What Do New Teachers Need to Know About Assessment? (Episode 7)

Janet Taylor joining me now. Janet, how are you?

I am doing well. How are you, Tim?

I am also doing well. I’m excited to tap into your expertise about assessment. I think you know more about assessment than anyone I know. So I’m very excited about this because very few people are actually super passionate about assessment. But would you put yourself in that category? Would you say you’re passionate about assessment?

I definitely always say it’s really geeky, right? That I love assessment so much. And I always joke too, right? It’s not like I woke up one day and I was like, “I cannot wait to write some rubrics,” right?

Right.

That is not where it came from. So I get excited to talk about it because I feel like it’s so much more than what we think it is, right?

Yes. And there are layers to it. We will dive into all of that today. But like I said, you know a lot, you’ve written a lot about this, and I’m hoping that you can guide all of our new teachers through some of the ins and outs. I’ll throw a few things in here and there, but we will rely on you a lot today. So let’s start with, I guess, just some really basic stuff for everybody who’s starting out, everybody who’s just starting to care about assessment. So basic question, what is the difference between formative and summative assessments?

It’s a great question. I think that this is an area that when you’re a new teacher is probably one of the most confusing parts-

Yep.

… and I’d like to just kind of maybe simplify it for everybody, right?

Yes, please do.

So formative assessment is the day-to-day, moment to moment feedback that you’re getting with your students to help them get to where they need to go. And the summative is demonstrating what students know and can do. It’s still feedback, and you can use it for a lot of different ways, and we can talk more about that, but those two things are very important. So formative is getting you to where you need to go, summative is showing what you can do, if that makes sense.

I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that’s a very simple explanation. And I love the idea, formative is just that day-to-day stuff, those conversations you have, just making small tweaks, small pieces of feedback, things like that. And then summative is sort of the end goal, and I think that works.

Right.

So basic question number two. Just kind of looking at the big picture, what is assessment overall and how do we differentiate between assessment and grading?

That is also an excellent question because really there’s so much to unpack when it comes to assessment. But again, in its simplest terms, assessment is feedback. That’s all. It is feedback for the students, it is feedback for you. Grading is the thing that we all dread, and I think that’s where everybody says, “I hate assessment.” And it’s, “No, I think you really just hate grading.”

You hate grading, and we need to not conflate the two, right?

Right.

We need to keep that separate. Assessment is the feedback that should be happening very consistently, and grading are all the little numbers that go in your gradebook.

I mean, truly it’s the assigning of those letters, numbers, percentages, any of that stuff that goes towards student skills, concepts, and behaviors, right? Now, you can assess student skills, concepts, and behaviors-

Yes.

… give feedback and help them get to where they need to go without putting a grade in, or even if you do, those two things should still be in your mind separate, right?

And one of the biggest pieces I want to make sure that people think about when they think about grading is that grading is also arbitrary, it’s inaccurate, and it is highly inequitable. And I can go in about all of those things, right?

I was going to say that feels like topics for another podcast.

Definitely. I wrote an article about that. So if you were looking for that, you can kind of access that. But here’s a thing. Grading is still that system, unfortunately, that we work within. And then there are ways, again, to make your grading practices more equitable, but that, like you said, is a better topic. I might touch on some of those today because it’s really hard not to talk about that, right?

No, please do because I think that’s something that everybody needs to think about when they are grading, when they’re setting up their gradebooks, their rubrics, et cetera. But like you said, we will kind of get into that. So I want to talk a little bit about assessment. And I feel like this is something that you and I keep repeating in all of these new teacher podcasts is that it takes a while to get it right. And I would say for me, it took me probably a decade to actually realize how to be effective with assessment. I’m not saying I was a complete failure, but I got things right here and there. I feel like I did a lot of things right, but it took me a long time to really feel like I was able to tie it all together, have an overarching plan for how everything was going to work. So I guess for you, how long did it take you to realize that assessment goes way beyond just grades?

So same here. I mean, it took me, I am guessing a solid eight years for me as I was digging into my teaching practice and trying to ask some really big questions about what was going on in my classroom, right? I was thinking about why were my students saying things like, “Will this get me an A?” Or, “Am I done yet?” Or, “Is this good enough?” And I thought-

Yes.

… “That’s a problem for me because I’m all about learning for learning’s sake, right? Authentic learning connections.”

So I guess digging deep into those questions and then how am I actually working through my curriculum and how am I scaffolding things in a certain way to get my students to use their critical thinking skills, right? That is when I started to think, “What am I doing that is not supporting that?” Right? And that’s when I kind of got into assessment. And it’s funny, I just spoke at our local conference, our state conference about sneaky assessments, right? Creative assessment, ways to engage creativity through assessment, and I said, “Also known as sneaky assessment in the art room.”

That’s a great name. I love that.

Because what it really came down to as I was talking about it, I was talking a lot about curriculum scaffolding. And I think a lot of times people look at all that and they’re like, “I’m doing all of that.” And we’re like, “Right. Those are the assessments.” And so thinking about where your students are going and kind of working backwards and think, “How am I actually supporting them?” Those are the assessments, right? Because every little piece that you’re kind of scaffolding up to it, you’re thinking about, “How are my students doing with that?” Right?

Right.

“Do they need more help? Do they need more extensions? Do they have it already before I even started?” Those kinds of things. And that informs your decisions with your curriculum, right?

So that’s the part it took me so long. I used to think, I mean, as, I think, most of us, right? That it was like, “Here’s my lesson, right? I’m going through my unit. I want my students to get to this point. And then how am I inserting exit ticket, bell ringer?” Right?

“How am I putting a rubric together at the end?” Right? And those were the parts that I realized assessment is not an add-on, right?

It should be integrated organically throughout to inform where you’re going.

And that’s exactly what I was saying, and I said it took me forever to figure out how to make it a comprehensive piece, how to make it whole, because it always was just something that you tacked on at the end or like, “I’m told that I should do this. Where can I fit it in?” But like you said, the end goal is to make it be a part of everything that you do.

Right. And I would say, on that same front, if you wait until the end, right? You have this project or artwork or whatever you’re doing unit, and you create a rubric for that, you’re like, “This is what I want my students to come out with,” right? And what I noticed, right? Is that I was either spending a 1,000 hours grading this student work, and maybe my students who were getting an A on the rubric really were kind of doing mediocre work, right? Or students who were doing incredible work weren’t hitting the specific criteria on my rubric, right? So something was not working, and I realized two things were happening, right? It was my assessment tool is not accurately measuring what I’m teaching, or most commonly both things, not just an and/or, right? It’s usually both. I didn’t set them up along the way so that they knew that those were the pieces that I wanted to make sure they were getting at the end.

Yes. Those are conversations that you should be having throughout, and I think that’s a good way to think about it. I want to shift gears a little bit because I want to talk about just some of the very basic logistics. I think it’s good for new teachers to talk about the logistics of grading because it can be so overwhelming just like, “What do I grade? When do I grade it? How do I organize it?” So let’s just start right now with how you set up your gradebook, because I think things can be different for everybody as far as, “How do you grade? How many points things are worth? What your district or your school is going to require of you when you’re setting up gradebooks? So I guess, Janet, what advice would you have for people as far as what they should think about when they’re setting up their gradebook?

Right. So starting out, I would say keeping it as simple and clean as possible. And what I mean by that, first of all, like you said, Tim, everybody’s set up is a little different based on your school, your administration, the expectations, right? So some schools will say, “Formative must be no more than 40% of the total grade,” or, “You can only do 10% of homework or whatever it is,” which by the way, that’s one way I make my grading equitable is I do not-

Yes.

… have homework and grade that. So you have to look at those parameters first. But the cleanest way that has worked for me, and it may not work for everybody, there are two options usually. One is grading by total points and grading weighted categories, right? And I’ll tell you what, figuring out all that math and the percentages and the weighted category, my brain cannot handle all of that, right? So I usually say, formative is worth X percentage, summative is worth another percentage, and then I have a final exam grade, right? And that’s the total weighting that I do. But then within my gradebook, everything is out of points and I make it add up to total points. So for example, I might have formative work that I am actually grading, I think we’ll talk about that, right?

Well, that’s another thing we need to talk about today, but go ahead.

So formative that I might actually grade might be five points, might be 10 points, might be 20 points. I usually don’t go even more than 20 points. Does it matter? No, because it’s all out of total points anyway for that grading for the formative weights, right? Which might be, let’s say, 20% or something like that, let’s just say. And then summative, I always do it out of 100 points or depending on what it is. So a summative artwork, students have been working a couple of weeks on this artwork, then that’s 100 points, right? Because they’re demonstrating what they know. Again, within that, it doesn’t matter because it’s within that category, right?

Yes.

But I might do something like smaller summative work, right? So maybe they’re practicing some things, but they’re still demonstrating, it’s still more than formative. And so maybe I’ll give that 50 points of a summative artwork or something like that. And so that way, I’m in control of kind of how things are weighted within the category, but Ultimately the category weights kind of-

I was going to say your gradebook can still be 70, 30 or whatever.

Exactly. Right. And to me as I’m explaining this on a podcast, it sounds like, “What are you talking about?” Right? But truly keeping things total points, I think, is the easiest way and simple way to go.

Let your gradebook do the math after that.

Exactly.

Yep. I see a lot of questions, get a lot of questions about, “How many things should I be grading? How many grades should I put in per week? How many grades do I have every quarter?” And I don’t know. Janet, how would you answer that one?

So again, that is very specific to your school. When I was teaching, I’m trying to remember, maybe it was Chicago Public Schools, they were adamant to hold kids very accountable and make sure you could see the grades and the gradebook, and parents could see that, right? They required three grades per week, which I was like, “How are we going to do this?”

That’s tough to do in art class.

It’s really tough. And so what does that actually look like? I mean, that we can talk more about. But I think personally, it’s more important to kind of have a consistent part of your grading process and getting those grades in timely, because there’s no point of putting a grade in, especially for formative, right? If you’re going to grade that, there’s no point in waiting two weeks to grade that or put that in.

Yes.

Then there’s no feedback coming back to the student, right? And they can’t fix it for next time. So I think those, that’s a big piece. And I’ll tell you again, this took me years to get to a point where I finally feel really good about my grading practices, right?

No, I was the same way. It is very difficult to find the time to grade what you need to grade, but I would say you need to make it a priority because I had a lot of times, this is just one example of, I guess, the consequences of that. I would wait a couple weeks to grade everything, and then I’d put in five grades at once with sketchbook, practice work, assignment, whatever else I was grading. And then all of a sudden, kids who can access their grades at any time are seeing these huge fluctuations in their grade. They go from a C- to an A or a B down to a D because they didn’t turn something in. And it would be no feedback, no feedback, no feedback, all of a sudden you have a D. That’s very stressful, man. That’s not really fair to them to make them ride that roller coaster. And same thing for parents. That can be a lot of anxiety where you’re not seeing any grades for weeks and weeks at a time, and then all of a sudden the grade just drops huge.

Then a student looks at it and they’re like, “Wait, what was that?”

Exactly. Like, “I don’t even remember that from two and a half weeks ago.” And so I would just say it needs to be a priority for you. Maybe not the top priority, but at least make sure then that you’re doing it consistently.

So kind of jumping on that though, I will say again, the difference between grading and assessment, right? So remember assessment is the feedback. So all the stuff that you’re giving feedback on, whether that’s in the gradebook or comments on a handout or final scores on an artwork or whatever it is, needs to be timely. So that truly for me has become what I am focused on, and it helps me decide what I’m going to grade and not grade, right? And makes me focus on, “Did I give them the feedback? What’s most important? Is it the feedback or the grade at this point?” Right? Sorry, go ahead.

No, that’s okay. Well, and I want to get to that point, but I have one more. We’re kind of in a speed round question here. But what about completion grades? How do you feel about completion grades?

I definitely do this. Okay. So this happens when, for example, I have to put a grade in, like I said, if I have three in a week, maybe I’m just checking off to say, “Hey, the kid did this.” Or maybe that’s the culture of the students, the parents’ expectations, that kind of thing. Or I really want students to focus on the learning in a low risk way-

Yes.

… and I don’t need to ding them or penalize them on a grade, right? Because they’re still learning it. And so I just want to make sure that at least they’ve done the work for it so then I can work on fixing that for the next assignment or whatever it is.

Exactly. And I feel like that’s a good way to get kids to experiment and to try some new things because a lot of times you break out a new technique or get out a new material, and kids are very anxious about that and very apprehensive like, “What if I’m not good at this?” And that’s a good way to just say, “I don’t care if you’re good at it, just try it. I just want you to give this a try. I just want you to experiment with this. And as long as you do it, full points.” I think that’s an easy way to sort of take some of the anxiety off of those kids and just make sure that they’re trying the new things that you want them to try.

I mean, that’s a really good point because a lot of times too, they’ll be like, “Am I going to get points off because I didn’t do X, Y, and Z or couldn’t do X, Y, Z.”

Right.

And I had that happen just the other day. They were like, “I am struggling with this technique. That’s kind of hard.” And I was like, “It’s okay that you didn’t get this right now.” And they were like, “Am I going to get points? And I’m like, “Points? First of all, do you know who I’m. I don’t really work like that.” But they’re very concerned about that, right? I want to also mention about completion grades is a great way to start your semester because-

Yes.

… remember how we were talking about all the waiting and all that stuff. We were saying how the student’s grade can drop from an A to a D really quickly. So in the beginning, there’s no summative work, right?

All formative. And so student’s grades, if they’re not completing some of these formative things, they might be failing the class, but that’s not accurate of actually how they’re doing in class. And you really want-

Right.

… those grades to be more accurate depiction-

Yes.

… of what’s actually happening, not just because they didn’t turn in the assignment or whatever it is, but you saw them working on it. So that’s a good way to give some completion grades so they’re starting off kind of in a strong sense as opposed to in the deficit.

That’s a really good point. Now, Janet, we’ve kind of teased this question a couple times, but we’re going to dive in now. How do we know what is worth grading? How do we know what’s worth assessing? And the big question, is it ever okay to not grade some work?

So I guess the big important takeaway today is that everything you do is worth assessing, but not everything is worth grading.

Yes. Everybody who’s only halfway paying attention to this, focus right now. Janet, can you please repeat that?

This will be our big takeaway from today. Everyone listen.

All right. Everything is worth assessing, but not everything is worth grading.

Perfect. Thank you. And can you explain just a little bit more?

So first of all, I probably have generally given my feelings about grading in general, right? And so when we talk about everything is worth assessing, so if you are giving students work to do, the whole point is that work should be driving them towards the end goal. If it is not doing that, then why are you giving it in the first place?

Tim Bogatz:

Yeah, what is the point of it?

What’s the point? And then also the information. So again, assessment is feedback. So we didn’t really talk too much about this, but what I mean by that is that whatever information that the students are providing to you, whether that is you’re observing it, you are seeing it in a written form, you’re seeing it in a practice or exploration form, you’re seeing it in the final artwork, right? Whatever it looks like to you, you’re taking in that information and students and you should be doing something with that, right? So if I am giving work to do, right? And I’m noticing that some students are struggling with that, right? Then my intention should not just to keep moving forward without-

Right.

… assessing those students, right? And on a side note I guess, that’s where the differentiation piece comes from. How they talk about differentiation, I think that’s really hard for us to wrap our heads around.

Really, I would like to say also that as art teachers, we go a step above differentiation and we individualize, right? Learning. And so if we’re not actually addressing those students’ needs, whether that’s in an intervention form, whether that’s general supports along the way, whether that’s giving a challenge or an extension to a student who’s doing above and beyond, whether that’s noticing your students are struggling like 70% of them did not get this concept, then you either need to reteach it, right? Then and there, or you have to say to yourself, “70% of my kids didn’t get this. I need to embed this skill again into the next unit,” right? So it doesn’t end there. It’s not like a one and done like, “I assessed this, I gave a grade and I’m done.”

All of that information should be informing your instruction period. So that’s what I mean by everything should be or is, right? Worth assessing. And then not everything is worth grading. And I think we kind of talked a little bit about some of these reasons earlier, right? Not everything needs to be graded because maybe you… So I’ll give you a big picture example of something not worth grading. So let’s say 70% of your students didn’t get that technique or whatever it was. Should you be penalizing your students because you maybe didn’t teach it well enough, right?

Right. That’s a tough pill to swallow sometimes, but it’s worth thinking about.

I mean, I definitely think if my students didn’t get something, and we all know we’ve been there where we were like, “I swear I have drilled this into them-”

Right.

… “We’ve talked about a million times.” They are just like, “What’s happening?” There’s some disconnect. I think about that as a job of mine, right? What am I doing? How can I deliver this differently? How can I reteach this in a different way to get them to get it? Right? But they should not be penalized in gradebook because they didn’t get it, right?

Something big picture was missing. Now, 10% of your kids missing something, then we’re talking about-

That’s a normal day in the art room.

Exactly. Maybe even 20%, right?

Yep.

Could even go up to a quarter, whatever it is, right? So that’s an example of something I would adjust my rubric, adjust my grading, maybe decide not to grade something, maybe give them a completion grade instead, right? So everybody gets the points for trying and I’m going to try it again, right?

Yes. Exactly.

I also say, so there’s two more pieces of assessment that I think can be very confusing for new and veteran teachers alike. So we talked about formative and summative, right?

Yes.

There’s also, drum roll please.

I was going to say, do we need to add more, Janet, really?

There’s also formal and informal, which either of those can also be formative or summative. So formal, I look at is like usually those typically graded pieces. So a summative rubric is a formal assessment.

But so could also a quiz that you’re giving them or a technique practice thing where you’ve taught them a bunch and now you’re asking them to show you that real quick, right?

That can be formal, right? Informal is usually that observation, the dialogue, the quick in the moment adjustments. Now, of course, summative can be informal, but it typically formative is the informal piece, right?

So when I’m thinking about what to put into gradebook or what to grade, that informal stuff is typically not in there. Sometimes I might give them points for persistence or points for something just to show that they are still working on these things throughout. But pretty much that’s kind of also delineates which one I’m putting into gradebook or not.

That makes a lot of sense. So can we talk a little bit more about those different types of assessment, I guess? Because I’m just thinking about looking for some just simple strategies that the teachers can use right away. If they’re listening to this, what can they take away and use right away? What does that type of assessment look like in the classroom? I don’t know. I’m just thinking about different ideas that the teachers can implement, maybe things that they have heard about but don’t use or things that may be new to them. Can you just give us a list of, I guess, ideas for assessment?

So again, I like to be as creative as possible, right? And I didn’t always, right? I might’ve given very stale bell ringers, I might’ve given exit tickets that were… Again, because we sit in institute days and this is what they talk about in our all school discussions, right? They’re like, “Implement this, implement that.” And you’re like, “How do I translate that into my classroom?” And also you think to yourself, “This is what the administration wants to see,” right?

Right.

And it’s just not authentic to what we do in the art room. Now, you can absolutely use them. I still do it occasionally integrate some of these things. I might do a quick quiz, for example, like a five point. I just want to make sure they understood the vocabulary or understood the safety techniques or whatever it is. I might toss a five point quick quiz on my Google Classroom or whatever it is, right? So that’s an example of that. Sticky note feedback. Great. I love to use sticky notes. So I use sticky notes-

I also love sticky notes. They are great. Well, because kids can get nervous about talking to each other about things, so I’ll have them write little mini critiques on sticky notes and then put them on the back of the work. And it’s a good way for some pure feedback. But anyway, sorry to interrupt.

No, let’s talk about critiques for a moment because I think that’s a pretty common assessment that we use in our classroom, right? And so one thing with critiques, just remember that you don’t want to wait until the end to critique.

Yes.

First of all, I don’t know about you, Tim, but every time I did an end of project critique, it was like crickets, right?

Yes.

They’re just all staring at it, nobody wants to talk about their work, it’s really uncomfortable hearing someone share about your work in front of the whole class, and they’re always like, “It’s cool. I like it.”

Right. You have to use some serious strategies to get them to actually talk.

But I feel like end of project critiques, they can have their place, especially-

Yes.

… with advanced kids, but I feel like for the most part, they’re a missed opportunity because everybody just walks away going, “I should have done that,” or, “I should have tried this.”

Yes.

And I think midpoint critiques or just before you even start critiques, I don’t know what the fancy name for that is, but just if you’re critiquing ideas and beginning sketches and basic composition stuff, those are both great because they can lead to improved work.

And that’s a great way to use the sticky notes, right? So students are even planning out their sketches. So before they even start their artwork like you said, you can have them have a sticky note at their place with their sketches, jot out kind of what they’re thinking or a question they have about their planning, right? And students can walk around and jot onto the sticky note. It’s a little bit more low risk, like you said. You’re not speaking out about it, kids are giving feedback. Do that a couple rounds, you get a couple of different voices in there, and that really helps, right? Or along the way, maybe you can do a more targeted question. You can say, “We’re looking at composition today. Which composition is best?” I don’t know. I’m kind of making this up on the fly, right? But it could be like, “Did I refine my work enough?” Right? “Are the edges smooth on this pot?” Or whatever it is, right? You can ask them to write down a question about their work. And I think that’s really powerful too because, again, this is my geeky assessment part, right?

You can gather how students are responding to each other, you can gather what vocabulary students know and don’t know, you can gather how they’re asking about their work. I mean, that’s really important to know if they can even articulate questions about their own work, how are they thinking about their work, which we don’t always see, right? So all of that. And then you have to think, “How am I going to then teach my students how to talk about their artwork or ask those questions?”

Right.

So again, all of that feedback from a very low risk aka sneaky assessment like, “Hey, we’re doing this,” or sticky note quick draws. Like I said, students are showcasing a skill that they have, that they came into the classroom with. Are they imaginative? Are they able to shade on their own without even prompting? What levels are they at? Right? And then dialogue, right? I think you and I were talking about this the other day that you like to spend time talking to your students, right?

Yeah. I love to do one-on-one critiques sometimes at the midpoint, sometimes at the end, but just being able to sit down because like you said, talking about your work in front of the class can be super scary sometimes. But if you can just sit down at the table, call a kid back to your desk where you can just have a good conversation for a couple minutes, and just like you said, make their thinking visible, have them talk about what they’re thinking, what they’re doing, and just having that private one-on-one conversation, I think that can be incredibly valuable if you can make that work, right? When I have 35, 36, 37 kids in my class, it’s real tough to find that one-on-one time, but it’s still possible sometimes. Then when I have smaller classes, when my advanced classes get a little bit smaller, it’s something that I like to do a lot. And I think it can be really valuable to just be able to have that discussion with kids at any point throughout the project.

And I think even just bouncing around the room and asking students, “Where are you at? What are you thinking about?” And to be honest, when we talk about evaluations and that kind of stuff, that’s where that level of questioning comes in too because you can dig a little deeper and really kind of have those conversations. And yours might take a little longer, you can do them in split seconds and get a lot of information from your kids.

Right.

I just want to touch on a couple more quick strategies for-

Yes, please do.

So practice is a great example of a quick assessment to give them too., right? So let’s say I’m teaching shading one day. So I could start by saying, “Here’s a worksheet that we’re all going to do, right? That shows how to shade different things, right? But it’s all empty. We’re going to do this as a class. I first want you to take this and explore on a separate piece of paper in your sketchbook what you think these things look like.” That gathers information. Now you know what you need to teach or not teach. Some kids, they might even come with already shading experience. Great.

Right.

You don’t have to spend a lot of time on that then, right? Then, they can do it as a whole class, right? You can see how they follow those directions, you can help them in the moment adjust their shading techniques, right? And then you can have them apply it in a low risk way to just kind of play with mark making, for example. So now they’ve shown you what they knew before, they’ve practiced it, they’re exploring how to apply it in an actual way, and then you can take those pieces and say, “Here’s a lot of assessment that I just did. They are all meaningful and not just busy work,” right?

Right.

Students actually can make those connections, and I think that’s really important. So another thing that I love to do too are goal sheets. So I set a lot of… I have an article on that one, and I think it’s called time management, using the studio habits of mind for time management. These goal sheets are really great because it helps students make their thinking visible. They can write down their goal for the day, they can come up with questions that they need to start thinking about, whether that’s for me or for them, they can then talk about successes that they had, right? Actually celebrate at the end of class-

Yep.

… and then at the end, what are some next steps for tomorrow? And it just really helps them also break down stuff. But you are gathering so much information from just these quick checks.

Right.

Can I share one more important story? I know. I was like, “This is going to be short. We’re going to get this done.” But is it okay? Do we have time?

You didn’t even wait for me to answer if it’s okay.

I know.

Right. Is it okay if I do this? Go.

I’m going to do it.

Yes, please do.

All right. So one really important thing I wanted to share was about, remember how we talked about bell ringers or exit tickets, things that we expect our administration to do. So I had created these bell ringers with a colleague of mine. We had this incredible curriculum, and so we made these bell ringer sheets that were for a week, right? So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And we thought, “The kids will come in, we have a bell ringer on the board, they’ll write the bell ringer on the sheet, they’ll answer the question, right? Fold it up, put it in their sketchbook for tomorrow. They’ll do the same thing over and over. At the end of the week, then we will take that and we will assess it-”

This sounds like a great routine.

Doesn’t it? It’s a total good procedure. It really is. These are procedures and routines, right? Kids come in, they know what to do, et cetera. So sometimes we would sprinkle in questions that were very specific to what they were learning, and sometimes we would just sprinkle in some fun questions to get to know our students or get them thinking outside the box, right? Again, great idea. At the end of the week, the students would turn that in, and then can you guess, Tim, what happened to those bell ringer sheets?

No, I would like you to tell me.

So this sounds familiar from earlier. So they kept stacking on my desk piles, piles and piles.

And then after about four weeks, they were such a big pile. I just kind of threw them in the garbage recycling bin and gave the kids the points or took it off my gradebook or whatever, right? I never asked about them, they didn’t care, whatever. So here’s the thing I want to make sure that new teachers think about when they’re creating their procedures for assessment, right? That bell ringer had the intention of supporting students’ learning, right? But it was not actually an assessment because nothing was timely feedback given back to them-

Right.

… whether it was a grade or my comments. The bell ringer was a great classroom management tool, right?

So it served that purpose. If you want to do that, then maybe don’t grade them or maybe give some completion points or whatever we talked about.

That can be a classroom management tool, but it is not an appropriate assessment unless you are giving timely feedback that is helping kids get to where they need to go.

I think that’s a great point, and I think something to keep in mind. You think of that as a classroom management tool because that is the reason you’re doing it. If there’s not an explicit learning target there or a reason for doing it other than this is how we need to start class, it’s probably not an assessment.

And it was like a perfect great way to start the class, right? Kids knew they can come in, they would settle down, they would do what they needed to do, I could take attendance, right? It was great, just not a great assessment.

Yep, exactly. No, that’s a great point. So talked about lots and lots of formative stuff here. I would love to sort of get your perspective on summative assessments, rubrics specifically, because I’m just thinking back to when I was a new teacher and what my rubrics looked like, and they looked suspiciously like the teacher who came before me, like their rubrics. Looking back now is like, “Everything’s worth exactly 100 points, and effort is a huge part of that.” And just like our participation grades and just lots of stuff I didn’t love. And I eventually got to this point where I was much more intentional and much more specific about what was in my rubrics. And so I guess I just love your perspective with that too. When you’re writing rubrics, when you’re writing summative assessments, the formal ones, what do you value? And I guess part two, I don’t know if you have a similar story, but has that changed as you’ve moved throughout your years as a teacher?

I feel like we could do a whole podcast just on rubrics or summative assessments because-

See, Janet, this is where nerding out over assessment maybe is a little too much. I don’t know that we need an entire podcast on rubrics.

I mean, I know I get really excited. But listen, it’s just that it’s complex, right? It’s not-

Yes.

… super simple to just be like, “This is what you do.” So I also would come in and have the teacher prior because a lot of times, especially as a new teacher, you’re usually teaching a couple of different classes that other teachers have already taught, right?

So maybe you’re the extra section of art one, maybe you’re the extra section of photography, whatever it is, right? Now, if you’re elementary, middle school, that may be very different, right? You were probably the only teacher. So this topic, I feel, of rubrics tends to gear more towards the upper levels, but can easily be modified for the elementary. And I think elementary, you’ve got 1,000,004 students, and what do rubrics look like and how do I assess that? Right? So I will say this. So I started off with all of those super long detailed rubrics or checklists or points that were like, “This times two, this times four.”

Yes.

And I was like, “How does this math work?” Again, you’d be surprised to know that I actually went to school originally to be a physics teacher. I know. Do you believe it?

I love that I’m learning this right now.

Math though, it’s like, “If you don’t use it, it’s just gone.” It’s gone in my brain. So I’m like, “I need to compartmentalize the math side.” So I guess it was not until after doing all of that deep work that I really realized what we needed to be assessing, right? And it wasn’t just me. I mean, it started with me thinking about my classes, thinking about this, but it rolled into a whole department discussion about what’s happening with our students, right? And we realized, so all of these rubrics were really focused on, like you said, probably technical, right? Design elements and principles and effort or participation, right? And so we realized that as we were working through that it was not valuing the creative process, which is what we as a department valued-

Right.

… that our students understood the whole process and we’re digging into the whole process, not just looking for that graded outcome to check the boxes. We wanted to see their thinking and to see them developing meaningful expressive artwork, not just really great still life, right?

Yep.

… some technique that we’ve taught them. I’m looking at design, so composition, elements, and principles, that kind of thing. I’m looking now also at critical thinking. And this was a big piece because a lot of times too, rubrics will ask for creativity, and how do you-

Right.

… define creativity? Right? And so I decided, “Well, you know what? There are pieces that make us creative or make our work more creative, and that all comes into critical thinking, decisions, and problem solving, and meaning making in all of those areas. And then the last one I have is refinement, and that is kind of those critiquing, making sure we’re using critiquing throughout. So students are asking for feedback, whether that’s organically or formally, right? How they’re responding to their peers, but also what are they going to do with that feedback? Because again, we don’t want our critique feedback to be one and done, right?

Right.

We want it actually them to say, “I’m taking in this information. Whether they choose to use that information fine, right?

But how are they using it? How are they making those intentional decisions? So those are my overarching concepts.

And then I have the next column is skills. And so skills are specific to each one of those. Now, here’s the thing. I don’t always grade or assess all of those concepts, right? Depending on my artwork, right? So I might be just focusing on one technique, and maybe I’m looking at technique and composition, right? I’m not looking for meaning making, I’m not looking for refinement. I’m just focused on those concepts, then that is all I’m looking at to assess.

Another area that I’m looking at is maybe splitting in. So maybe I have two techniques that I want to look at, right? That are important and essential, and maybe I’m focused on this unit on refinement.

Now, here’s the thing is that we are teaching so much all the time. How do you boil that down to what is that you’re assessing in a rubric? Right? Really asy to look at an artwork and say, “My gosh. I’ve taught 20 different things, so I need to assess 20 different things.”

And the focus should really be what is essential for that particular artwork for students to move forward. So let’s say in the last unit, I taught composition and most of them got it, and I feel [inaudible 00:45:58] about it. Maybe in this one, even though it talks about composition, right? Maybe I don’t assess that in my rubric because that’s not as important at this time.

Yeah, it’s not one of the essentials, like you said.

Yeah. So it’s really about kind of looking and kind of boiling that down. Another way that I use these rubrics or think about how you evaluators like, “How are you writing the rubrics with your students for that?” Right? “How are you writing it?”

Of course.

And I often am like, “I’m not, right? But here are the ways that they are learning how to work through that,” right? So halfway through the unit, or as we’re working on our artwork, let’s say, so we’ve done a bunch of practice, we’re working on our artwork, I can ask the students, “We’re going to take a few minutes and we’re going to talk about what are the criteria that we’re looking for in this artwork?” And we talk about what are the objectives? What’s the point of this artwork? Let’s form those together. And I already have them formed in my mind, right? And this also tells me if they’re getting where we’re trying to go to, right?

Yeah, that’s a good point.

So if they’re talking about composition, but we didn’t even talk about composition in this unit, then maybe something’s a little off, right? Something is disconnect. So having them kind of talk about criteria and then breaking that into must-haves versus bonus, right? Those additional things that are nice to haves, right? But the essential. Having them work through that with you really makes sure that they know where they’re going and then you know you can only need to assess those particular criteria.

Right.

Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And I think for a lot of people, this maybe tough to visualize since we’re doing it podcast wise. So I’ll just tell you, we will link to the plug and play rubric that Janet has designed, and you can kind of take a look at that. And I think once you see it on the page, it really makes a lot of sense. It’s like a very intuitive rubric, I think. And so just check it out if that’s of interest to you, and I think you’ll see the value in it when you check that out.

So next question that I want to dive into though. We’ve been kind of disparaging toward effort and participation on our rubrics. And I would guess, like you say, these are more classroom management pieces, these are more behavior management pieces and just things you should be doing otherwise, not necessarily something that you should be assessing or grading. And I guess that’s my simple explanation for why they don’t belong on your rubric. But, Janet, can you dive into that and give us your perspective too on why we don’t want to put things like effort and participation in our rubrics?

So again, this boils down for me about my equitable grading practices, right? So first of all, you might have students who are in no control of their behaviors, right? That’s just part of their makeup, right? And so why are you putting that in when they can’t control that, for example? That’s like an extreme case, right? I always say, so I’ve had a lot of really great discussions about this with really great friends of mine because they were like, “Well, I think it’s important to grade behaviors. That’s really important to the art studio, right? Cleaning up and collaborating and all that stuff,” right? So I look at it like this, you can assess behaviors, and truthfully, if you want to grade behaviors, you can maybe put those into studio habits of mind or something like that in a separate rubric or separate grading category. But I do not put that into my rubric when I’m assessing an artwork hands down-

Right.

… because first of all, how do you know what that looks like? Right? You could have a student who is… Here’s a great example. I have a student who’s just kind of staring off into space in class, and I’m like, “Well, they’re not participating, they’re not giving their effort.” Who is it to say that they’re not thinking about their artwork?

Right.

And what does that look like to say they’re not outside of class talking to somebody else about their artwork and thinking through their ideas that are not even visible to you? Right? So I kind of look at it like that. I want to keep their thinking as visible as I can so that I can use that as evidence towards their artwork. It’s not my job to dictate what their effort or participation really looks like, right? The other piece is that it’s not in our standards at all, actually.

Yes.

So that’s a big piece. So that’s why I say if you’re going to put that somewhere, at least make it separate and identify it as, “These are maybe important pieces to my classroom workflow,” or whatever it is, right? And not in the artwork. So you could have a student do an amazing artwork, but maybe they’re not the nicest kid or something, right?

Right.

Maybe they’re kind of giving you some slack, maybe they’ve got their head down or whatever.

Maybe you just don’t like them.

Right. Maybe they’re just having a bad day. Whatever, we’re humans, right?

Yes.

Things happen, but their artwork is what you should be assessing, their skills, right? That’s what we’re looking at for the standards. I also think that this really leads to bias. So like we said, that kid that maybe you just don’t like. It happens, right? That kid that maybe is just kind of a jerk, and so you’re like, “Well, I’m not going to give them an A on this artwork.” Well, that’s bias, right? They deserve the A, you got-

They deserve the grade that they earned.

Exactly. And so a lot of times people say, “How can you grade artwork? Right? It’s so subjective.” And I say, “Let’s make it as least subjective as possible. Let’s keep everything, all of our bias out, and just focus on those essential criteria,” right?

Yep, exactly.

On a side note, so remember how I did say that evidence of learning, I mentioned that.

Yes.

So I just want to make a point too that I do have my students do reflections or things like that, but I don’t grade those because I look at it like, “I am not an English teacher, right? I’m not their ELA teacher. I am here to try to extract their thinking processes and use that so that I can be more accurately grading.” And so when we talk about behaviors is another thing. Unless I’m specifically teaching something, then I shouldn’t be grading it, right?

Yep.

So unless I’m teaching them how to write an artist statement and it’s got a formula or whatever, then I shouldn’t be putting a grade to it because I can’t expect them to just know how to do that.

And a little bit of a callback to what we talked about earlier. Artist statements are completion grade for me. I don’t care how well you write, I don’t care exactly what you’re talking about, I just want to know your thinking. And as long as you’re sharing that with me, you get the points for doing it.

Yep.

And so I think that’s a really good point. Janet, I was ready to wrap it up, but we have a question that came in via email and I figure we can end with this question. That’s a good one. This is from Kellen in Virginia. And Kellen says, “I’m enjoying all of these new teacher episodes, and thank you for putting them together.” You’re welcome, Kellen.

So kind of you.

“When you get to the one about grading,” which would be where we are right now, “can you talk about final exams? My district just told me that every subject area will need to have a final exam, and I don’t know where to go with that. What do finals look like in an art class? What do you do for finals?” Would you like me to take this first or do you want to take this first?

No, go for it.

When my district sprung something very similar to this on me, I was like, “Sweet, we’ll put together our portfolios, we’ll call it good.” And my principal was like, “Nope, that’s not going to work. They need to actively be doing something during that 90-minute timeframe,” or however long the final was. And so I had to shift my thinking a little bit, and I had them create an entire artwork from beginning to end in those 90 minutes. And so that’s what I told them, “You just have to create the artwork from start to finish in 90 minutes.” But then we spent the days leading up to that final doing all of the preparations we needed.

And so I would give them a theme and say, “This is the theme that we’re going to do. Do all of your brainstorming, all of your sketches, all of your ideas.” We’d give feedback, they would give feedback to each other, they’d plan everything out, they’d get all of the materials they want, have everything ready to go, and they literally come in for finals. I mean, they already had their paper cut for what size they were creating. They would come in, get all their supplies, all their materials, and just work for that entire 90 minutes. And then whatever they had completed at the end of that 90 minutes was the final. And so everything that kind of went into that process was part of the grade. And again, the finished product was not always spectacular because you only have an hour and a half for an entire artwork. But again, the grading was all about the planning, the process, all of those things that we talked about before.

But that kind of served its purpose for me. I mean, it was not an ideal experience for the kids, but I think it was an interesting one. It was a good challenge for them, and it sort of hit home, just kind of the art making process. And so I thought it was acceptable for finals within the constraints that my admin gave to me. So I thought that was good enough. So, Janet, what about you? What do you do for finals?

So I used to do that too, and I actually stopped doing artwork as a final because even if I was leading up to it, I usually was teaching a new technique or something like that.

Right.

It wasn’t really fair to make that cumulative. But also, no offense, Tim, that feels really stressful to me, 90 minutes to create an artwork, right?

Yeah, it was anxiety-inducing for sure for some kids. So I regret that a little bit, but I didn’t have anything better at the time.

I know, and things were different then, not quite how it is now, I feel like. But I also feel like they have so many other finals, these kids, super high risk finals that I just feel like that pressure in general just created too much. And I was like, “They’re in art class and I don’t want to put that pressure on them,” right?

Fair.

So that’s just me. I look at my students, I’m like, “They are so stressed, I don’t want to add more to that.” But I’ve also done things in the past where I’ve said, “We’re going to work on for the last couple of weeks, right? A self-portrait that showcases three of the following techniques you learn from class.” And I would give them a list of all the different techniques. They had to choose that, and that was really fun because they actually got to be really expressive and then pick which ones that they wanted to showcase.

I like that.

Sometimes I’ll do a fun quick artwork, something fast-paced, just kind of easy, like an artist trading cards, that’s a fun one so that they have some choice. They’re still demonstrating some of their decision making and their skills, and they actually get to express themselves. You get to trade those, that’s also fun. Recently I made them do portraits of themselves, and we made a book out of that. So it showed their portraits from the beginning of the semester, end of the semester, and kind of shows that growth, which is kind of fun.

Right.

But generally speaking, I actually now just create portfolios, and that’s really what I focus on. And cleaning the art room, that’s a big one.

Yes.

Do that then, I’ll be honest, because it’s part of our studio habits, right? But basically, my students are creating slides portfolios. You can do portfolios in a lot of different ways. You can toss them into a Google Doc and have them talk about their favorite or least favorite and why. You could have them talk about how they’re demonstrating skills and show some vocabulary, for example. You could just do that, right? But I have them create slide deck all semester long, and then at the end, they review their slides and do kind of a culmination reflection on the course like, “What would you vote off the island and why?” Or, “How did you overcome some of your obstacles?”

And so for me, it really was more focused on how are they working through the semester and not just an end result. And so that has worked really well for me too. And it takes pressures off of them. And I also say, “You’re not going to get the slide. The last reflection, you have to sit there and write,” or whatever on the last day. But it’s the same thing. It’s like 90 minutes, and maybe it takes them a half an hour tops-

Right.

… and then we clean. So that’s usually what I do.

That works. And I think just the big lesson is kind of within the constraints of your schedule and what your admin needs you to do and what you need to do to wrap up your class. And so I don’t know that there’s one overarching piece of advice or one way to do this, but hopefully the examples we gave may get people thinking about what’s possible. But, Kellen, thank you for the question. All right. Janet, it’s time to go, but do you have any final thoughts, anything that you want to share?

I guess that I just want to make sure people remember that assessment is not gross. Grading is gross, right? But assessment is really all the stuff we’re doing all the time. And one of my big takeaways always for veteran teachers is reminding yourself of all the things that you’re doing with assessment, being feedback, right? So that you can use that language and articulate that back to your administration too and say, “Look at all the things that I am doing to assess. It may not look like math class, right? But I want you to know these are how I’m assessing my students all the time.”

Absolutely. That’s really well done. And I would say just as we talk about with almost every one of these episodes, this is not something you’re going to figure out right now, something that you’re going to work toward. And so I would say just teachers can and should reflect on what’s important to them, what they want to value in their classroom, and then have the assessments kind of reflect that, whether you care about the process or the techniques or the composition or whatever, and just kind of have your assessments reflect that and push your students’ learning in those areas. And we talked a lot today about possible formative assessments that you can use. And so I hope people can find a couple that intrigue them or work for them. We talked a lot about rubrics and how we set that up, and so I hope that advice can be helpful for people as well. But just think about what you value, think about what is most important to you, and then kind of design your assessments around those areas. And I think that can be an incredibly valuable way to do things.

Yep.

All right. We will close it up there. Janet, thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you for all of your nerdy excitement and your expertise. We appreciate all of it.

Thanks, Tim. I always appreciate chatting with you.

Tim Bogatz:

I want to say thank you to Janet for the conversation. I appreciate all of her expertise when it comes to assessment. She has written so many great articles and has so much more to say, and we will put links in the show notes to as many of those articles as we can.

When it comes to assessment, I would encourage you to keep looking for new ideas and keep learning about the topic–as we talked about repeatedly, it will take a while to discover what is going to work for you in your classroom. But as Janet mentioned, when you do it right, it can be a valuable piece of your students’ learning as well as your own teaching. 

Our next episode, episode 8, will be the final episode of the series, on the topic of professional development. I hope you can join us again for that conversation, but until then, thank you for listening!