INTASC Standard #8
Assessment of Student Learning
The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
Headings for INTASC standards are taken from - Campbell, D.M. et al. (1997). How to develop a professional portfolio: A manual
Assessment provides a challenge for instrumental music educators because often our class sizes are double or triple what most other educators encounter. However, the importance of assessment cannot be understated. As instrumental music educators, we must create the time to provide effective feedback to our students. This can only be accomplished if we are regularly assessing our students in a valid and reliable way.
Informal assessment should be taking place daily in the instrumental music classroom. Teacher should be questioning, observing and listening constantly to assess learning and modify instruction appropriately. Also, instrumental music educators should be formally assessing students on a regular basis and not solely on the psychomotor domain. We should assess performance but also we need to be assessing cognitive learning as well as development in the affective domain.
Teachers benefit from assessment because it allows for reflection on teaching effectiveness. For example, if I finish a lesson and my students are not able to meet the behavioral objectives I set in my lesson plan as an assessment tool, then I know that my teaching was not effective that day and I need to formulate a new angle to approach the concept through. Students benefit through having clearly stated expectations to meet and by receiving feedback to help them improve and learn to self-assess. Additionally, the music program benefits from assessment because it provides a strong advocating tool. By making music a subject that has real, tangible proof of assessment over a period of time, teachers can better advocated for music’s place in the school.
There are two umbrellas under which assessment can fall. It can be either informal or formal assessment. Formal assessment is assessment through the use of tests, performance tests for skills, projects and other things that are very obviously assessing student knowledge and ability. Informal assessment is perhaps even more important but more difficult to conceptualize. It is assessment that is not as overt. It can be questioning the class or through observations of student achievement through the course of the lesson. It is often not as obvious to the students as formal assessment and therefore provides some inherent benefits.
When assessing students, teachers need to consider three areas: knowledge, skills and attitude/preference. These are three domains of learning and need to be assessed equally and effectively. Knowledge is assessing the cognitive domain and assessing the concepts of music. A knowledge question would be “what is tempo?”. To assess knowledge, several tools exist. This is a place to use the standard written test or quiz but also questioning can very effectively assess knowledge of music. However, teachers need to be mindful that their questions are effective and appropriate. Teachers should always consider the levels of higher-order thinking they are engaging.
Skill is the second area for teachers to assess. Skills are in the psychomotor domain. Just because a student understands cognitively, does not mean they have the skill to do it and vise versa. An example of a skill would be demonstrating playing proficiency on their instrument.
The third area for teachers to assess is attitudes and preferences. This is the most overlooked and difficult to assess area and it is in the affected domain. An example would be assessing students’ ability to value music that is new to them. Tools to assessing this difficult domain would be to really know your students so that you can better understand them, really listening to students and what they are saying and using cooperative learning and opportunities to work with peers.
Self-assessment is a learned behavior but one that can be developed early and is a vital component to effective assessment and learning. For students, self-assessment can help them to feel ownership of their own growth and of music class. Students should have the opportunity to help create assessment tools and portfolios or cumulative projects are great opportunities for students to self-assess. The teacher should play the role of guide in developing students’ abilities to think critically about their own growth and can most easily do so through the use of questioning. Teachers need to be constantly self-assessing as well. We need to constantly be refining our teaching strategies in order to better educate our students. The best way to provide optimal education for students is to have a teacher who self-assesses on instruction because instruction will be constantly improving.
Informal assessment should be taking place daily in the instrumental music classroom. Teacher should be questioning, observing and listening constantly to assess learning and modify instruction appropriately. Also, instrumental music educators should be formally assessing students on a regular basis and not solely on the psychomotor domain. We should assess performance but also we need to be assessing cognitive learning as well as development in the affective domain.
Teachers benefit from assessment because it allows for reflection on teaching effectiveness. For example, if I finish a lesson and my students are not able to meet the behavioral objectives I set in my lesson plan as an assessment tool, then I know that my teaching was not effective that day and I need to formulate a new angle to approach the concept through. Students benefit through having clearly stated expectations to meet and by receiving feedback to help them improve and learn to self-assess. Additionally, the music program benefits from assessment because it provides a strong advocating tool. By making music a subject that has real, tangible proof of assessment over a period of time, teachers can better advocated for music’s place in the school.
There are two umbrellas under which assessment can fall. It can be either informal or formal assessment. Formal assessment is assessment through the use of tests, performance tests for skills, projects and other things that are very obviously assessing student knowledge and ability. Informal assessment is perhaps even more important but more difficult to conceptualize. It is assessment that is not as overt. It can be questioning the class or through observations of student achievement through the course of the lesson. It is often not as obvious to the students as formal assessment and therefore provides some inherent benefits.
When assessing students, teachers need to consider three areas: knowledge, skills and attitude/preference. These are three domains of learning and need to be assessed equally and effectively. Knowledge is assessing the cognitive domain and assessing the concepts of music. A knowledge question would be “what is tempo?”. To assess knowledge, several tools exist. This is a place to use the standard written test or quiz but also questioning can very effectively assess knowledge of music. However, teachers need to be mindful that their questions are effective and appropriate. Teachers should always consider the levels of higher-order thinking they are engaging.
Skill is the second area for teachers to assess. Skills are in the psychomotor domain. Just because a student understands cognitively, does not mean they have the skill to do it and vise versa. An example of a skill would be demonstrating playing proficiency on their instrument.
The third area for teachers to assess is attitudes and preferences. This is the most overlooked and difficult to assess area and it is in the affected domain. An example would be assessing students’ ability to value music that is new to them. Tools to assessing this difficult domain would be to really know your students so that you can better understand them, really listening to students and what they are saying and using cooperative learning and opportunities to work with peers.
Self-assessment is a learned behavior but one that can be developed early and is a vital component to effective assessment and learning. For students, self-assessment can help them to feel ownership of their own growth and of music class. Students should have the opportunity to help create assessment tools and portfolios or cumulative projects are great opportunities for students to self-assess. The teacher should play the role of guide in developing students’ abilities to think critically about their own growth and can most easily do so through the use of questioning. Teachers need to be constantly self-assessing as well. We need to constantly be refining our teaching strategies in order to better educate our students. The best way to provide optimal education for students is to have a teacher who self-assesses on instruction because instruction will be constantly improving.
Artifact 1- Perception Chart for Listening Lesson
This artifact is a perception chart that I used as part of a peer teaching episode for my Secondary General Music Methods course. We were asked to execute a listening lesson and develop a perception chart to guide student listening and assess student understanding and learning. This artifact demonstrates my ability to create and utilize tools for measuring student learning. Also, this demonstrates my ability to develop lessons that have opportunities for formal assessment of student learning.
Artifact 2- LAMP Project Assessment Tools
This artifact is a series of documents that I generated as part of my Learner Assessment Model Project during student teaching. We were asked to develop a pretest, execute a three week unit and then give the same test as a post test. Mine included a written and playing test. The entire document is too large to have on this website but is available upon inquiry through email. This is simply the assessment tools that were utilized as part of that project. This artifact demonstrates my ability to create authentic and valid assessment tools and in the context of the project to prove student learning.