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The Arts In Every Classroom: A Workshop for Elementary School Teachers

Professional Development > The Arts In Every Classroom: A Workshop for Elementary School Teachers > 6. The Role of Assessment in Curriculum Design > 6.1 Getting Ready

Arts

K-2, 3-5

The Role of Assessment in Curriculum Design Getting Ready

Workshop Leader Susanne Burgess engages the Learner Teams in a discussion of assessment strategies.

(10 minutes)

The following information will help you focus and organize your professional development session.

Learning Objectives

  • Write a performance task to use as an assessment tool.
  • Align the performance task with a unit objective.
  • Design a set of scoring guidelines, or rubric.

Guiding Questions

These are questions for your group to consider as you work through the session:

  • How can assessments be used as curriculum planning tools?
  • What is the difference between a performance task and a performance?
  • How can you establish effective criteria for assessment in the arts?

Materials and Resources

Opening Steps
At the conclusion of Program 5, you were asked to consider how you would use the “backward design” process to develop your own curriculum unit. Discuss the difficulties and successes you might expect.

Facilitator: Encourage participants to begin thinking about assessment by discussing these questions:

  • How do we know students have learned what we taught?
  • What is the difference between a formative assessment and a summative assessment?
  • How are formative and summative assessments interrelated?

Series Directory

The Arts In Every Classroom: A Workshop for Elementary School Teachers

Credits

Produced by Lavine Production Group, Inc. in collaboration with KSA-Plus Communications and the Southeast Center for Education in the Arts. 2003.
  • Closed Captioning
  • ISBN: 1-57680-666-9

Sections

6.1 Getting Ready

6.2 Watch the Program

Supplementary: Assessment Design Process

Workshop 1: The Role of Assessment in Curriculum Design

Supplementary: Course Guide

Workshop 6: The Role of Assessment in Curriculum Design

Supplementary: Evaluating Performance Tasks Worksheet (with sample)

Handout

Supplementary: Performance Tasks Rubric Worksheet (with sample)

Handout

Supplementary: Criteria for Planning Multi-Arts Instruction

Reading

Workshops

Introduction 0 Arts Education

workshop 1 What Is Art?

The Learner Teams and students explore the nature of theatre, music, dance, and visual art as they consider their own definitions for each art form. They watch an excerpt from Quidam, a surrealistic performance piece that combines the four art forms in unusual ways, and begin to explore connections between fantasy and reality.

workshop 2 Responding to the Arts

Learner Team members and students compare two multi-arts performance pieces from different eras, Quidam (1996) and Parade (1917). They discover how our perception of a work of art is influenced by what we know about the time and place it was created. They also explore how music can establish a mood, create their own vaudeville acts, and learn a process of critical evaluation.

workshop 3 Historical References in the Arts

Learner Team members and students examine costume designs for Parade, focusing on how the designs help convey character. They interpret works by painter René Magritte and choreographer Alwin Nikolais, discovering influences on the creators of Quidam. They also conduct research into the history of street performance and report their findings, in the role of art historian.

workshop 4 Creating a Multi-Arts Performance Piece

Learner Team members and students examine the elements of the classic journey as identified by Joseph Campbell. They then create a multi-arts performance piece that represents a journey story. They apply what they have learned in previous lessons in order to rehearse, critique, revise, and perform their work.

workshop 5 Designing a Multi-Arts Curriculum Unit

Learner Team members are introduced to a curriculum design process that asks teachers and students to focus on why rather than what — sometimes called backwards design. The teams begin to construct their own arts-based units of study, identifying enduring ideas and constructing essential questions that lead to carefully planned unit objectives and performance tasks.

workshop 6 The Role of Assessment in Curriculum Design

As the Learner Teams continue working on their own units, they examine strategies for determining how well students meet unit objectives. By revisiting the lessons in the first four programs, they discover how to build formative and summative assessments into the units that they are developing.

workshop 7 Three Schools, Three Approaches

Documentary segments filmed during the next school year show the Learner Teams planning and teaching arts-based lessons that grew out of work in the first six programs. Discussions at the end of the school year, facilitated by one of the workshop leaders, give the Learner Team members a chance to reflect on some of the developments in their teaching practice.

workshop 8 Building on New Ideas

More documentary segments show further work by the team members with their students, among themselves, and with colleagues. The end-of-year discussions continue, with team members reflecting on how their new initiatives in the arts have affected them and their schools, and offering advice for other teachers who want to bring the arts into their own classrooms.

Supplementary Classroom Materials Demonstration Video

Programs 1-3

Lesson Plans What is Art?

Program 1 Lesson Plans