Planning Art Assessment
A Handy Idea About Labelling Art Pieces For Evaluation
This idea for labelling artworks is a small part of an adapatable assessment system.
Creating a new system for assessment for an Art classroom is always time consuming and can be confusing. Developing an assessing system will prevent such a huge task becoming over whelming. Art Storage for assessment can become an enormous burden so arranging to return work to students as quickly as possible is always advisable.
Some of an Art Teacher’s storage problems can be solved by creating a digital pathway for art to be stored and collated. This will enable teachers to glean a global view of the student’s progress. Aim to streamline the assessment process with a mathod that can be applied to all units of work. Clarity of method and purpose will enable all to feel that they are included in the process. Students, parents and colleagues will come to feel that they have a stake and will feel empowered when asked to comment and contribute.
In Queensland, a system called Curriculum Manager “Links performance and knowledge objectives to units, lessons, activities, and assessments.” In this electronic system, levels are assigned to student learning at the end of the year. (Progress is systematically monitored throughout the year.)
Teachers in each country should be aware of monitoring and recording systems. Reference to 'levels' is in this case to Queensland Australian standards.
The idea for labelling artworks is a small part of a system. The ideas can be adapted to suite your needs as a teacher. You can even use the labels as digital signatures or Avatars.
Assessment of the subject Art needs to be approached creatively. Systems need to be adapted so that the teacher can manage to scan the bulk of the visual work with out permanent storage of it. She will need to be able to lay the work out so that she can shuffle and group work in levels. Once spread out she can see at a glance at what level the work will fall. This will enable her to make a global assessment for each student.
Here is a simple suggestion designed to streamline the assessment process. This idea should take about an hour.
- Talk to the students about why you are making name tags.
- Tell them that you are making labels that will be placed on top of their work when each piece is being digitally photographed
- Make sure they know that this tag will be visible marker for their art for an entire year
- Give them a stencil – (animal shapes are good).
- Don’t choose shapes that are too big as they need to be visible but not obscure the work itself
- Ask them to trace around the animal shape.
- They can then shade and adorn it to the best of their ability
- Get them to rescue the outlines with black felt tipped pen
- Now make sure they realise that the digital camera will need to be able to ‘clearly read’ the written words – remind them why these name tags are being created
- They will write their names very clearly. Make sure they know that they must clearly print first and last names as well as their class grouping.
Once the class has completed this work the best of their ability ask them to glue the shapes to a large piece of card. After you have laminated them cut around each one cropping close to the shape. This will protect them through out the year. They will receive a lot of wear and tear as they will be tossed around at each assessment session.
You now have your first piece of assessment for the year! This is now the first cog in the assessment system.
The next step will be to cut up and laminate assessment sentences so that level can be assigned quickly and easily to artwork.
You might also like to read Assessment Tools Applied To Arts and What Is A Criteria Sheet?
