Experience Summary

After my five observations and giving my own lesson in Mrs. Tarris’s classroom at

Greensburg-Salem Middle School, I feel a lot more confident in understanding how I will

implement assessment in my everyday classroom. In most art classes I have previously observed

in, the majority of the class period is used to work on projects, as many art teachers only utilize

project based learning. However, I have noticed this changes based on the grade level, as in Mrs.

Tarris’s classroom she used a lot of questioning as formative assessments because middle school

students are knowledgeable enough to apply their experience into answering questions they may

not know the answer to yet. I watched her implement questioning as a form of assessment in

almost every visit to her classroom. Additionally, I like how she used the students’ sketchbooks

as journals for responses. She would then use this as a participation grade and check their

responses to see their understanding of content. I compared Mrs. Tarris’s classroom to my own

middle school art class and it was very different. I think she used way more assessment elements

than I have normally seen used in art. I was able to gain a lot of insight by asking her questions

about her rubrics and see how she used the students’ art work as an actual pre-assessment. I

knew before entering the classroom that all of their summative assessments were projects, which

I agree makes sense for art class. However, I see now how there is actually a lot of ways to

implement assessment throughout the lesson in formative ways.

The creation and teaching of my own lesson also helped me a lot. I realized that as an art

teacher, I have a lot of other elements happening while I am teaching a lesson; such as the

introduction and use of materials. I found myself lecturing and forgetting little things too, like

turning on the lights after playing the surrealism video, and writing the exit ticket prompt on the

board. My biggest take away from this experience is preparation for lessons is extremely
important and that practicing teaching lessons is the only way I will improve in my

implementation of art and assessment. I think even from the first to the second day I was able to

make adjustments to how I was explaining things because I took into account how students were

reacting. I noticed a lot of them really did not like to ask questions, which was probably due to

me being unfamiliar. Mrs. Tarris was a great resource in showing me how to prepare the

materials and to suggest planning my lessons to the minute. In art class time is always an issue

and when there are extra things outside of just working on the project, I have found that I have to

be more direct in saying when the class needs to move on to the next step. This also goes along

with making sure that I as the teacher am efficient in explaining directions and demonstrating. I

think that if her whiteboards were not already written with directions from her other projects, I

would have made written and visual directions for students to also refer to as I was explaining

the directions to the lesson.

Also, I think that I would like to create rubrics for my lessons ahead of time and possibly

give them to my students for them to put in their sketchbooks, that way they can always refer to

what they will be formally graded on in their projects. Mrs. Tarris did not use any type of data

notebooking, but I think that the sketchbooks would be a great place to keep track of something

like that. I have decided that the feedback the students get from their projects could be used as

data notebooking if they keep them in their sketchbooks and reflect on their projects.

Lastly, I realize how much rapport really matters when coming in to teach a lesson and

the students who do not know you. I used questioning as a formative assessment, but because a

lot of the students had not seen me before, they had a hard time sharing their answers. Likewise,

I was uncomfortable because I had not met this group of 7th grade students before because I

originally planned to teach 8th grade (as I observed them for 3/5 of my visits). I think that student
teaching will help with this as I will be able to get to know the students better and feel more

comfortable questioning and engaging with them.