Assessment in Art: November's Stepping Stones

For November's Stepping Stones in Arts & Activities Magazine, I focused on creating assessments in art.  Back in May, I participated in The Art of Ed's online class Assessment in Art, which was very informative and has helped shape my assessments for students in future lessons.

Assessments are important for art teachers because without them, we would not have the tools available to help us reflect and refine our own teaching strategies and assist our students in growing into their own creative abilities.  Assessments are even more important for art teachers now for the following reasons:

 1.   According to Jessica Balsley (founder of The Art of Ed), “Kids deserve teachers who help them to learn and grow.  Showing that growth is one way we are doing justice to our students and their learning.”  In gathering information on our students, we are learning how they work, what accommodations they may need to succeed, and what they need from us to help them grow.

 2.   Evaluations are becoming more prevalent in our education career.  With the implementation of the Danielson model and other evaluation techniques in districts across the country, part of our personal evaluation is how we assess our students’ progress over time.

 3.   We need to provide evidence to show why we are important and why it would be wrong if the art programs were cut in schools across the country.  Having the data and proof on hand will back up your claim and build a stronger case against your program’s removal.

 4.   As art teachers, we need to take the lead in the assessment of our own subject. In other words, it would be best if we create our own ways of assessment and prove our accountability rather than allow a politician or test maker decide how your students should be assessed. 

There are quite a few ways to use assessments in art that do not require written tests.  Your grading design depends on what works best for you and your students.

Portfolios are great evidence to measure growth in art.  Portfolios not only help students, parents, and administration view the artwork’s growth over time, but students can really reflect on their own progression in their body of work. You can achieve this through collecting the physical students artwork over the course of the class, or taking digital photos for an online program, like Artsonia or Google Docs.  I personally use Artsonia to upload images of student work, and I’ve already utilized the program to demonstrate students’ growth over time with parents, teachers, and administrators.  There are pros and cons in using portfolios as an assessments tool, such as storage issues when dealing with the collection of artworks.  Teachers who work from a cart or travel from school to school may not have the space to store the artworks for a portfolio.  Also, portfolios are time consuming, which can be a challenge for many teachers who travel and lack proper plan time in their schedules.  Even if you feel you lack the time in creating a portfolio, finding a way to budget that time will help your art program in the long run.

Self Reflections are one way to gather information from students in written form.  Using self-reflections helps students to look back on their own works and what they can do to improve their own abilities. Since using self-reflections with my students over time, I have noticed an increase in student accountability.  Students see what they need to improve upon, practice their skills, and in each project, demonstrate growth in their skills.

Artist Statements are another way of gathering information from students in written form.  An artist statement tells the viewer information about the artwork created.  When a student writes an artist statement, they can reveal vocabulary learned through the process, the steps they use in creating their projects, as well as personal thoughts about their artworks (revealed through self-reflections as well).

Formative Assessments are conducted informally during the middle of the learning to inform your instruction. We may not even realize how often we check our students for understanding while they are in process with their projects.  In order to see how our students are performing with each project, we must constantly check our students’ progress through conversations, notes, and critiques. 

Tests in Art do not always have to be written.  A great method in measuring growth over time is using pre and post tests in your classes.  For examples, as a pre-test, have your students create an artwork demonstrating their artistic abilities, like a self-portrait.  Within a given amount of time, administer the “post” test that is almost exactly like the first.  You will then have a demonstration of growth that can be used as a test or as a portfolio entry!

If you are interested in more ways to create effective assessments in your class, I highly recommend taking the Assessment in Art class offered by the Art of Education.  This online class introduces different methods you can use to assess your students’ artwork and helps you to create your own assessment plan that works for you.

10 Reasons Artsonia Improved My Classroom

After getting back from maternity leave, I finally decided to buckle down and start using Artsonia.  For those who are unfamiliar with the name, Artsonia.com is an online artist gallery for teachers and parents to use.  Teachers can upload images of student artwork and parents can view the images, plus they can buy products with the artwork.

I was introduced to Artsonia a few years ago, and after hearing about all the work you need to put in, I was turned off.  With juggling three schools, traveling, and pushing a cart, I couldn't fathom taking the extra time to enter in all the artwork.  I was even asked if I had parent volunteers, which I did not.  Then the iPad started mainstreaming in our digital culture and the Artsonia app was created.  With the app, you can just snap a photo of student work, then upload it straight to student's names and galleries.  Hearing how much easier it was to upload artwork, I finally started using the site.

It took me a few weeks to enter the names of students and all the parent emails the school had collected.  I started seeing parents creating their own accounts, and I was elated.  Next, I printed pre-named permission slips (provided by Artsonia) and sent them home with kids for parents who did not provide emails to the school.  Then the slips started pouring in.

While I was collecting parent permission to show student artwork online, I started a project on Donors Choose for an iPad in the art room.  My main intention was to teach students how to upload their own work and create their own online portfolio.  Until then, I had the iPevo documentation camera.

I finally had all the student names and parent emails entered, then I started to photograph the artwork with the camera.  It was challenging at first because I was starting to take too much time away from prepping projects and decorating the halls with work.  Every photo I took had to be entered in manually, matched to the student and labeled to the correct gallery.  Over a few more weeks, I started to get the hang of it.

I had such a positive boost of parent communication, student enthusiasm, and administrative support.  Why did I not start this sooner?  I was afraid of the extra work to put in the beginning, but the positives immediately outweighed the negatives.

Here are some positives I have discovered in using Artsonia, which I feel is beneficial even to the traveling/cart/temporary art educators:

1. Parent Communication: I used to struggle trying to find time to contact parents.  I tried my best to create fliers, send notes home, create a website, and even try emailing throughout the year with little response from parents, but with Artsonia, I'm getting many positive responses.  I see the parents commenting on their child's work, and even sharing their child's gallery with family!

2. Art Room Newsletters:  Artsonia allows you to generate a newsletter that gets emailed straight to the parents.  Another added bonus with parent communication!  The newsletter template is extremely easy to use, and you can even break down each grade level you teach so parent's can scroll to see what their child is learning!

3. Student Ownership: Since introducing Artsonia to the students, they have been showing more pride in their work, which has been seen by the smile on their faces when I tell them it's upload day!  There have even been times where students beg to upload their own artwork they've created on their own!  Fewer artworks are thrown in the garbage, plus if the student loses their projects, we have an instant image to print up.  Also, students want the chance to enter their own artwork.  Now that I have an iPad for the classroom (thanks to all the generous donors on Donors Choose), students are learning to upload their own work!

4. Connections with ELA Common Core: Every time you upload a new artwork, you have the option to add a title and an artist statement.  I've started asking my 3-5 graders to add a sentence to describe their work, and every year, I will be asking for more descriptions to help enhance sentence structure and extended responses.  And, all the art projects that have been inspired by books are posted for the district and state to see as evidence of my integration.

5. Evidence of Student Growth: Many states are requiring teachers to show evidence of student growth. Since I am project-based and do not test knowledge in my class with quizzes, I found this site to be the best way to demonstrate student growth.  All images uploaded to the artist are archived, which means you can go back and visit previous artworks to see how the child has developed in their craftsmanship and understanding through time.  I had a perfect example this week.  One of the kindergarten students was struggling with fine motor skills in the beginning of the year.  Since I started entering artwork on Artsonia, I can now see the child's development each week.  In the fall, the student could not hold scissors properly, but now, he was able to complete his own puppet, cutting out his own shapes!  I was able to show this progression to the child's OT teacher on Artsonia, and she was thrilled to see the evidence through time.

6. Evidence of Presentation (Core Arts Standard): Before Artsonia (and with my limited time), I was only able to provide evidence of student work by displays and blog posts.  Now, I am gathering a portfolio of student work in one place!

7. Evidence of All Common Core Standards You Integrate in Your Lessons:  Has your administrator or curriculum director asked you how you integrate common core into the art class?  Simply send them the link to the school's online gallery and be sure to add the standard in your exhibit descriptions!  This includes ELA, Math, NGSS, Technology, and more!

8. An Automatic Fundraiser: Every artwork you upload into the student's accounts are seen by the parents.  If that parent wants to purchase an item (t-shirt, coffee mug, etc.) with their child's artwork, they can simply order it through Artsonia's online store and it shipped directly to them.  A percentage of the cost goes right back to you to use for your art supplies!  The only thing you have to do is upload the artwork!

9. The Artsonia Staff are Extremely Helpful:  My school has a high transient rate, so it's hard to keep track of all the names you no longer use or need.  Artsonia can work with you to move those student accounts to the next school.   And if your students graduate and move on to high school?  They can help you move those names as well!  This way, parents do not need to start an entire new account!  With teaching at multiple schools, this has been very helpful, and I love the staff for working with me on this challenge.

10. Promoting Your Curriculum: With thousands of art educators already using Artsonia, we can view other school's artworks, network, and share!  It's a quick and easy way to just share a link of your school's exhibits with parents, administrators, and community.  Would you like to see my school's galleries?  Click to visit Wilkins and Lyle Elementary's exhibits!  I know teachers who have an account for every school they travel to!

If you've never heard of Artsonia, or you've contemplated starting your own account, I highly recommend using this valuable resource for your curriculum.  With all the recent changes in education and evidence we now must provide, this is the best one to use for art educators.  It may be a little time-consuming in the beginning entering in all the names, but the long term goals are so rewarding!

Side Note: If you have access to a Microsoft Excel master list of student names, the process of entering names will be SO much faster for you.

How Do You Measure Student Growth in Art?

With the induction of the Language Arts and Math common core standards and the revamp of teacher evaluations, many districts are pushing harder for evidence of growth in all learning areas, and how other subject areas are infusing common core into their lessons. In Illinois, state law is requiring school districts to create and implement performance evaluation systems to measure teachers’ skills while factoring in student academic growth (about 30-50% of a teacher's evaluation score). Yes, that includes all teachers, including art, music, physical education, drama, and any educator that works with students in the public school system.  The use of goals and tests to measure growth and tying it to a teacher's evaluation has been a delicate topic among educators.

These recent changes have been a challenge for many teachers who already have a load on themselves, especially while traveling or working with a lack of space.  While general classroom teacher can have 20-40 students in their classroom, art teachers have over 800+ students they teach.  It would be nearly impossible to evaluate the growth of that many students and gather data forms throughout the entire school year, on top of project prepping, lessons, and other duties art teachers perform within their buildings.  And what if you have a high transient rate?  Stay calm and teach art.  

So with the already heavy workload many of us have, why do this?


According to author Susan Riley (founder and President of Education Closet):

As an arts teacher, you know what skills and concepts your students struggle with year in and year out.  This is our chance to identify these areas and focus on them with intensity over a long period of time.  It’s also our chance as educators to identify areas where we would like to grow and request professional development or other resources to help support our goals.

Susan further explains:

Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) have the potential to be a way to advocate for your program and to provide a frame for having meaningful conversations about student growth.  As arts teachers, we use performance tasks, formative assessments, and a lot of professional judgment to help our students grow in their capacity to make art and participate in the artistic process.  SLOs simply provide a context to showcase this work to others who may not understand what we do each and every day.


So how can we measure student growth in art?

1. Find out if you need to create a series of goals for each student, or for a specific group of students.  Knowing the amount of students you will measure will determine the complexity of the goals you set.  For example, if you need to set objectives for your entire amount of classes, decide on an attainable goal, such as meeting the project objectives set in place.  If you are asked to monitor a small group of students for growth, consider specific goals related to each individual learning style.

2. Determine the length of time you need to measure.  Is it a full year?  a few month span?  Knowing your length of time can also be a determining factor in planning your objectives.

3. Create your objectives, no matter what the name may be: Student Growth Objectives (SGOs), Student Learning Objectives (SLOs), or SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals are more common names, depending on your district.  The first point is to find out what it is you are measuring in your art class.  Are you wanting to measure students' drawing skills over time?  Identification of elements of art?  Whatever goal you set, make sure it's relevant to your curriculum.  

4. Make a form to track your data.  Depending on the goals you set, you can use excel sheets, data tables, or even consider a portfolio!  Did you know that one of the visual arts standards currently being developed by the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (CCAS) is focused on presentation, which includes portfolios of work?  If you check out the NCCAS website, you'll see that the standards are currently in progress and are due for release in Spring 2014!

If you're confused about where to start, consider some options to learn more about this process.  

Option #1: The Art of Education is offering and online class in January 2014 called Showing Student Growth in Art.

Option #2: Read up on blogs that offer guidance.  The Americans for the Arts Artsblog contains plenty of articles related to student growth in art and common core connections.

Option #3: Reach out to your PLN (professional learning network) on social media.  Ask other art educators what they do, what works, and what doesn't.

As I enter into this new territory as well, I will share my experiences in the process.  Are you using goals to measure students growth?  Please share your experience!

Why Do We Need Pacing Guides?

It's been over a week since I created my last post, and I'm going through blog writing withdrawal.  At the end of the school year, it may be time to wind down, but the workload does not get any lighter. 

One of the many reasons why I started slowing down in my posts is because we are a "Rising Star" school district.  "Rising Star" means that we are under review for refinement in our curriculum, environment, and everyday school practices.  As the art representative for our district, I report to the curriculum department whenever the state is in need of evidence of our visual arts practices.

Recently, we were asked by the state to create a month-by-month pacing guide of the art curriculum.  A pacing guide is a document created to show what concepts and standards you are incorporating month by month.  Many districts have adopted pacing guides to keep classrooms on task and ready for ISATS, as well as prerequisite knowledge for the next school year. 

From many conversations I've had with art education colleagues, many art departments have also adapted this method of pacing as well.  It helps to keep all visual art teachers on track to scaffold student knowledge and experience with materials.  Not all school districts require the art department to follow a guide.  If you do not, you have the freedom to choose which lessons to teach in your class, granted they follow any state standard you are required to teach.

In our district, we have four art teachers total:  one stationary elementary teacher (has a room without a sink and no kiln), two traveling art teachers (I have two rooms with sinks, and a kiln at one school, while the other traveller has two rooms with sinks and no kiln), and one junior high art teacher (room, sinks, and kiln).  When we were told to create a month to month pacing guide, we were given a challenge. 

How could we follow month to month when we each have different situations? 

With seeing students once a week for 40 minutes, how can we stay on task when days off, assemblies, and school wide events get in the way???

It's not as if we haven't combined lessons before.  We have made sure in the past to scaffold student learning year by year, so when they reach jr. high, the students are at the same level of learning.  One teacher may focus on the concept of perspective one month, while another visited perspective in a different month since her school was focusing on another theme at the time.

Another challenge was materials.  Not all art teachers have a kiln, and half of us previously pushed a cart froom room to room.  With lack of storage space, we found ways to work with what we had.  When students reach the junior high, my previous students may know the methods of ceramic clay, firing, and glazing, but the elementary students from the other schools may only know air dry clay (and not all elementary teachers work with clay).

With all the challenges presented, we still had to divise a plan, which is currently in the works.

So to share what we have so far, we designed the guide in a table format.  We have a column for the month, standard, concepts, and overall idea of the lesson.  The guide is in progress, but it's a start to show the state that we are working toward refinement.

I apologize for the poor image (I'm writing this at work), we started each grade level guide with a list of the state standards.

This is an example page of our 1st grade pacing guide so far.  This is an in-progress document, so a full document will be posted once finished (and when I figure out how to post a microsoft document into my blog posts, it will look MUCH better).

So if my pacing guide isn't finished...why am I writing about this? 

Every art teacher has a different situation.  Some have guides to follow, others have free reign.  I'm curious to hear what you have.  If you browse passed this post by chance, please take a moment to share what your district does.  It would be nice to gain a perspective on how common or uncommon pacing guides are in the art curriculum.

My Kindergarten Mid-Year Assessments

I teach in a widely-diverse neighborhood.  We have a huge population of Arabic, Polish, African-American, Hispanic, and more.  Besides their ethnic backgrounds, we also have a variety of development levels, especially in Kindergarten.  I can tell on a kindergarten student's first day in art if they had been in early childhood, daycare or preschool by the first drawings they make for me. 

For my first day of art every year, all students are asked to create a full-body drawing of themselves.  The art teachers in our district use this drawing to measure long-term growth.  After 8th grade, the students will receive their drawings as a final portfolio.  With kindergarten, I can get anything from scribbles to full bodies made without sticks.  My goal by mid-year is to have all students draw bodies with shapes and move away from the dreaded "m & m" heads and stick figures.  I even push away from those corner suns.

Throughout the years, I still remind the students NOT to use sticks or corner suns, but it improves in every passing year.

Before I start the mid-year drawing assessment, I have my students start a book in class that I made to help practice their shapes.  I then have the students take the books home to complete on their own.  Since kindergarten does not receive an art grade on their report card, I give incentives to students who return their books completed (ex. candy, stickers, pencils).  I make sure the students know that if they do not finish their books, they will have a hard time with their next project!

If you would like a copy of my shape book that I created for kindergarten, please contact me and I will email you a pdf. 

The following week, I show students how to draw a full body using shapes.  We go over the head, neck, torso, arms, and legs, as well as the features of the face.  After the students draw the entire body, I have them traced with black marker, and colored in with crayon.  This is also where I push students to color the sky ALL THE WAY and not leave a little blue line at the top of the paper.

Here's some finished products!

After students draw their pictures, they trace with black marker before starting to color. 

Still, we find those that show emerging skills that do not meet the standards at the level they should be at.  This is the reason why it is importrant to have assessments...so you can document student growth and know which students would need additional assistance in improving their visual skills.  The same goes with any subject in school!