Assessment in Art Education

Assessment is key in education and the reformation of education. It helps educators dictate goals and create lessons. Being in a middle school classroom for my fieldwork I can definitely see why assessment is important. Not only because my mentor teacher has discussed it with me but also just observing the classroom and watching her grade projects. She has explained to me what she looks out for while assessing the students work. She even does a ‘do now’ at the beginning of class and at the end of class she tries to leave time for review.  And during these two times, she asks questions and gives students participation points for answering questions. This is a way that helps her assess students at the end of the quarter. I really like how she uses that technique and I would definitely consider that for when I have a classroom.

I never realized how a portfolio could be used for assessment. I also really love this technique for a classroom. A portfolio will hold all of the information a teacher, principal, parents and the student need to know about their artwork. And they can take it with them all throughout school. It would hold the students artwork, artist statement, table of contents of what is inside the portfolio, a cd with works on it, research materials, anything you can think of really.

Formative assessments are very useful in a classroom. It allows a less pressured, free flowing conversation to happen between students and teacher. It allows students to get feedback on their artwork without the pressure of it being graded yet and allows students to go back and fix things that maybe need changing.

I have also noticed that both formative assessment and summative assessment are used in the classroom for my fieldwork. Summative assessment is used at the end of the class and the beginning of each new day. My mentor teacher tries to ask students review questions to see if the students have retained any new information they have learned.

Overall I have noticed that in order to assess a students work or progress you have to explain what you are going to be looking at so the student has the opportunity to get a good mark. For example if you’re assessing a project and take points off for things the student hasn’t done but the teacher hasn’t explained what the requirements were fully. My mentor teacher also has grading rubrics for each project. She prints out a numbered list of the exact things she is going to be looking for when she grades the projects. Its clarification, clarification, clarification.