words
Appealing descriptions

Variety of Adjectives

Student Task Description

You have just recently opened a restaurant named Chez (your name here). Aside from having a
name, your restaurant must have FOOD! Having a list of appetizers, main courses, and desserts
on the menu is not enough though; many similar restaurants have the same items on the menu.
You need to have descriptions with each of the items that are eye-catching and enticing! The
more appetizing the menu item description is, the more likely it will be that people will buy it,
which means that your restaurant will make more money! You will not only need to get creative
with the descriptions, but also with the names of the items on your menu. Use adjectives and
proper adjectives to make your descriptions more detailed, and feel free to use comparative
and superlative adjectives to compare your foods to other restaurants with similar foods!
For example,
Adjectives: Instead of writing bacon (noun as adjective) cheeseburger (noun), you could
call it an Applewood smoked bacon cheeseburger. You may then describe it as a
succulent and flavorful burger placed between two toasted buns, topped with crunchy
lettuce, stringy mozzarella cheese, and crispy bacon.
Comparatives: Comparative adjectives compare two different nouns. You may have a
double cheeseburger on the menu, and may want to compare it in the description to
the regular cheeseburger on your menu. The double cheeseburger is heftier than the
single cheeseburger.
Superlatives: Superlative adjectives compare three or more things. You will want to
convince your customers that your salads are the most filling or the healthiest salads
available for 9.99.
You must include a section in your menu for appetizers, entrees (main courses), and desserts.
Each section must have at least five different items. Your menu must be typed and can be in a
brochure format, or can be a single- or double-sided piece of paper. If you are having trouble
coming up with food ideas, use some of the foods you eat at home and at school that you
enjoy. Good adjectives can even make less interesting foods like Brussels sprouts sound
delicious! You are free to use a thesaurus to come up with unique words, but be careful! Some
synonyms may not always work for the thing that you are describing.
Things to include in your menu:
1. Title of your restaurant with a picture or design (can be a digital image or drawn image).
Make sure that it represents the kind of food you will have at your restaurant!
2. Appetizers, main courses, and desserts sections with at least five items each.

3. Full sentence descriptions for each item, using either adjectives, superlatives, or
comparatives.

Assessment Criteria
4

Excellent

Proficient

Adequate

Limited *

Pertinent
adjectives are
chosen to
describe menu
items

Relevant
adjectives are
chosen to
describe menu
items

Suitable
adjectives are
chosen to
describe menu
items

Vague
adjectives are
chosen to
describe menu
items

Appealing
descriptions

Vivid names and

descriptions of
menu items
using adjectives
and their
comparative/
superlative
forms

Interesting
names and
descriptions of
menu items
using adjectives
and their
comparative/
superlative
forms

Simplistic
names and
descriptions of
menu items
using adjectives
and their
comparative/
superlative
forms

Names and
descriptions of
menu items
using adjectives
and their
comparative/
superlative
forms lack
appeal

Variety of
Adjectives

Extensive use of
adjectives and
their
comparitive/
superlative
forms in menu
writing

Substantial use
of adjectives
and their
comparitive/
superlative
forms in menu
writing

Partial use of
adjectives and
their
comparitive/
superlative
forms in menu
writing

Incomplete use
of adjectives
and their
comparitive/
superlative
forms in menu
writing

Level
Criteria

Appropriate
words

Insufficient /
Blank *

No score is awarded
because there is
insufficient evidence
of student
performance based
on the requirements
of the assessment
task.

* When work is judged to be limited or insufficient, the teacher makes decisions about appropriate intervention to help the student
improve.

The defense paper (no longer than 1000 words) is to explain what information your
assessment strategies are designed to collect, how you would use that information to
modify your teaching, and how your assessment designs reflect what you have learned in
the course and through the readings. Students will be expected to cite explicit references
to the texts, as well as any other assessment literature that supports their lesson designs

Defense
Paper
Level
Criteria

Defense Paper
(Outcome 1, 2)

Excellent

Proficient

Adequate

Limited *

Demonstrates an
extensive
understanding of how
ongoing assessment
guides instruction
Demonstrates an
extensive
understanding of how
to determine student
learning
Demonstrates a
comprehensive
understanding of the
assessment theory and
best practices

Demonstrates an
substantial
understanding of how
ongoing assessment
guides instruction
Demonstrates an
substantial
understanding of how
to determine student
learning
Demonstrates a
thorough
understanding of the
assessment theory and
best practices

Demonstrates an
partial understanding
of how ongoing
assessment guides
instruction

Demonstrates an
sketchy understanding
of how ongoing
assessment guides
instruction

Demonstrates an
partial understanding
of how to determine
student learning

Demonstrates an
sketchy understanding
of how to determine
student learning

Demonstrates a cursory
understanding of the
assessment theory and
best practices

Demonstrates a
superficial
understanding of the
assessment theory and
best practices

Insufficient /
Blank *
No score is
awarded because
there is
insufficient
evidence of
student
performance
based on the
requirements of
the assessment
task.

In order to effectively assess students, you need to use triangulation to obtain evidence
of student learning through observation of process, conversations, and collection of products
(Davies, 2011, p. 46). The attached lesson plans are structured in such a way that all three
forms of assessment are embedded throughout the lessons, under the names of observations,
key questions, and products/performances. Clear learning objectives must are tied to the GLOs
and SLOs from the Alberta programs of study, and the assessment strategies must closely linked
with the learning objectives throughout the lesson (Tomlinson, 2008). Throughout these
lessons, any time there is assessment embedded within the lesson, there is an annotation
showing which learning objective is being assessed.
The anecdotal notes and observations of the class, as well as the type of questions
asked by the students will help me to determine if more or less time needs to be dedicated to
teaching the topic within the current class or in future classes. Feedback from the students is an
important component of the lessons, as it will give me insight in how I need to adjust my
teaching practices to better accommodate and differentiate instruction for the students, as well
as informing me of students that may need extra attention. You will notice that in the lesson
plans, the assessment/differentiation sections are very general. Until I get a sense of the needs
of the students and evaluate other contextual variables, such as classroom culture, teaching
resources, and previous learning experiences of students, I will not understand how to
specifically differentiate assessment and instruction for the students.
Ultimately, assessment should be student-centered. It is important that students are
actively involved in the construction of goals and criteria, as well as providing and presenting

evidence of their learning to peers, parents, and teachers (Davies, 2011). Throughout the
lessons, specifically the performance assessment task, I have created questions for students
with the intention to determine what they think success looks like, along with using
exemplars. This is so they can become more invested in their own learning, allowing them
frame success criteria in language that they understand. This co-construction of criteria will also
be used as a tool to guide instruction, as the students may potentially come up with criteria
that were not originally included on the rubric. Another way that these lessons keep the
assessment student-centered is through opportunities for self- and peer-assessment, such as
the comparing of adjective vocabulary with one another during the scattergories activity.
Davies argues that the teacher should not bear all of the responsibility of assessment, but share
it with his or her students through peer- and self-assessment (2011).
Because these lessons are merely an introduction to adjectives, I only used formative
assessment strategies. I do not intend to summatively assess the students, as I want the
students to have time to refine their skills of using adjectives. According to Jan Chappuis,
formative feedback is only effective if the students are given enough time to act on it (2012). In
Chappuis article, Helping students understand assessment, she proposes the strategy of
designing lessons to focus on one aspect of quality at a time (2005). Thus the first, second,
and third lessons contain instruction focusing on using appropriate words, using vivid
adjectives, and incorporating all types of adjectives into writing, respectively the criteria that
are included in the performance task rubric.
The majority of the learning objectives in these three lessons are knowledge and
performance skill targets, so the assessment strategies need to reflect these targets (Chappuis,
Chappuis, & Stiggins, 2009). Most of the assessment techniques for knowledge targets in these
lessons involve questioning by both the teacher and peers to test recall of adjective vocabulary
and rules, while the performance targets are assessed by methods that have students
incorporating adjectives into writing, speaking, and representing. It is important to scaffold the
learning objectives that you will be assessing in increasing orders of Blooms taxonomy (Roscoe,
2012). Thus within the learning objectives in the three lessons, there are lower order directing
words such as describe, locate, and identify, as well as higher order directives such as
distinguish, organize, and design.
References:
Davies, A. (2011). Making classroom assessment work (3rd ed.). Courtenay, BC: Connections
Publishing.
Chappuis, J. (2005). Helping students understand assessment. Educational Leadership, 63(3),
39-43.
Chappuis, J. (2012). How am I doing?. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 36-41.

Chappuis, S., Chappuis J., & Stiggins R. (2009). The quest for quality. Educational Leadership,
67(3), 14-19.
Roscoe, K. (2012). An introduction to curriculum and instruction. Victoria, BC: Metropolitan
Publishing.
Tomlinson, C.A. (2008). Learning to love assessment. Educational Leadership, 65(4), 8-13.