Art education is a way for me to help young people learn how find their voices, explore what interests them and build critical thinking and problem-solving skills. By providing a choice-based classroom with a focus on idea generation, reflection, and talking about student art, I hope to empower students with skills that are transferable beyond the art classroom. My job as a teacher is to educate the whole child and a choice-based teaching approach allows for differentiation and discoveries that may not happen if I were to make all the decisions in a specific teacher-guided lesson. I am aware that a majority of my students may never again take an art class after mine, but by teaching them to think like artists I am teaching skills that transfer to other areas of life.
My goal for my future classroom is to run it in the manner of Teaching For Artistic Behavior (TAB) The mantra for TAB is this:
Understanding By Design
How does all of this choice this translate into real world assessment? Because TAB is focused more on the artmaking process rather than the final product the lessons are designed backwards. In this manner of lesson planning the lesson is designed with the end goal first, for example, designing a lesson with a big idea and enduring understandings in mind. Big ideas are universal and transferable and encompass the human condition rather than a narrow focus on art, while enduring understandings show a relationship between two concepts. By focusing on broad concepts as objectives we provide students with an open-ended challenge which they may approach in a variety of ways. After a pre-assessment such as an exit ticket or a whole-class instruction I am ready to begin the lesson. A method for lesson planning I am fond of is Understanding By Design. Some characteristics of Understanding by Design are described in this graphic:
By designing a lesson plan in this way the focus is on developing real world skills, the transfer of those skills, and evidence of learning.
Studio Habits of Mind As Formative Assessment
Even though these big ideas and enduring understandings are universal and the focus is on the process, we still must have a way to assess students in the art classroom. Many TAB classrooms focus on the Studio Habits of Mind, which provide a framework from which to assess what learning is taking place. By assessing studio habits rather than a specific art skill set I can document growth in a variety of areas to help me in educating the whole child.
Turning these Studio Habits into an assessment tool with "I Can" statements, allows me to document the students’ progress in a formative assessment. For example, if the students decide to design doll dresses they can self-assess through I Can statements. “I can engage and persist by trying a new fabric when I didn’t like the texture of the fabric on one of my dresses. I can reflect on my artwork by writing an artist statement.” In a TAB classroom, formative assessments are a constant and the studio habits build problem-solving and critical thinking skills by having students reflect as they work through their projects. Sketchbooks with studio thinking prompts are a great way for students to keep track of goal-setting, idea generation and discoveries made.
Summative Assessment
Summative assessments in the art classroom can take many forms. Often I have students share the art with the class and I document discoveries they have made by recording their reflections on my phone. For larger projects students write an artist statement that addresses the artistic process.. A summative assessment may also take the form of a teacher conference with the students, blog posts and whole-class or small group critiques. Getting students to talk about student art through critiques can be intimidating to students, therefore I will provide a framework for various critique games to get students more comfortable with sharing their thoughts and insights. One example of a critique game could be where students try and guess the title of a work to facilitate a discussion.
Assessment From Start to Finish
My assessment plans are as follows:
Pre-assess students' prior knowledge through exit tickets and worksheets such as KWL (What I know, what I wonder and what I want to learn)
Formative assessments through sketchbooks, blogs and online portfolios
Summative assessments through talking about student art, artist statements, critiques, and one-on-one conferences.
By framing these assessments around the Studio Habits of mind and Understanding by Design I can ensure students are being assessed on 21st Century skills that transfer to other content areas and provide students with the opportunity to reflect on their own learning.