Performance assessments offer teachers the opportunity to gather information about student understanding, knowledge, and skills in a more authentic and engaging manner than afforded by traditional standardized tests. However, high-quality tasks and rubrics can be a real challenge to create. This session will familiarize participants with the fundamentals of performance assessment development by exploring how to unpack standards to craft high-quality learning goals, develop tasks that measure deep understanding and transfer of learning, create instructions that reflect learning goals and communicate clear expectations for student performance, and develop scoring rubrics that provide informative instructional feedback and align with the standards delineated by the VDOE Quality Criteria Tool. This workshop will also help participants improve their “assessment literacy” by discussing the most recent VDOE guidelines for Balanced Assessment Plans, and by considering the different kinds of assessments which might be appropriate for evaluating specific skills and knowledge as part of a plan for encouraging deeper learning. All teachers and instructional leaders who are engaged in the challenging work of creating high-quality tasks and rubrics to use as part of their school division’s Balanced Assessment Plan are encouraged to participate in this session, which will give them access to the resources and strategies that are available through the VaSCL Task Bank. All participants will be encouraged to continue to advance their understanding and implementation of what they have learned during this workshop by field-testing and providing feedback on tasks and rubrics that are created for the VaSCL Task Bank during the 2019-2020 school year. Anyone who is planning to participate in the five meetings of the VaSCL Task Bank for the first time this year is asked to register for this session, so that they can receive the training needed to be effective members of VaSCL Task Bank Work Groups.