Sami Auster
Art Educator/Artist/ Student
Instruction & Assessment
Why is art important to teach?
Art teaches students:
-Creative problem solving.
-How to think critically
-How to be patient
-How to break down difficult concepts visually,
thus making them easier to comprehend.
-How to express themselves and their beliefs visually.
-How to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
-How to respect and see things from multiple perspectives.
-How to "say" what cannot be said with words.
-How to embrace failure as a process for learning.
What is the role of assessment in art?
-Assessment drives instruction because data collected from an assessment delegates what needs to be taught more in depth.
-Types of assessment I use: Formative (Ex: Question of the day), Summative (Ex: Projects), Authentic assessment (Ex: Students learning to center on the pottery wheel)
-Feedback is crucial for every type of assessment.
-Assessment is for the teacher to learn what students understand and to discover gaps in knowledge which then informs what the teacher should teach.
-I am consistently assessing students using formative assessments and authentic assessments while students work on a project and then at the end of the unit/project I utilize summative assessments.
-Assessment allows students a chance to reflect on their learning by providing students with feedback on how well they understood a concept and showing the student what they still need to work on.
-When creating assessments I plug the standards into the rubrics I create. This ensures that students are being evaluated based on the standards.
How Do You Make Accommodations For Assessments?
There are multiple ways to make accommodations for assessments, some accommodations I often use are:
Presentation Accommodations: Allow students to access info in ways that don't require them to read print,some alternate modes include visual, multi-sensory, auditory and tactile.
Ex: Large print, different colored paper, sign language
Response Accommodations: Allow students to complete assessments in different ways such as verbally.
Ex: Having a scribe, tape recorder
Setting Accommodations: Change the location or conditions of the assessment setting.
Timing & Scheduling Accommodations: Increase the length of time to complete assessment or change the way the time is organized. Ex: Multiple or frequent breaks and/or changing schedule or order of activities.