artedkate

[artedkate]

What I think is the goal of assessment depends on the environment. In the public school system, assessment is, more than anything, a way to assign grades. Students must receive grades, assessment helps grading be more fair. Although, in the real world, assessment is much different. Without the boundaries of grading, assessment seeps more into criticism. Criticism has a negative connotation, but it’s a way to talk about the way others are making, creating, or just existing. For example, we assess our friends by noticing their behaviors, and might be able to give advice or congratulate them etc. The goal from this assessment in real life is normally just to better yourself and the people you interact with. In public schools, it often becomes less about simply bettering the students and instead more about setting structured perameters in order to conclude grades. This week at Clover Hill, we observed a different teacher instead of Ms. Barnett, we observed the photography teacher Mrs. Berneche. I haven’t seen Ms. Barnett’s assessment strategies, but I did see some of Mrs. Berneche’s. For example, the students were assigned to assess their contact sheets they created with their first role of film. Mrs. Berneche had printed out a listed rubric, in which she went over step by step in front of the class. She told them exactly what to look for, and about how many points each things would be worth. So the students graded their own work, but with heavy assistance; This is formative assessment. I haven’t seen any examples of summative assessment from Ms. Barnett or Mrs. Berneche. As a student, more so in K-12 classes, I saw assessment as a game. I just needed to check all the boxes, and I’d get an A. I think my creativity managed to surivive some within this, but I know it all seemed very structured to me. It was helpful to be able to look at a rubric and see exactly when I got the grade I received. I wish I would’ve had more verbal assessment, especially in my art classes or classes in which I had writing assignments. When I created something, I was often not told how I was doing during the process itself. In my own teaching, I’d like to be very transparent about my assessment towards students. I’d like to use both formal and subjective assessment. Written examples of expectations are helpful, they should also be directly communicated. I think check in’s would be helpful as well. I’d also like to observe and notice my students and their way of working, so that I could also use that when assessing them in case they may have tried very hard on something yet just took a turn in the wrong direction.