Assessment+Journey

 ==Assessment Journey, Part One==

When I came to the elementary from the secondary level, I was at a loss of how to assess students’ learning. I had developed a system that worked for me at the high school, but it involved reading (a rubric) and self-assessment with writing. I didn’t feel that this was appropriate for my students at the elementary school.

And then school started. I was overwhelmed with the volume of students and work. I found a grading system and procedure used by the retired teacher I replaced, and began using that. It was a grading scale based on student performance:

//At the end of class, if the project is complete, I have each student hold it up as I read their name from the grade book. I enter a grade as I call their names and then they are allowed to keep the project. If it is incomplete, we put it back in the folder to be completed the following week.

100% Project shows learning, creativity and effort* 75% Project is complete but shows little learning, creativity or effort* 50% Project is incomplete 0% Project is not done at all//

The first problem was that our cutoff for an “N” is 85%. Using this system, it was far too easy for a student who was completing their work but not high-achieving to fall into the “N” category. I revised the second category to 85% almost immediately. The big problem with this system was I felt it was unfair. I subjectively graded students’ work with no input or feedback from the students. The students didn’t know what their grade was until I “gave” them their grade as they held up their work in front of the whole class. Then they still didn’t know if they had an S or an N until they received their report cards.

At the beginning if this year I revised my grading system. Grades 1-3 were graded on completion. If the students did the project and completed it, they got a 100. If they didn’t, they got a 50% or a zero, depending if it was partially or not completed at all. Grades 4 and 5 were graded using the same grading system. Grade 6 receives a percentage grade, since they are middle school students, so it was most important to me to change this system radically for them. I wanted something that would be fair, easy to understand and use, and provide the student with immediate feedback on their grades.

I developed a “gradesheet” for each project we completed in 6th grade. It included learning criteria as evidenced in the artwork, and areas for self and teacher assessment. I wrote the grading criteria based on the steps to complete the project, plus craftsmanship. Students would award themselves points for each category, and then I would do the same. In practice, I found the gradesheets to be cumbersome. It was difficult for the students to understand what they should do with them. (Maybe I didn’t teach the procedure well.) It also took me a long time to grade their work. I wanted to be fair and give constructive feedback, but it just took too long. I found myself falling seriously behind as the 9 weeks grading period reached a close. Plus, in the end, it was still just giving a subjective, arbitrary grade. So I decided to talk with my students about this system and try something else.

I told my 6th graders that I had decided to scrap this system and try something new. Then I asked for their help in developing the "something new." “What should you be graded on?” I asked each class. Some of the ideas were effort, participation, behavior, quality of work, and meeting goals. So I went to work looking for a rubric online that would help us.

Assessment Journey, Part Two
So I found an Art rubric online that I tried.

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 * < I assigned a number to each level, five being the highest and one being the lowest. This created a total possible of twenty points, which was easy to convert into a percentage grade. The first two categories are very general and hard to apply for scoring work. The last two categories were easy for the students to understand and apply to evaluating their performance. The first two criteria were totally unsatisfactory to me. Still subjective and amorphous. Back to the drawing board.

Assessment Journey, Part Three
On the last inservice day we had, the art teachers met in the afternoon to work on our art curriculum and rubrics. We are being asked by the district to provide examples of assessment tools, specifically rubrics that we use in our classrooms. It made for an interesting discussion between the art teachers as to the different ways that we assess our students. The older grades, middle and high school, tended to use very detailed rubrics that involved students self-assessing and writing about it. The elementary rubrics tended to be more holistic and involved no student self-assessment.

It was really interesting to see the other teachers' rubrics. Everybody had a slightly different approach, but we all seemed to be on the same page with the big picture. || ||