Assessment Rubrics

Goal: Through my work with my Professional Learning Group, my goal is to develop and refine more objective standard and criteria for assessment of student work both of a formative and of a summative nature through the development of clearer rubrics.

Goal objectives: My goal for this year is to develop two new rubrics that help to address the grading issues associated with homework that has to do with rhythm playing and a clearer criteria for note reading home assessments.

This is a Rubric that breaks down all of the parts of the performance of a melody that help to make it a well rounded educational experience. In addition, there are specific criteria as to what quality of performance equals what type of grade.

The process of using these Rubics is two fold. First, it presents a fairly objective way of giving a grade to something that is often seen as very subjective. While it is still not as objective as Science, it still gives students a solid and clear way to see what were the components that comprised their composite grade for a homework assignment. Students are given two points just for announcing their piece and counting it off, and then also for using a metronome, because there are very important aspects of the homework assignment. However, without points being assigned, students would never do those parts of a complete assignment consistently. Once I assigned a few points to these parts of an assignment, it simply became part of the process that students did in completing their homework. Students who have done this for multiple years in the Instrumental Music Program do it without the need for prompting or points, it simple becomes the way that they do these assignments for me.

I have really enjoyed the process of exploring and developing rubrics for my students as a way of making both the expectations of my classes as well as the grading of my classwork and homework clearer and much more transparent. In recent years, there has been great efforts by leading thinkers in Instrumental Music education about how we foster growth in our students, and how do we assess and grade both the musical development of our students along with having more objective and transparent means of assessing student musical performance. While my efforts in the grand study are still very much a work in progress, I feel my interest and sensitivity to the constantly evolving and improving methods of assessing musical performance encourage me to continue to seek out and to try to develop better and clearer mode of assessing music student performance in a way that promotes students to work hard, continuing to grow, and to think deeply and critically about what they are doing when they are studying or performing with their instruments.