Art Assessment Four Simple Tips

Art Assessment. Four simple tips for helping art teachers assess student work.

It’s nearly that time of year when mid-year reports are due. Assessing art can be a challenge, for lots of reasons. Firstly, there’s the logistical challenges: you often can’t take big sculptures home to grade and with face-to-face teaching commitments, meetings and to do lists, you don’t get time to sit down and go through all the folios and final pieces. Secondly there are theoretical issues: how do you assess Art anyway- is it the success of final art piece, the effort, the concept, the process, how well a student can explain things? Well yep, it’s all of that.  So how do you do it?

Well, there isn’t one definitive approach to assessment, some love an app like iDoceo, others love an old school grade book, a rubric for every separate project they do, but having done this a long time, I’ve tried and tested lots of methods and I’m happy to share with you what’s worked well for me.

If like me, you are teaching hundreds of students a week you need to be realistic. So, streamlining your efficiencies are important as really there is no proper time for this, you just need to merge it into your lessons. So here are four simple tips for helping to get you through all your art assessment:

1.        Ask yourself, what are you really assessing?

This comes back to the art curriculum. In Victoria, Australia we teach four strands in The Arts. So, while your project may have been textiles or clay- you’re not just assessing their weaving knot tying ability or clay joining techniques- that comes under Art Practices which is only one of the four strands of the curriculum.

I have defined this for the Junior F-2 students here, and this goes in my content descriptor along with a unit outline, on the student report:

Skills (Strands)

Explore and Express - how a student has explored ideas, experiences, observations and imagination to create their artworks.

Respond and Interpret - how a student has talked about artworks and considered where and why people make art.

Art Practices - how a student has explored different art materials and processes to make art.

Presentation - how a student has considered presenting their work for display.

For students in upper Primary the strands get a little more in depth as I have defined below:

Skills (Strands)

Explore and Express - how a student has explored different art processes, ideas and meaning in the creation of their art work.

Respond and Interpret - how a student has responded to themes, artistic concepts and the work of influential Artists both in class discussions and as inspiration for their own work.

Art Practices - how a student has developed skills in art techniques and utilised the elements and principles of art in their work for effect.

Presentation - how a student has contributed creatively to display ideas, talked about their work and presented their artwork to engage the viewer.

Now you may not teach all strands as heavily every Semester as strands such as Presentation may be more of a focus when there is an Art Show, collaborative display or parent event. Although you can still mark students at standard if they present to the class, or have a gallery walk, do a school display board, or get them to write an artist’s statement, sketch a creative display idea, create a virtual gallery, do a talking circle sharing their work. The creative approaches are endless, just work them in to your lesson planning.  It also means if a student was absent or missed your Art Show- you can get creative with helping them make standard in another task.

If you realise, OMG I haven’t taught any art appreciation or got the kids to talk about their art we’ve been so busy just making! Don’t panic. This doesn’t have to be stressful. Maybe it’s just an art game at the beginning of a lesson, a class discussion, a turn and talk activity, a share, an exit ticket, being able to tell you an artist you’ve looked at and what they like about their work. Obviously, age and ability appropriate- but it doesn’t have to be an art history lecture! You can integrate it into what you’re doing, and maybe you’re doing it already as you move around asking the students questions about their work process, you just haven’t looked at it that way until now.

If you’re in a different state, in high school or even on the other side of the world, this tip boils down to working your data collection backwards from what the curriculum assesses, not forward from whatever project or skill-based task your students have completed.

 2.        Colour Code your Data

Here's a handy colour-coded template of how I collect the data using a system where they are either Working Towards Standard, At Standard, or Above Standard. I like to use Orange for Working Towards as I can focus in on them to hopefully pull them over the line. Green is for Go- they are all good and reaching Standard, and the Blues are the blue-ribbon students who are really excelling and working above level.

I am a very visual colour-coded person, so I find just looking at the colours on the spreadsheet means I can quickly input data. It also means if the computer is down or I’m roving in amongst paint and clay I can use 3 coloured pencils and a printout of my class roll as a quick assessment record until I can get on the computer or iPad again.

 If the overall progresssion is if they are 3 out of the four strands in that colour. You can see Pablo is ahead in some areas but not all yet. Frida if ahead in 3 of the four areas so ahead overall. Oscar is meeting standard but is pretty messy and can’t articulate well about his art yet but I’d still make him standard overall. Mona is really behind and I’d be assessing her as working towards unless I can differentiate tasks enough for her learning needs to get her up to standard.

It also means I can take a quick glance at the class and focus in on my orange students in the lead up to assessment deadlines. It just helps me keep on top of it all. If you’d like me to email you this excel spreadsheet, you can easily copy it into google sheets too, just send me an email em@empowermooreart.com Happy to help my fellow art teachers out.

3.        Another easy and engaging way of assessing students is to actually get them to do it themselves!

What? I don’t mean they write their own report but a self-assessment can actually really help you know who’s confident and competent in what you taught them, and who is still working towards the standard. Apart from those extreme kids who have low self-esteem and those who love Art soooo much they assess themselves a little higher due to being so passionate, for the most part in my experience, they are actually pretty spot on. So I developed these sliding scales with my students a few years ago. I like to show them at a beginning of a project too especially the older students so it’s explicit what they’ll be assessed on. There are two versions: one for the tiny F-2 students and one for the older primary students.

 Again, these relate to the four curriculum strands and can be adapted to whatever project you worked on or looked at for the whole term or unit.

This relates to the working towards, standard and above standard from left to right on the sliding scales. Or another way to put it, the sadder the emoji face the more Orange and they’re still Working Towards Standard. If your student is trying and you can see evidence in their work and process of exploring and art elements, and they can tell you how they made it then they are Green and At Standard. If they’re starry eyed, super eloquent, confident in their ability and the results are impactful then they would be Blue and Above Standard. Here’s how I use the self-assessment as a rubric for my own assessment. It’s like a simplfied visual rubric. It helps me see it at a glance when writing reports and it helps those kids who need visual references rather than words due to age or learning difficulties. I purposefully don’t have the gradient colour scale on the student self-assessment as I want them to be as honest and objective in their reflection as possible without the pressure of just seeing it as an assessment.

Working Towards Standard is Orange At Standard is Green Above Standard is Blue

You can print these out and get kids to mark with a pencil. You can load it on Seesaw or Google Classroom and get students to respond digitally on top of the template. You can put it on the TV and do it collaboratively getting them to draw the emojis in their sketchbooks next to the number, or even just on a whiteboard or drawing board and rove around to see the responses. There are lots of fun interactive ways depending on the age group and class dynamic. I’ve even had students in Foundation/Prep smile or frown at me like the emojis while I capture their responses. If you’d like an image or powerpoint of these just email me em@empowermooreart.com I’m feeling generous! Just give credit and shout outs with kindness.

 4.        Photograph artwork next to a name tag

 I have art folios for each student, so when a project is finished, I get students to put their work next to their folio or name label and I move around the room and take a snap of each piece, both 2D or 3D. This means I have a record, I don’t need to look at it again, if it gets lost or broken it’s no problem, if I need to go back and check my assessment I can, if I need to check for moderation with another teacher or answer a post-report enquiry from a parent- I have a visual record as well as my data. Now I know some people buy an app to do this- I just find the spreadsheet and photo works just fine for me.

 I hope you’ve found these tips helpful.

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 Drop me an email em@empowermooreart.com if you’d like the templates or have ideas for a future blog post that would help you in your art teaching journey and finally best of luck writing all your reports! Xx Emily