I thought teaching at the high school level would force me to look at assessments in a different way, but I realized that requiring students to take assessments is less about proving who is listening in class and more about how well I am presenting the information for student growth and achievement. At the kindergarten and first-grade level, students are at the beginning stages of their ability to read and write limiting my ways to find the means to assess students other than with oral or performance-based assessments. This year my high school students have allowed me to get more creative with my evaluations while keeping the fun in learning.
This month I am working through three different dance genres leading up to a culminating unit exam. Some of the ways that I have made efforts to reinforce the information through formative assessments are vocabulary memory, Powerpoint Jeopard, and student-led teaching sessions. Exit slips are another method that has always worked well for my students and honestly reminds them that through the fun we are having, the information being covered has a greater purpose and importance.
At the end of this month, my students will use their practice from vocab memory and exit slips to conquer a summative assessment that will cover everything from hip-hop, jazz and ballet dance history, and technique. I will be asking students to define, match, summarize and draw to assess their thinking. My goal for my dancers is to look deeper into what we are learning and practicing. Dance is more than a movement to music. Dance has history and language that sometimes gets forgotten by the dancers who claim to love it so much. My students have not had the privilege of being exposed to the many facets of dance other than what they have seen online and through television commercially. Combining this with the information processed through formative and summative assessments, my students have a better chance of gaining and maintaining information for longer than a semester.
