Practical Teaching Tip: Formative Assessment A-B-C Exit Slip

If you are like me and teach at a public school, I am sure you have felt the push to include more reading, writing, math and science into our art classrooms. A couple weeks ago we had a meeting with teachers from different content areas and the focus was on different types of formative assessments. I found this one interesting and decided to share it with all of you!

A-B-C Activity (not a real official name, but oh well)

How it works.... 

I am going to do a lesson on George Segal and my students are going to create "tape people". I am sure you have heard of this project before, if not I will be sharing photos and such in the following weeks. Generally, when I introduce a project I start off by showing the students a PowerPoint Presentation about the projects where I share artists, student work, professional artist work, etc. After I show the PPT, as and exit slip I am going to have the students complete this activity.

With their table they are going to write down words that can be associated with George Segal. The goal is for them to come up with at least 1 word for each letter of the alphabet. After the students have completed the paper (about 5 minutes or so). I will put my paper up on the projector and I will call on groups at random to tell me what they put for the first letter of the alphabet and then keep doing this until we have gotten through the entire alphabet. Then the tables can add these words to their sheet.

Here is the blank sheet before they begin.

After I introduce this lesson I will post photos and updates :)

I would love to hear your input!

• How do you include Formative Assessments into your classroom? 
• How do you tie the 'core' classes into your curriculum?

Practical Teaching Tip: Grading Rubrics

I know there are many schools of thought when it comes to assessment. However, for me I have found that utilizing detailed rubrics have been most productive in a high school setting.

Reasons detailed grading rubrics works:

• Students have a clear understanding of what I am looking for when I grade their projects
• Students are able to complete mid-project checks or formative assessments based on what they need to change or work on before they turn the project in
• Students can use the rubric to grade one another
• Parents have a clear understanding of how I am accessing their student's artwork
• My opinion about whether I think the art is "good" does not come into play
• It is very easy and fast to grade a project when all you have to do is check off boxes
• When I grade projects I do it during class through a critique so the students know what their grade is right away

Here are some examples of the way I set up different rubrics. The first section to the left is the criteria to which I am grading the project. The columns to the right is the amount of points awarded.

Sample Glaze Rubric

 (my ceramic projects get graded once for the project before it goes into the kiln and then again after it has been glaze fired)

3D: Glaze Rubric                                  
 Project Title:                                                                      

Name:                                                                                                                Class Period:                                            Grade:        /35

1.        Sketch a diagram of your piece on the back, color it with colored pencil and label the names of the glazes.

2.        What color scheme or variation of one did you choose? Circle: Primary, Secondary, Warm, Cool, Neutral, Complimentary, Analogous other:                                                                                

3.        What glazing technique did you use? Circle: Stencils, sgraffito, staining, under glaze, wax resist, layering, glass or mixing

Criteria	Weak (1)	Poor (2)	Average (3)	Good (4)	Excellent (5)
Color Scheme: Choose one of the following above or a variation. Overall the colors go well together.
2+ Coats: Student used 2 coats (or more depending on what the label stated) of glaze on entire piece.
Wax on Bottom: Student sealed bottom signature with wax. Glaze that accidentally got on the wax should be wiped away with a wet sponge.
Technique: Student included one of the techniques listed above
Bisque Ware was Properly Cleaned: Student washed piece before it was glazed, there is no crawl.
All areas are painted neatly: There is no bare clay body showing, all areas are cleanly painted.
Completed Questions Above	1	-	2	-	3

How do you grade art? I would love to hear NEW ideas :)

Happy Friday Art Lovers! Take time this weekend to make some art for yourself even if its just a drawing in a sketchbook.

Advanced Art Class Midterm: Student Art Blogs

In the past I have had my advanced art students create a website to showcase their artwork that they have created this year and previous years (as an online portfolio). This year I decided to do something different. I realized that when the students tried to log into their account second semester to update their website for the final exam, they forgot their passwords and in general didn't do much with the website- making it useless.

I am an avid Pinterest-er and have seen many posts from Apex High School. When I clicked on their actual blog I got inspired. The art teacher at that school has the students create an art blog- what a great idea! My students always ask if they can take pictures of their artwork to post on instagram and other social media outlets, so why not tie into my curriculum what they are actually interested in- social media.

For 3 days we went down to the media center and my students set up their blog. I still wanted to retain the aspect of the online portfolio so those requirements were still embedded in the rubric. By adding the aspect of the "blog" I wanted them to post 5 blog posts. I left it very open-ended; I told them that the idea behind this was to document the process of their art or they could use it as a personal reflection to the projects that they have created

.  

The requirements for their grade included:

• A page for an artist statement (it could have been about a specific artwork that they created this year or just about their art in general)
• The blog had to look professional, but still show their personality (you can see some students went a little too casual for my liking, we will be doing some updates when we get back from break).
• There had to be a short biography
• The Portfolio or Gallery had to have at least 5 images of their artwork with labels (name, title, size, medium and year)
• ...and their blog posts

HERE is the link to the page on my blog where you can see my student's blogs!

I am excited to see how this develops throughout the school year. I plan on having the students post a least once a week and also doing online critiques through the comment section of the posts. 

Art Teacher: if you have ever tried anything like this before, share below- links, successes, failures and comments are always appreciated!

On another note, at this time tomorrow I will be officially on Winter Break!!!!!!- oh wait scratch that I have a game tomorrow night too-

 #artteacherbyday #cheercoachbyafternoon #wifeandsoontobemommaattheendofthenight

Practical Teaching Tip: Differentiated Instruction Study Guide Visual Art

It's that time of the year....midterms. To help my students study for their exam they are working on a study guide. My PGP (professional growth plan) includes a focus on including more differentiated instructional strategies, so for their study guide I created a Tic-Tac-Toe board. Each prompt has a different prompt which they get to select. The beauty of this project is that I get free visuals out of it. This year I started to make big posters with illustrations on the steps to glazing, creating a slab box, etc. BUT, I was getting behind on other tasks by creating these for each project, so by having them to do this now I can select the best ones to laminate and hang around the room next year.

Assignment Sheet

The posters that I made for my room

Students working on their visuals for the study guide