WISCONSIN ART EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
  • Home
    • Home Archive Feb-May 18, 2020
    • Home-Fall 2019-Feb 2020
    • About
    • Membership
    • Contact
  • News
    • Art Times
    • NAEA News & Information
  • Educator
    • Collaborate: 2022 Fall Conference
    • Art & Soul 2021: Highlights
    • 2021 Art & Soul: Fall Conference
    • High School Art Teacher Survey
    • Advocacy
    • Awards
    • WAEA Grants >
      • Hunzinger Grant Application
      • Potawatomi Grant Application
    • Non-WAEA Grants
    • Professional Development
    • Art-Making & Exhibitions
    • 2020 Vision: Fall Conference
  • Student
    • Visual Arts Classic >
      • Board Members (VAC)
    • Visioneer Design Challenge
    • Youth Art Month 2021-22
    • Youth Art Month 2020-21
    • Youth Art Month 2019-20
    • Youth Art Month 2018-19
    • Scholastic Art & Writing
    • Wisconsin School Board Association WAEA Award
    • Student Art Contests & Scholarships
    • Student Art Classes & Camps
  • History & Fellows
    • Fellows 2019-Allen Caucutt
    • Fellows 2019-Anna S. McNeil
    • Fellows 2019-Ron Stokes
    • Fellows 2018-Janet Carson
    • Fellows 2018-Bill Schulman
  • WAEA Board
    • WAEA Calendar 2021 - 22
    • Board Members (VAC)

Assessing Student Assessments

3/18/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Julie Miller, NE Region VP

Assessing Student Assessments

In recent years, many school districts have turned to an increased focus on student assessments. At first, it seemed like just another heaping helping to an already full teaching plate. Then I realized that much of what was being required of all educators was something that art teachers already did—a lot—the administration was just putting it into words.

The new National Core Art Standards suggest that assessments should be imbedded in learning, which is the essence of an art project. The projects allow the students to apply their knowledge of art concepts instead of just reiterating them on a test. It is my opinion that application of learning is a more accurate and practical measure of understanding how to use an art concept than merely writing the words. I have had students that do poorly on the written tests, but create beautiful projects when they apply the concepts to their work. Therein lies the issue where some of the debate among art teachers centers—how to use a common assessment throughout the district with multiple teachers and multiple schools using multiple projects. The solution can be simply to have an assessment that is based on the standards and on the agreed upon student learning objectives. It could be used as a stand-alone test or used as a rubric, which could be applied to any project used to teach the standards and SLOs. This is definitely easier said than done!

There are many positives on my list of what can be gained from assessments in art education. I have found that assessments have made me more aware of my students’ needs. For districts involved with PLCs (Professional Learning Communities), this is essential to what we do in the classroom. The focus is on how students learn, not how we teach. If assessment results show that we need to change up some of our methods, it does not mean that we are doing something wrong, just that it was not the best approach for our students’ learning.

Assessments have also made me more aware of basics that may need re-teaching. For example, a recent CFA (Common Formative Assessment) that I gave to third grade on complementary colors revealed that the students that struggled with complementary colors did not have a grasp on primary colors. I might have overlooked that obvious data otherwise because of the assumption that all third graders certainly must know primary colors.

Assessments have also made me more aware of which of my teaching methods are most effective for retaining learning over time. Through my CFA’s, I found that more of my first graders were better at warm and cool colors than they were at primary and secondary colors. I use raps and lots of visuals for learning warm and cool colors, so I’m thinking I need to develop the same approach for primary and secondary colors. CFA data has shown me that the projects that begin with students experimenting with the media they will be using in the projects provide a better, more lasting understanding of the concepts than projects where I just explain the concepts to them.

Assessments also help me see which grade levels that projects are most appropriate for. If the whole class goes well beyond expectations with a CFA given during a project, perhaps the rigor is not there and it would be better suited for a younger grade level.

Assessments have helped me improvise and revise projects in progress to meet student needs. For example, after reviewing the results of the CFA on complementary colors, I revised a third grade drawing project to include mounting cutouts of the drawings on woven backgrounds of complementary colors to give added practice with that color concept.

Assessments have also helped me revise my expectations of how many projects I can plan on completing during the year. More is not better. I do fewer projects each year than when I first started teaching, but with more introduction, more experimentation, more enrichment activities, more collaborative work, and hopefully a deeper learning and understanding of the concepts.

My overall feeling about the increased focus on assessments is that, although time-consuming and not always easy to fit into our schedules, they do offer valuable information to help us focus on our students’ learning. The catch is, we have to look at the results not as a judgment on our teaching, but an assessment of our students’ learning. We have to be willing to use the data they give us without letting our pride get in the way by repeating our favorite lessons that are not producing the desired results in our students. We have to be willing to change our methods if collaboration with other teachers shows their methods are getting better results than ours. We have to be willing to use the assessment data to improve student learning, not as indicators or our proficiency as teachers. In the end, the primary focus of assessments must be the needs of students, not teachers.

0 Comments

March is Youth Art Month

3/18/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture







March is Youth Art Month 

Lynnae Burns

WestCental-VP

YES! It is Youth Art Month time! I know that many of you have been busy preparing your student 

art for our annual Youth Art Month Exhibits. Our middle school art teachers just completed 

hanging our citywide annual art exhibit in celebration of YAM at our public library. Our 

elementary art staff will soon be joining us and displaying art in both our north and south branch 

public libraries of La Crosse. During these shows, our district invites each of our school board 

members to come view the exhibits and select one piece of art to hang in our school district 

boardroom. Late in spring, students and their families are invited to a fine arts recognition 

ceremony to meet the board members that chose their work. These artworks get framed and 

are displayed for the school district board and attendees to see until the following Youth Art 

Month shows. This event has been a wonderful way to showcase and celebrate our youth artists 

in our school community.

Let us embrace our regional and state level Youth Art Month Exhibits. I have been enjoying 

seeing and hearing from the regional VP’s on their regional exhibits. This has been an amazing 

opportunity to oversee over 30 of our region’s teacher YAM submissions. Our regional show is 

being installed at the Heider Center for the Arts in West Salem, and will be on display starting 

February 2nd. Our exhibit will end with a closing reception for the artists and their families on 

February 19th from 6-7:30pm. Shortly after that, this show will be packaged up and be ready for 

transit to the State Capital Exhibit on February 21st. 

This year’s change to our Youth Art Month submission allowed all WAEA members to submit up 

to five student works (two more than last year) with three of those five going on to the State 

Capital YAM Show. We anticipate that the State Capital Rotunda will be overflowing with the 

magnificent artworks from the art studio classroom from all over the state. It is my hope that 

each of you is taking the time to celebrate your students’ artistic accomplishments with them 

and their families. 

YES! I can’t wait to see our art fill the Capital.

0 Comments

Organizing Assessments with Google Forms

3/18/2015

0 Comments

 
Organizing Assessments with Google Forms

By:  Sarah Higley

When I began teaching elementary art two and a half years ago, I was immediately overwhelmed by the responsibility of assessing almost 400 students. The online grade book that my district provides is not user friendly for a teacher that sees every student in the school. Therefore, I set out to find my own way of organizing grades and assessments. The solution I found has served me well for nearly two years, and I hope it might give you some ideas about how you can organize your grades as well.  

First of all, this process works much better if you have an iPad that you have access to all the time. The first step is on my regular computer.  I create a Google Form for each class that has my report card standards on the top, then an empty space for the project we are working on, followed by a list of all the students in each class with the options of 1, 2, 3, 4, incomplete, and absent below each name. Yes, this step is time intensive, but I figure that the time it saves me throughout the year is worth it.  

The Google Form functions like an online survey.  I can walk around the room with my iPad and tap on the grade I want to give each student. Then the magic starts! When I press submit, the information I put into the Google Form migrates to a Google Spreadsheet! This is why I love this system so much. I can pull up a spreadsheet for a particular class and see each student’s name with a list of their grades underneath. This is a function that I cannot do with the district grade book.


Depending on how your district does grading, this system may look different for you. I would suggest creating a practice Google Form and just playing around with it to see if you can make this tool work for you in your classroom. Even if my exact system is not right for you, you may be able to incorporate Google Forms to make your assessment organization more efficient. I hope this information was helpful!

0 Comments

    Regional VP's

    Picture
    Julie Miller, North East Region
    Picture
    Tim Znidarsich, South West
    Picture
    Lynnae Burns, West Central Region
    Jill Fortin, North Central Region



    Megan Sluyter, North Central Region
    Picture

    Archives

    March 2015
    January 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Accessibility Policy
NAEA
© Wisconsin Art Education Association 2021, Breanne Kanak,  Designer
  • Home
    • Home Archive Feb-May 18, 2020
    • Home-Fall 2019-Feb 2020
    • About
    • Membership
    • Contact
  • News
    • Art Times
    • NAEA News & Information
  • Educator
    • Collaborate: 2022 Fall Conference
    • Art & Soul 2021: Highlights
    • 2021 Art & Soul: Fall Conference
    • High School Art Teacher Survey
    • Advocacy
    • Awards
    • WAEA Grants >
      • Hunzinger Grant Application
      • Potawatomi Grant Application
    • Non-WAEA Grants
    • Professional Development
    • Art-Making & Exhibitions
    • 2020 Vision: Fall Conference
  • Student
    • Visual Arts Classic >
      • Board Members (VAC)
    • Visioneer Design Challenge
    • Youth Art Month 2021-22
    • Youth Art Month 2020-21
    • Youth Art Month 2019-20
    • Youth Art Month 2018-19
    • Scholastic Art & Writing
    • Wisconsin School Board Association WAEA Award
    • Student Art Contests & Scholarships
    • Student Art Classes & Camps
  • History & Fellows
    • Fellows 2019-Allen Caucutt
    • Fellows 2019-Anna S. McNeil
    • Fellows 2019-Ron Stokes
    • Fellows 2018-Janet Carson
    • Fellows 2018-Bill Schulman
  • WAEA Board
    • WAEA Calendar 2021 - 22
    • Board Members (VAC)