Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Formative Assessment

One of the major concepts that I teach in my class is how to look and respond to art using the Art Elements and Principles of Design.  I introduce the Elements and Principles in eighth grade.  As a formative assessment to see how they respond to art, I put up a work of art and ask them to tell me about the strongest Element or the strongest Principle.  They need to write a minimum of five sentences.

When reading the responses, I look for the use of art vocabulary and the strength of their reasoning behind their opinion.  I constantly tell them to back up their opinion.  I track the students' progress on a spread sheet.  When they respond using very few art vocabulary words, name more than 1-2 Elements, and/or don't back up their opinion, they get a minus sign.  When they begin to grasp the concepts and back up their opinion using some art vocabulary words, they get a dash.  Once they have mastered choosing one Principle or Element and full backing up their opinion utilizing art vocabulary they get a check mark.

When reteaching and expanding on these concepts, I do a lot of it through discussion.  We do whole group discussion and one on one.  I use my spread sheet when speaking with my students one on one.  Throughout the quarter, the majority of the students are at least to a dash mark.  I plan on using this information when students take art at the high school level.