Assessment in The Arts

1. Teacher observation: sit back and just observe students occasionally

1.1. Watch how students interact, plan and respond to each other; watch how they generate ideas and develop those ideas; see what they enjoy, what sparks them and which activities they struggle with; make mental notes and occasionally take actual notes

2. DIscussion and reflection: responding to questions about form, practice, or product

2.1. Self-reflection, reflecting on performances by other students, analysing strengths and weaknesses, evaluating progress

3. "Active" class participation in many simple Arts activities: It’s much more “get up and try” rather than “sit down and take notes.”

3.1. Games and exercises, role-play activities, brainstorming, improvising, group or whole-class discussion, storyboarding and hot-seating

4. Practice journals, logs or blogs

5. Entrance and exit tickets

5.1. Use entrance tickets at the start of your lesson to help your students focus on what’s to come and use exit tickets to establish what they’ve learnt from the lesson.

6. Minds on activities

7. Improvement: learning new skills and practicing - do students put in the work necessary to learn new skills? Do they practice to improve those skills? Do they make connections between those skills?

8. Problem solving and critical thinking: get to the WHY

9. Confidence and bravery: Do students taks risks and push themselves out of their comfort zones?

10. Have they learned transferable skills?

10.1. Participation, dealing with groups of people, working individually and as a team to complete a project, time management, public speaking, leading and following, problem solving, rote memorization, critical thinking and articulating thoughts, and multi-tasking. These are all skills used both in the Arts and in every day life.

11. Feedback

11.1. Focused, specific feedback helps students understand learning objectives, choose the best strategies for the task, make corrections throughout the learning process, monitor their own learning, and determine where to go next.

12. Rubrics and checklists

12.1. If students have access to the success criteria, they can consistently self-reflect on their work. Success criteria gives students a framework to communicate with the teacher and their peers about their learning. This can help students ask for help as needed.

13. Generate and reflect on learning goals with students