Art Teachers of Saint Lawrence County Unite! (Well, some of them!)

Today we had a regional art teachers meeting to try and work out regional assessments.  We attempted this back in March, but never got very far.  Probably only 1/3 of the teachers were present today, but I think we accomplished a lot more than if everyone would have been there!

Unfortunately, I was the only all elementary art teacher present (everyone else was K-12, 3-8, 5-8, etc.).  The assessment rubric we created was geared towards Jr./Sr. high, but is easily changed for lower grades.  What we ended up deciding on for a regional assessment (for those who would want to use it), was to do an observational drawing.  It could be as simple as an object, such as your hand or shoe, or as advanced as a 3-day still life drawing.  We created a basic, adjustable rubric that included the categories: (1)Technical Accuracy (shape, proportion, contour, detail), (2)Shading/Value (light source, gradient scale, shadows and highlights), (3)Line (range of lines, both real and implied), (4)Composition (positive and negative space, fully developed drawing), and (5)Craftsmanship (no tears, smudges, folds, etc; artwork created and maintained in a professional manner).

Now, a lot of our concerns that we discussed included giving the post-assessment.  First, the guidelines say that we must have another person in our room when giving the assessment.  This could be the person who will fill out the assessments (as we cannot assess our students on the final assessment to prevent favoring a student), a substitute, or a random faculty member.  What happens if our district can't provide us this extra person if we decide we will be doing a 3-day still life drawing?  Unfortunately this isn't something we can control...it's a district responsibility.  I know at my district, it's virtually impossible to find subs at the end of the year.  Hopefully, the districts across the board will report back to the state that it is nearly impossible to do this, or we will have to actually have a testing time to give our assessments at the end of the year.

Our other concerns with the post-assessment is how much we can guide students during it?  Do we just tell them to draw a still life based on what they've learned?  Tell them they have 3 days to do it?  Or can we give prompts..."Remember to check your cast shadows!"  True, this is a final assessment and students should be able to do this based on what they've learned without prompting, but how often do you do an art project that you don't have to remind students what to look for, or give students the extra prompting so they do their best work?  Obviously we can't draw for them, which hopefully not very many art teachers do anyways.  We decided that the best way to "get around this" or deal with that questions was to create a check list for the students to attach to the back of their project.  When the student thinks they're done, we can flip it over and review the guidelines with the student to easily point out that they need to go back and check their value scales...similar to the way someone administering a regents exam might pick up an early finishers exam only to find they didn't fill out questions 1-20 on the multiple choice and will tell them to go back and do it.

And remember when I said all my assessment rubrics were completed, but may need some tweaking?  Well, they do.  Not in terms of what I am assessing, because those are what I assess when I look at the projects, but in my wording.  I created my rubrics based on Marzano, and even though that is the system my school is using, I can't use his wording of "with assistance" and "could not complete even with assistance" because we technically aren't supposed to assist the students during these final assessments.  At least it won't be too much work to re-word my rubrics!

A.P.P.R.: Pre and Post Assessments

I've had a few people commenting on these assessments so I decided I would share what I've come up with so far.  I've already shared my rubrics for the self-portraits but here I will share what I've decided to do for my pre and post assessments at every grade level.

In St. Lawrence county, we had one staff development day in March that we all got together at and tried to come up with regional assessments.  We had a really difficult time and never really finished, nor got back together to finish.  I wasn't really happy with what we came up with either as it was way to specific and for most of the grade levels, didn't match what I taught.  I really don't like the idea of repeating an exact project at the beginning and end of the year, and that's what they wanted to do.  I feel like the following assessments I made allow for students to create something different as their end product so they won't be taking home two identical projects (aside from the test assessments!).


Before I share these though, please understand the following:

         1.  I won't have to use all of these each year...this year I have figured that I will need to do assessments for 5th, 6th, Kindergarten and 1st grade as these are my largest grade levels that will give me my 51% student population.

         2.  I may have to change my assessments at the beginning of the year a bit, depending on whether or not my superintendent approves of them as rigorous assessments.  (I'm guessing that I will have to take the time management aspect out of my rubrics as it will be difficult for the other teacher to assess this since she won't be in my room...unless of course I would be allowed to assess that part of the rubric.)

Kindergarten

I've shared the worksheet that goes with this assessment here.  For this assessment, students will be asked to cut out various shapes (simple to advanced) and to glue them onto construction paper.  I plan to assess their scissor skills and their gluing skills.  I am a little unsure as to if this particular assessment can be done by the other teacher as I am assessing their scissor and gluing skills here and most of the cutting rubric in particular will need to be filled out from observations...

1st Grade

For my 1st grade assessment, I will have student split their paper into 6 sections.  They will receive 6 minutes to draw each item as I call it out to the best of their ability.  Those include a fuzzy dog, a rainbow, a flower, a tree, their family, and anything they want.  The following rubric is what I created for that assessment:

2nd Grade

My 2nd grade assessment will be treated partly as a type of test and partly as a drawing.  (To deal with students with IEPs, I will probably read the scavenger hunt part out loud.)  We start to get into critiques and talking about art in 2nd grade, so their assessment will reflect that.  They will receive three paintings (Picasso's Crying Woman, American Gothic, and the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait).  For the last part of the assessment, they will receive the remainder of the first period to start and one other complete class to finish half of Vittore Carpaccio's painting called Two Venetian Ladies on a Balcony.  Here is the grading rubric for this assessment:

3rd Grade

In 3rd grade, we will focus on depth and landscapes, so their assessment will be for landscapes.  For the pre-assessment, I will read them the story of Little Red Riding Hood without showing them any of the pictures.  They will then have two class periods to draw what they think the path looked like to grandmothers house from the story.  At the end  of the year, they will do the same thing, but I will read them the story of Hanzel and Gretel.  I will look for details in their drawing that they remembered from the story, as well as the characteristics of a good landscape.  Here is that rubric:

4th Grade

In 4th grade, they will start to do more drawings from real life and learn some basic shading techniques so their assessment will be to draw a still life and shade it in black and white.  Here is that rubric:

5th Grade

In 5th grade we will focus on color theory so they will receive a color theory test in worksheet form where they have to color in the color wheel using colored pencil and answer a series of questions by coloring.  I haven't decided if I will give them one or two days for this...I'm leaning towards one day unless they have an IEP for longer.  Here is that worksheet (I plan to score it out of 100):

6th Grade

Sixth graders will also receive a test.  The first part of the test will consist of the students seeing seven different slides.  The second part will consist of 11 vocabulary words that they must define and tell me which culture they come from (Porcelain, capital, altar, cartouche, pictograph, Dreamtime, hieroglyphics, candy skull, animal spirit, Ionic order, nomad).  I am thinking that I will split this test into two days, part 1 and part 2.  Below is what the 1st page of that test looks like:

Name:  _____________________________    Date:  _______________

Class:  ______________________________

Be sure to read ALL the directions carefully in each section carefully.  Answer each question to the best of your ability.  You may not ask another student for help.

     A.   

Prehistoric                Egyptian                    Greek             Asian Aboriginal                 Mexican                    Native American

 For the first section, you will see seven slides.  Each slide will remain on the board for three minutes.  For each slide, you must tell me what culture it comes from and 1-2 sentences explaining why that artwork represents that culture (5 pts. each)

1.    Culture:  _________________________________

Facts:  ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

APPR/Common Core: Pre- and Post-Assessments

Well, I've spent the last few days figuring out exactly what I'm going to do for my pre- and post-assessments for art class.  Even though I'm only going to have to do SLO's for approximately three grade levels, I'm still planning my assessments for every grade...eventually I'll have to do these assessments in every grade depending on my enrollment each year!

When I first attended our regional staff development meetings during the school year, I wasn't very happy with the regional assessments we were putting together.  In a sense, they were too specific and they didn't align with what I taught my kids in each grade.  A college friend of mine teachers downstate in NY had her regional meeting for art over the summer.  She shared with me that they had decided to use the same pre- and post assessment for K-6:  self-portraits.  I'm not that into doing the same thing for every grade...I like changing things up from year to year, but she gave me the idea that I could save their self-portraits all the way up through 6th grade and then make a book for each child to have at the end of 6th grade when they transition into the high school.

After mulling this over, I decided that maybe I did like this idea after all, but it still didn't seem like enough of an assessment for me, especially since I don't plan on really covering self-portraits until 3rd and 4th grade with the kids.  So, this is what I plan on doing...each grade will do self-portrait at the beginning and end of the year, as well as one other assessment that will more closely pertain to what students will be taught during the school year.

Kindergarten:  Self-Portrait & Scissor Skills Worksheet

Kindergartners will have to cut these out and glue onto construction paper with Elmer's Glue.  We do A LOT of cutting and gluing projects in Kindergarten, so I feel this is an appropriate assessment!  By the end of the year, most students should be able to cut out those advanced shapes with no problem and glue them using a decent amount of glue!

1st Grade:  Self-Portrait & Drawing Test

For the drawing test assessment, students will have to split their paper into six sections.  They will be given six minutes for each section to do the best drawing they can of the following things:

~A tree

~A flower

~A fuzzy dog

~A house

~Your family

~Anything!

During 1st grade, I cover things such as adding good details, adding texture to drawings, using a horizon line, and so on, so by the end of the year, I expect to see these things in their post-assessment drawing.

2nd Grade:  Self-Portrait & Artwork Scavenger Hunt

In second grade, I really begin introducing critiques to students.  We do group critiques and class critiques a lot starting in 2nd grade.  Because of that, I like students to be able to describe their artwork using the Elements and Principles of Art that they have learned so far.  Therefore, my 2nd grade assessment will be a type of scavenger hunt.  I haven't actually made this yet, but I will definitely post it once I complete it.  Students will be asked to identify the Elements and Principles in various famous artworks.  Some examples might be, circle all the vertical lines with a blue crayon.  Circle the artwork that is symmetrical and put an "X" through the artwork that is asymmetrical. 

3rd Grade:  Self-Portraits & Fairy Tale Landscape Drawings

In third grade, I teach foreground, middle ground and background.  We also really get into landscapes.  I've seen numerous versions of the lesson "The Path to Grandmother's House,"

based on Little Red Riding Hood, such as the one here on the Painted Paper blog.  I decided that at the beginning of the year, I would read them the story of Little Red Riding Hood but I wouldn't show them any pictures from the book.  I would then assess their drawings based on how well they picked up details from the book and how they draw a landscape.  At the end of the year, instead of using Little Red Riding Hood, I will use another fairy tale, like Hansel & Gretel.  The landscapes might look slightly different in both, but students should be able to use their drawing skills to show me a more advanced landscape!

4th Grade:  Self-Portraits & Still Life Drawing
This one will be pretty self explanatory.  We will concentrate on using contour drawings to draw from real life quite a bit in 4th grade, including observing shadows and value.  So, I will simply have my students do a 2-3 day still life drawing in the beginning and the end of the school year, probably using colored pencils.

5th Grade:  Self-Portrait & Color Theory Quiz
In 5th grade, I start giving little quizzes.  I started doing this last year because my 5th graders weren't the best behaved group at special and when I started giving them graded quizzes, they started listening better!  I also really found out who was understanding the more advanced material.  Aside from the self-portrait, the other assessment I will use for 5th grade will actually be a quiz.

I found this handout on-line last year before I knew about Pinterest and I altered it to my needs...I hate that I can't site my source for this but it came from a 4th grade unit on color theory and it was off a school website!  I will continue to look for the original source for this so I properly give credit where it's due!


6th Grade:  Self-Portrait & Cultural Art Quiz:
In 6th grade, I align their art projects with the cultures they learn about in history class.  I decided the best way to assess these students would be to give them a quiz that asks them to identify what culture certain artworks come from.  I will cover the following cultures in class with students, at least half of which are also covered in their history class:  Prehistoric, Egyptian, Greek, Mexican, Chinese, Aboriginal and Native American.  The quiz will ask students to match the culture with their artwork and explain in 2-3 sentences how they know that artwork is from the specified culture.  Again, once I have this quiz completed, I'll post it!