I am a very firm believer that assessment of students is best used to the teacher's advantage.
How?
By assessing students, you can in fact assess yourself and the progress you are making with your students. It can basically show you how effective of a teacher you are by seeing what your students retain from your teachings.
So according to the diagram on page 505, there 10 different forms of assessment? And they are paired off into groups of two by saying "this form as compared to this form" sort of. I think. Maybe?
Basing my reasoning from the Questions to Consider, I'll just go ahead and assume that I'm supposed to talk about ALL of the forms of assessment and think of my own assessment idea for each. So here we go!
Informal vs. Formal
Informal for me in a classroom setting would probably something along the lines of observing who is prepared for class before it starts, who hands in homework vs. who doesn't, etc. And then a formal assessment would be something more similar to asking the students before hand to bring something specific to class and then observing who did what was asked/required of them. I think I would use these to make sure that I have taught my students that preparation is a must with music, because if you don't prepare for a rehearsal, then that's valuable rehearsal time wasted going over issues that could have easily been addressed on the student's own time with personal practice time.
Paper/Pencil vs. Performance
Since my classroom is most likely going to be some sort of musical environment, we'll go ahead and put these assessments into a musical context. Paper/pencil would most easily be done in the form of a test, musical critique, music theory quiz, what have you. And performance in this case can be taken quite literally to mean that. I plan on encouraging much solo and small ensemble performances, chair auditions will be a norm for concert settings, and musical evaluations of marching music will definitely be a must (that last one will only be in the case of high school marching band)
Standardized Test vs. Teacher Made
No one in my experience has ever like standardized testing, and the implementation of those goes without explanation. And I'm sure I'll not enjoy administering the tests just as much as I didn't like taking them. As for teacher made assessments, there are so many ways to administer your own made tests, and there are different ways to make them and so on. I think I would use them more in a music theory class over a general music or concert band class, simply because tests aren't really something you administer to assess progress in either of those settings. However in a theory class, you definitely would need to keep up with student progress just to make sure they are grasping the concepts of how music is "built" and why it is done so in a very particular fasion.
Criterion referenced vs. Norm-referenced
Both of these are extremely easily administered and assessed in a middle school band setting. Let's say that I have a sixth grade beginning band. I could use criterion referenced AND norm referenced assessment in the form of a tune from a beginning band method book that teaches how to play accurate eighth notes. I could then have each student play that tune for me as a playing test. I could then easily determine who went home and practiced their eighth notes like assigned to them. This can be criterion and norm referenced at the same time because I am assessing their mastery of this skill and I can compare the performance to that of their peers by making the assessment a chair placement test.
Traditional vs. Authentic
Once again, these assessments can so easily be applied to a middle school band setting. Let's say for instance that I have an eighth grade band that is auditioning for chair placement for an upcoming concert. I can then use the chair placement itself as the traditional assessment, because it is the classroom setting and away from real-world tasks. The authentic assessment could then be the concert which the students had the chair placements for. The concert is a real world application of the skills the students have been mastering during band class, and the chair placements they earned for the concert can show the abilities demonstrated by the students during the chair placements.
You've got solid examples and your intro helped make reading easier. I have a question: for criterion and norm-referenced, you say you could combine the two. I am assuming that you mean things like tone could be where you do the norm-referencing. Do you think there are factors like tone in other subjects that would make it as easy as music to combine norm and reference-based tests? Or is it more important to consider that being first chair does not give you a higher grade than being second chair?
ReplyDeleteA general note in the future: Don't forget to include other scholarly sources in your posts. Is there a specific music pedagogy class you take or have taken? What would a textbook from that class have to say about assessment?
Gretchen, I really liked how you brought up the fact that the assessments not only evaluate the students progress, but the teacher's as well. That makes so much sense because most of the time how well the students perform on tests is a direct representation of the teacher. It is sad, but sometimes true. I heard on the news that some teachers were going to be rewarded for the outcome of their students' scores on the TCAP, if they were high. This leaving some teachers scared they were going to be punished if their students did bad on the TCAP and this leads to most teachers "teaching the test." I'm not so sure how I feel about this because I have an Aunt that is an elementary school teacher and she said that she can teach until she is blue in the face and still some of those kids just cannot pass the test. Is that really all her fault? I'm not too sure, but I do know that is a lot of pressure to put on one teacher. Also, I was wondering what kind of ideas you would have for the pencil/paper assessment with you wanting to be a music teacher, but I remember writing down music notes and answering questions about sheet music. Anyway, I like your ideas and you seem to have all this under control; keep it up! :-)
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