Within the classroom students are taught lesson based on standards and then need to apply them to different situation to be able to fully commit the lesson to memory. How do we do this? We do this through apply the information learned into real life experiences. Often time these experiences within the classroom are directly related to the real world, for instance learning how to make change through a grocery shopping activity or learning about economics by becoming a producer and consumer of products found with in the classroom. It is through performance based activities assessments that the outside world is brought into the fore front of the educational experience of your child. During these performance based assessments the students will take their prior knowledge of topic and combine it with the information that they have learned within the classroom. As the students learn, connection to prior knowledge are made by the teacher and by the students themselves. After making these connection is it only natural for the student to want to and be able to assessment themselves using the same connection making tasked that they have used throughout the unit of study. This is where performance based or authentic assessments come into play. These types of assessments are not your paper and pencil test that are sometimes required, but are assessments that are produced by the student while be guided by the teacher. A sample of these types of assessments and activities can be found on the links below