TETAC Guidelines for Arts-Centered Instructional Units

Assessment
The construction of assessment tasks that are integral and embedded in learning experiences helps teachers insure that learning activities for students are relevant and engaging and display continual evidence of learning. These guidelines provide ways for teachers to understand assessment as a range of activities. The assessment criteria provided encourage teachers to:

Align unit goals with assessment as an integral process in curriculum development. Gauge accomplishment according to stated objectives during the learning experience. Assess student mastery of art ideas and skills at the completion of the unit. Enable students to pay attention to their own methods of learning.

Criteria		Explanation		Examples
1. Enduring ideas, key concepts. and important skills are assessed.		Both significant knowledge and skills should be assessed.		To what extent has the learner been able to convey the connection between his/her work and the enduring ideas studied?
2. Specific criteria for assessment tasks are used.		Students may examine their work over time in a unit, use different kinds of criteria such as production or responding, and/or be given the opportunity to develop criteria along with the teacher. Rating scales and rubrics are provided for students when appropriate. Students and the teacher determine the assessment criteria through initital group discussion		Criteria for a written judgment of an artwork: students will be able to make persuasive judgments supported with convincing evidence. Criteria for a classroom dramatization: students will be able to effectively use their bodies to express feelings and convey characters' attitude through voice and body.
3. Assessment tasks are relevant and engaging to students.		Assessment tasks frequently allow for multiple answers and solutions. Assessment requires the application of a repertoire of skills and knowledge.		Objective: Students will be able to draw upon personal and cultural values and concerns as subjects and themes for their artmaking. Assessment: Using non-traditional materials, students construct an artwork and write about how their choice of materials reflects their own personal and cultural values.
4. There is evidence of student learning.		Students have more than one opportunity to demonstrate the nature and complexity of their learning. Assessment involves more than one task and more than one aspect of the content. There is both formative and summative assessment.		Formative: List three examples of a blues lyric and identify the pattern in each. Summative: Write lyrics for stories that conform to the mood of the blues in which assessment is based on aab format, ten syllables per line, and rhyming end words for each line.
5. There are opportunities for student self-assessment.		Student assessment can be supported or guided by: rating scales. self-assessment form. rubrics.		Students select items from process portfolio for self-assessment.