Alanna Gaylord's Art Education Portfolio

Description:

            Assessment is a teaching method used to gather information that can be used to evaluate students on their knowledge of art and art history, process of creating art, and art production. Assessment is divided into two sections: formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment takes place during the learning and art making process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student achievement. Formative assessment may take the form of teacher observation and interview, student checklists, personal reflections, in-process critiques, etc. Summative assessment is used to evaluate whether or not students meet the goals and objectives of a lessons and generally takes place at the end of a lesson, unit, or semester. Summative assessments include final critiques, self-assessments, rubrics, or artist statements. One final form of assessment is authentic assessment, which is one of the most natural forms of assessment because it allows students to be assessed in a manner that resembles real-world settings. Authentic assessments include critiques, art portfolios, and personal reflections.

 

Analysis:

            Assessment provides a great deal of benefits in the art classroom for both teachers and students. Assessment of student knowledge, process, and production provides teachers with an understanding of student achievement and the success rate of lessons. Assessment benefits students because it provides them with an opportunity to reflect on their own work, which helps them work towards an understanding of their success and areas to improve. Ongoing assessment, which includes formative and summative assessment, is important for providing students with a continuous system of production, analysis, and revision. While formative assessment helps students to measure their progress and guide further development, summative assessment helps students to reflect on their work and that of their peers. Continuous assessment throughout the art making process helps students to be aware of new interpretations and perspectives and how to reach their artistic goals. There are many different types of assessment that all benefit students in different ways. Types of assessment techniques can include rubrics, observation and interviewing, journals, art portfolios, discussions, checklists, critiques, and written reflections.

Critiques in particular provide an authentic form of assessment involving analytical and interpretive discussion between the artist, their peers and their teacher. In this form of assessment the teacher is responsible for facilitating the critique in an appropriate and beneficial way. In order to properly facilitate a critique, there are many steps that a teacher should follow in this process. Before beginning the critique, the teacher should first explain the criteria and dynamics of a critique in order for the students to understand what is expected from both the roles of the artist and the peers. Then the teacher should encourage students to brainstorm ideas and thoughts before the discussion begins. The teacher should also encourage the use of appropriate vocabulary during the critique. This will help to reinforce terms that were introduced during the lesson and to help everyone fully understand the work of art and artists’ intent. Throughout the critique, the teacher should be sure to hear every voice and also reiterate students’ ideas in order to help students to comprehend how diverse and interesting different opinions can be in relation to art. The teacher should also be sure to ask open-ended questions in order to generate these diverse responses. Finally, the teacher should require the students to defend their responses to each artwork by explaining the supporting evidence that generated their thought process. These steps will help to produce interesting and open-ended discussions among students about artwork that they created.

 

Reflection:

            Through my experiences teaching in a middle school art classroom, I have found that assessment is very important. In terms of formative assessment, I have found interviewing and observation to be most important in order to constantly check in with students about their artwork and make sure they are understanding the learning objectives and goals of a project. As for summative assessment, I have found assessment rubrics to be very helpful. Not only is it important for you as the teacher to have a written description of what you are assessing students on, but it is also very important for students to have this written description as well. For instance, with a rubric, students are able to use it as a sort of checklist when creating an assignment; whenever they have finished one requirement, they are able to check back in with the rubric to see what is required of them at a secure level. I have also found that is important to provide process-related questions that provoke artist-statement-like writing. In this way, students are able to describe to the teacher about their artistic process and explain in words their knowledge of the content and/or media. My experiences with critiques, on the other hand, have always been very casual. At the middle school level I don’t want to overwhelm my students with too critical of questions. However, I have found that interesting and open-ended discussions about student artwork encourages students to stretch and explore and open their minds about their own artwork and the artwork of their peers

 

 

.