Day 7 Practicum Experience- Day 4 of Lesson- How CT assess student work (10-7-13)

To begin the day in the art classroom we asked Mrs. M some questions about how she assesses artwork and participation in the classroom.  She also let us see how she enters her grades into the computer.  She has one rubric that she follows with all of her students.  She doesn't make an individual one for each lesson.  The rubric she wrote has 6 categories and each students fills out the rubric on their own, circling the number they feel they deserve. Each category is as follows,

Showed skill with media 20 19 18 17 16 15
Was organized/creative 20 19 18 17 16 15
Understands specific Elements of Art 20 19 18 17 16 15
Line-color-shape and form-texture-value-space ( circle the answers)
Effort: Took your time, good use of class time 20 19 18 17 16 15
Attitude and Behavior (In class) 20 19 18 17 16 15

Total: 100 points  Your Score:         Letter Grade:

She has each student fill out this rubric individually about their own work.  They assess themselves first and then Mrs. M goes through and looks at the work and the rubric and adds comments and adds a final grade.  She often gives an A to all of the students.

To me this doesn't seem like the best way of grading.  I feel that many of the projects should have specified criteria that should be followed and assessed.  She also doesn't often do group critiques, which allows for the students to discuss their work with the class.  She goes mostly off of how well the student participated and put effort in to the work, which I do agree with; however, I do not feel that all of the students should be getting A's all the time if their work doesn't merit an A.  Letter grades to me don't even really make sense at this age either.  But she has made this system work for her so maybe there is something to look into from that.

After asking a few questions and getting Mrs. M's responses, it was time for us to begin our lesson continuation.  It was the 4th day of our teaching and the students were starting their flower drawings.
I gave a demonstration about how to place the windows on the magazine image of the flowers and how to use what I saw in the window to draw on my sheet.  I had all the students gather around me for the demonstration.  They were all very attentive and answered a lot of my questions.  I asked them what types of element I was using while drawing the outline of my flower and they all took turns answering, with line, shape, space, and form.  We also discussed how the other elements such as texture, value, and color would be used once we started adding paints to the flowers.

During the demonstration I felt really confident and had a good time showing the kids how to draw lightly and how to do clear contour lines of the flowers.  Once the demonstration was over, I helped the students to get their flowers picked out and windows taped down.  Some of the students had a bit of trouble trying to get the window the way they wanted it, but figured it out with some help.  Once they had their flowers and paper ready they began to sketch out on the watercolor paper.  This didn't take them very long and some of the sketches were really nice.  After the sketching my partner did a quick painting demo and the kids were off! They began doing some of the techniques they tried on their charts.  They weren't able to paint a whole lot however because class was about over.  They cleaned up their spaces and packed up their paints.  Most were really loud and excited and didn't want to pack up, but keep painting.  We got them all to clean up and sent them on their way to the next class.

I was really happy with how today went.  The demonstration was great and I loved how excited the kids were to start working on their flowers! I can't wait to get back in the classroom and help out some more.