siltatehtävä

Siltatehtävä, literally “bridge task,” is a type of educational assignment used in Finnish schooling and higher education to create a link between topics, units, or levels of complexity. Its aim is to help students transfer prior knowledge to new content, activate recall, and ease transitions between topics. Siltatehtävät can be used at the end of a unit to summarize what has been learned and connect to the next topic, or at the start of a new unit to assess prerequisites and set learning goals. They are typically concise and integrated with ongoing content, emphasizing application, synthesis, or reflection rather than rote repetition.

A siltatehtävä may take the form of a short prompt, a reflective question, a small project, or a problem that requires applying what a student already knows to a new situation. They are often designed to be accessible to all students yet demanding enough to reveal gaps in understanding. They can be assigned individually or in groups and may be used formatively to guide instruction or diagnose readiness.

Examples of siltatehtävä include asking students to relate a recently studied mathematical concept to real-world data, asking a language learner to compare and contrast rules from the previous unit with those in the upcoming unit, or requesting a brief plan showing how a science concept could be applied to a real-life scenario.

For effectiveness, siltatehtävät should align with explicit learning objectives, be clear about expectations, and have a simple rubric. When well designed, they support learning transfer and motivation; poorly designed tasks can be confusing or time-consuming. They are a common feature in Finnish instructional design but may vary in form across schools and disciplines.