Friday, March 7, 2008

Assessment...

What is your favorite and/or most successful way of assessing student work? Bob Reeker, LPS

7 comments:

Bob said...

There are so many options out there for both formative and summative assessment. I enjoy using peer evaluation. Students write "praise", "ask", "tell", and "suggest" (P.A.T.S) comments for others' work. I usually do this about 2/3 of the way through the project, so the artist may respond to the critique. If you would like an electronic copy of the form I use, email me at breeker@lps.org. Bob

Unknown said...

I totally agree with the peer evaluation and I also do personal critique. I find students are harder on themselves than others are.
P.S. I love the blog

Jane said...

My fifth graders use rubrics and grade themselves (I double check).It takes about three art porjects of training, and they become very accurate.
A trick with rubrics is to show them only the "excellent" column in the beginning (so they know what to aim for). If you really want to get good at forming assessments, I have two suggestions.
1) Read Stiggins. He does discuss performance and production assessments, but there is much more to discovering what your students know, even within our very short time spans with them.
2) Take the Nebraska Leadership in Learning and Assessment Cohort this
incredible program, and great stipends.
Info at http://cehs.unl.edu/nac
You can also contact me about more on art assessments at jkathol@epsne.org.
Jane

Bob said...

To add to what Jane said, in LPS, we are working on creating a "bank" of images that represent each of our four grading systems. For example, when a teacher is done with a project, she would take four photos, each representing a "4", "3", "2", and "1" (see my comments in the Parent/Teacher post about our standards). These are placed on our server where teachers around the district may pull the images and share with students. Since these are from 40 different buildings, students in our buildings don't see images from our own students. From the beginning of the unit, students can see what we are aiming for in criteria from actual examples. Bob

Jane said...

Great idea to share the levels of student work across the district, Bob. Next year, EPS will have our new art curriculum in an online program that allows us to upload lesson plans, visuals, assessments, etc. We will have to include visual levels of student work...really important for the new teachers to learn, as well as the students to aim for. Thanks for the great idea!

Jane said...

A different thought on assessments:
I have gone to state and national conventions and attended many speakers on assessing art. One of my frustrations is no one spoke on assessing student learning across all the national standards. Assessing student art work has been done forever. Assessing student basic knowledge (artist name, date, etc.) has been done.
BUT...how are we assessing students making cross-discipline connections? How are we assessing
student thinking and planning when incorporating ideas, symbols, and subject matter? Are we assuming they did so, because they followed our example or a peer's, or are we really asking them? A lot of what we claim art does for learning is not being proven with an assessment. We say art promotes creative thought. How do we know what that thought was? Just doing art because it looks good doesn't make it deep, well-thought out, nor does it show depth of communication. So, I keep looking for answers.

Bob said...

Jane, I really enjoy reading your comments about assessment. I feel in LPS we address much of what you say due to the fact that our core curriculum is written directly from the national standards. And at least at the elementary level, we must grade students in those areas 4 times a year. Through our Core Ability 1 "The Creative Process" and Core Ability 3 "Express Ideas through Art", we get at the idea of producing original and expressive works using symbols. CAs 2 & 6 address connecting and living with art...how do students make those cross-curricular and life connections with and through visual arts? CA 4 is knowing the language; CA 5 is making art, and CA 7 is talking about art. We feel we have a very comprehensive program that addresses all national standards but leaves the curriculum open for the teachers to have creative license. Bob, LPS