TAB Thursday: Engaging Learners Through Art-Making Part 4

This week, I dove into Chapter 4: Assessing Progress. First off, I really enjoyed this chapter. Assessment is an area of teaching that I find interesting as well as difficult to utilize to its best potential. In my own opinion, if assessment is done correctly, students should be able to know where they stand in the class, how they performed on a project, the progress of their learning, and an opportunity to self-reflect with the purpose of growing artistically. However, all of these factors are tough to get through. Most of the time, I feel that students don't worry about assessment, so it becomes a lot of work for little effect. Let's see how the authors discuss assessment in the choice-based art system.

WHAT I READ

At the very beginning of the chapter, Douglas and Jaquith emphasize using assessment because it gives value to the art classroom. It sets out a purpose for students and rationale for the parents.

The first type of system are formative assessments. Formative assessments help set goals and plan curriculum through identifying skill sets and understandings at student developmental stages. Even though feedback is given as students work, talking and observing individual students throughout the class let the teacher know how the student sets up and puts away materials, their planning process, and their understanding of the materials.

There are several methods to approach the formative assessments listed and defined:

1. Conferences and Conversations

2. Documenting Evidence of Learning,

3. Surveys

4. Journals and Student Reflections

5. Rubrics

6. Talking About Artwork

Of these, I was mostly interested in the student reflections and the rubrics side of formative assessment. Keeping journals, even for a few minutes at the end of class, help students explain what they worked on and think about how the studio time went. I also like the pair and share idea, where students are allowed to talk to a partner about what they worked on.

Rubrics are important in my district. The authors talked about how to use generic rubrics that can go across many art projects.

Lastly, the authors discuss progress reports and teacher reflections. I have a difficult time with how progress reports are suggested here. I see a lot of students, and to consider leaving some kind of written report, even a short comment seems overwhelming and would require a high sense of organization to avoid any mix ups. The teacher reflections section, as short as it may be, makes perfect sense. I use blogging to help my reflections, and before that, I used an artist journal in which I created mini-art projects in the journal and wrote about the day.

QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT I READ

I wanted to see some examples of rubrics. In my district, it is encouraged to use self-evaluation, peer-evaluation, and then a teacher evaluation on each rubric. What does a rubric look like in a choice-based art education system?

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