Assessment Instruments       

   For pre-assessment every start to a lesson we would start with a presentation of the idea they would be learning about. Before starting the presentation we would ask questions such as "Does anyone know what a nebula is?" "How is it made?" and "What does it look like?"; we asked these questions in hopes our students would explore them. In our Nebulae and Supernova lesson plans we showed videos and let the students observe, ask questions and then work together to solve those questions.  Then after the presentation was over students would reflect their learning on a play-sheet or in their sketchbook and sometimes even both.             

Assessment Instruments

Some of the assessment instruments we used were the blog, sketchbooks, and play-sheets.
The blog is where we showed all of our students focus and understandings. We did this through pictures, videos, and quotes.     

Sketchbooks were used as both pre-assessment tools and formative tools. We would have students explore ideas in their sketchbooks that they may want to try for the lesson and after the lesson was over they would usually have to reflect the lesson in their sketchbook.  For the cyanotypes they reflected the process, what happened, and what they would do differently next time, as a formative assessment. 
The play-sheets were a way to see if students had gained new understanding after seeing the presentation.For example in the Nebula play-sheet students were asked what colors they wanted to make their nebula and if it was warm or cold? Students were asked this because in the presentation it talked about how temperature effected the colors that were present in the nebulae, and we wanted to see if there was a new gained knowledge about this or not.   Formative Assessment

 We had a couple ways to formally assess the students. The first way that we used for almost every lesson plan was to write in their sketchbooks. We would ask students to reflect their process in their project, if they liked it and what they  would have changed. This ended up being a big success in out cyanotype lesson and  even though students were working in small groups and were encouraged to share with their groups many students wanted to share their new findings with the whole class. We also did this through 'tokens'. After our Nebula lesson we split the class into two explained the tokens and had them place them as a group where they thought they belonged . After all tokens were placed we had the two groups join back as one and talk about why they placed the tokens. We were prepaid with guided questions to encourage talking but the students didn't need those. The students all explained in detail  why they loved an artwork, felt a connection to an artwork, why they thought it took a lot of time and why they thought it was a good idea. Through the token activity students were more willing to talk out loud and in response to the questions, so some students were willing to explain why it took so long and some techniques they used to create the nebula.         

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Documentation of Learning

In our blog we have a documentation of photos, videos, and quotes to provide evidence of concepts, skills and outcomes/objectives. This is a from our cyanotype blog   One student exclaimed, "I can see my paper turning green and blue! That means it was working!"  This student showed an understanding of exposure and how light is important to this process.  Overall, the students demonstrated knowledge of the Cyanotype process and how to create a print. It was important for us to document all the steps our students took to understand their new learned process. It was even important to document the problems to the lesson as well because it was a learning curve for both teachers and the students alike, here is one from the cyanotype lesson as well One student said, "When I put my print in the water, everything washed off! I can't see any of my objects." As a class, it was determined that the prints needed to be exposed to light for a little bit longer to create a proper print. In our nebula creations students explored paper marbling which was a messy but fun class and in the end it ended up being really successful, here is a quote from the end of the project One of the tokens that was laid for another artwork that was covered in the paper marbling technique was the clock and a student reflected "I put the clock because I didn't even cover my whole page and that took a long time, I cant even imagine how long it took to cover the whole thing", this made the artist very excited and he did say that it took a long time but hes happy with the way it looked. Sometimes students would reflect each others skills and hard work.

Our blogs ended up being a huge resource for us to reflect our students new gained understanding.

 

Strengths and Weaknesses of Assessments 

The strengths we gained from assessments were insight of our students new understandings. This insight was also useful for other people who might want to view it, other teachers, other students, students family, and maybe even their principle. Assessments for our students was a good way to show that students did learn in art class and their growth.
I think a negative to our assessments was how we gave them. All pre-assessments were verbal ones. We would ask questions to see students understandings then go straight to the presentation to teach them new understandings. I think it could have been beneficial to give students a pre-assessment before they even start the lesson. That way we could change things that need to be changed in advanced. We were at a disadvantage to some extent because if our class already knew the questions before showing the presentation then what would be the point of even showing the presentation. Verbal pre-assessments are also harder to document if there isn't someone there to video you, so it can also be harder to document the growth.

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Newsletter

Attached here is also the front and back of out newsletter to show what our students did in our class and what they accomplished. 

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