Assessment Philosophy

How I Utilize Assessment Of and For Learning in My Classroom Formative assessment is an integral part of any musicians practice and performance. Our eyes are trained to assess the sequence of squiggles on the page and turn those squiggles into sound. Our ears are trained to assess through hearing when a note in played or sung incorrectly, when a word is not precisely enunciated, or when an emotion is not effectively expressed (and multitudinous other ways that our ears helps us manipulate our practice). Our bodies are trained to tangibly assess when our instruments are not performing correctly. As a director, I act as the singular eye to see, ear to hear, and body to feel the needs of the ensemble. I assess my ensembles minute-by-minute, day-by-day in this manner: when I hear something off, I assess the cause and give feedback to the students. The students in turn modify their performance, which will either achieve the desired effect or not. If not, I assess a new cause and modify the feedback. Minute-by-minute, students are receiving feedback from me to improve their performance. In addition to minute-by-minute formative assessment, I provide them with formative assessment opportunities through singing or playing tests. The students are asked to prepare a selection from our repertoire, alone or with others, using a rubric highlighting my expectations for their performance. I utilize rubrics quite frequently because it allows my musicians to see tangible proof of how competent they are in musical skills and ways that they can improve before performing our summative assessment: the concert. Additionally, rubrics remove much of the subjective grading that can creep into arts classes. While I would like to give more attention to individual instruction, the nature of my classes (which are completely group-oriented) do not allow me much time to focus on individual students. This is something I would like to continue to think about and work on in my classroom. As mentioned above, I also utilize assessments of learning in my classroom through concerts and similar performances. Performances and concerts give my students the opportunity to show to me, their parents, their peers, and themselves just how much they have learned during the instruction time. While performances are clearly summative assessments, they also are a more high-stakes formative assessment. They highlight areas that could have been improved upon, and gives students a goal to shoot for before the next concert. My Beliefs About Formative Assessment As I said above, formative assessment is an integral part of any musicians life, but is especially vital to a music teachers practice. I believe that without formative assessment, music education would not function. I believe that formative assessment is an essential tool to creating quality performances, quality musicians, and life-long music learners. Formative assessment informs the teachers instruction regarding performance skills and, when used properly, produces students who create quality performances. Students who illustrate quality performances know how to create future quality performances and thus become quality musicians. Finally, I believe students who consistently create quality performances are motivated to continue to create quality performances as long as they are involved in music. My Beliefs About Summative Assessment As mentioned above, summative assessment in the music classroom comes in the form of concerts and performances. I believe that nothing creates better musicians than performing for an audience. Performing for an audience proves to yourself and others just how much work you have done (or not done as the case may be). As I say in my classes, practice does not make perfect; practice makes habit. No amount of practicing will make any musician or any

performance perfect. But performances will highlight what habits we have been practicingboth good habits and bad habits. I believe you can think of formative assessment as the habit practicing time and the summative assessment (i.e. concert) as the expression of the habits you have been practicing. So, summative assessment is also essential for creating quality musicians. Grading Philosophy In a perfect world, I wouldnt need to grade my students performance. I should clarify that statement: not grading my students performance does not mean that I would not need to assess their performance, simply that I would not provide a letter or number that expresses their performances. While assessment is essential to fostering quality musicians, grading is not. However, this is not a perfect world and thus I need to provide grades. On the one hand, I believe that some students would not be motivated if there were no grades because they would have no accountability (although I fully believe that there could be and should be other forms of accountability in any classroom besides grades). On the other hand, I fully recognize that students who would not be motivated in a system without grades are indoctrinated with a traditional grading systemso much so that to try to place them in another system would be utter disaster. They are as much a product of the system as common grading practice. However, I believe students do not need grades to learn, or even to be motivated to learn. While it is great to have the above beliefs, the system in which I teach requires that I provide grades. My experience of grading in music classrooms as a student provided me with a foundation of belief that it is too subjective and too difficult to grade musical performances. In order to provide the necessary grade for a music class, my teachers relied upon many behavioral and/or external factors (such as attendance) to determine grading. While I have tried not to rely too much upon these practices, I recognize that I also have used such factors to determine parts of my grading. I am as much a product of the classrooms in which I learned as I am a product of the best practices I have learned through pedagogy and methods study. With all of that being said, I believe that I am not only teaching students to create quality performances using highly honed musical skills, I also believe I am teaching them how to navigate the oftentimes difficult adult world. So while I believe that it is important to not grade solely on behavior, I do believe that proper behavior is an important skill that my students need to master in order to be successful as adults. Therefore, I do dedicate a small percentage of my grades to behavior. Additionally, I believe that the best grading is specific and prompt feedback. If grades are expressions of where a student is and where he or she should be, specific and prompt feedback are the best grades to give a student. Letter and number grades tend to be generalized expressions of a students status of mastery of skills and concepts; specific, prompt feedback is unambiguous as to what produced the feedback and why it was given, and is given quickly so that students have a chance to demonstrate a change in understanding. I believe that specific, prompt feedback is the best grade I could give any one of my students, and the grade that will help them learn the most. Conclusion While some of my beliefs about assessment may be in direct contrast to the research, the beliefs I hold are the ones that work for me as a teacher at this time. I cannot say after I reach the status of master teacher how my beliefs may differ from now. I can only hold onto these beliefs as long as they are relevant to my teaching. Similarly, I could not adopt the assessment practices of another teacher as their practice may not be relative to the way I teach. I believe it is important to explore the research about assessment and to come to sound conclusions based on your experience as a teacher. Assessment, as with all teaching practice, should be authentic to you as a teacher. If it is not, it is time to reassess your practice.