MTSA ePortfolio EDUC9401

EVIDENCE SET 3- TPA 5

INTRODUCTION

The class that I focused on for this activity was a year 7 Visual Arts class. This is different to the focus class for my TPA3 as I had to change mentors, classes and focus students part way through my placement block due to an issue with my main Mentor experiencing the death of a family member and not teaching for a period of weeks. After discussion with my University Liaison and the school, my timetable was adjusted, and I continued with a new mentor. While this was challenging at the time, it gave me opportunity to work with more students and establish further relationships within the school, both with students and teachers.

Evidence Set 3 demonstrates planning for, executing and adjustment of assessment. Learning outcomes for planned activities are assessed to determine that criteria was met successfully. The CARES model (Context, Action, Results, Evaluation, Standards) frames this evidence set and draws reference to APST focus areas: 3.6, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5.

CONTEXT

The school is situated in a small coastal community with various links to the local environment. This was evident in the Art class that this TPA 5 assessment was designed for. Working with the curriculum (Australian Government, 2024), available resources and an ongoing unit of work, this task was able to be assimilated into the Under the Sea unit that involved several art mediums and offered cross-curriculum links to sustainability and marine environments. The lesson had elements of project-based learning (NSW Government, 2022) with a scaffolded direction from me, leading to a student-centred and hands-on activity that was differentiated by the students having agency to plan their own artwork and manage its complexity (Department of Education and Training, 2023). This meant that the lesson produced higher order thinking for the students by having them apply, analyse, synthesize, evaluate, and create their creatures in clay.
The students had the freedom to work independently while also having ongoing support available from the teacher. This allowed the learners to work through, with assistance, the challenges they faced and were able to see immediate results from their actions (APST 5.2).

ACTION

Being an art class, there is ample opportunity for informal and formative assessment. This has been demonstrated by discussing goals and plans with individual students and making suggestions to direct them with techniques or further research. Art is an avenue for naturally differentiated and student led learning opportunities (Tomlinson, 2014).

Strategies for assessment are varied as is the work in visual arts. Literacy focuses on the theory-based components such as analysis and reflections on works, whether it is the students own work or analysing another artist’s work. Metacognitive questioning is explored and developed in Visual thinking strategies (figure 3). I have worked with the class a number of times to present this in conjunction with practical time in lessons. This has kept it short, and participation is enthusiastic and positive. Students’ art vocabulary has developed noticeably over the 4 weeks since we introduced this task, and ongoing practice will broaden this even more. Timely and appropriate feedback demonstrates APST 5.2.

RESULTS

A Watercolour masterclass, and fine line pen masterclass, both were formative assessment tasks that the students had verbal feedback (APST 5.2) on during the lesson, and in the following lesson their experiments were returned, and they were given a comment and feedback on their work with the examples that they were most successful with highlighted and recognised. This showed the students where they were most successful with the skills demonstrated.

These were components of a larger unit of work, and they brought these techniques together to create their major artwork for the unit of work. The tasks were to give the learners the tools to use on their multi-skilled major artwork and I offered the lessons in steps so that they completed each component and then had those skills to use in their artworks. Feedback was in the form of verbal, in the class, and recognition on their trial watercolour and fine line examples that they had met the requirements of the task (FIGURE 4 and 5).

Demonstrate understanding of assessment moderation and its application to support consistent and comparable judgements of student learning (APST 5.3).

I created a rubric that addressed the criteria in the lesson plan to assess the main objectives and how well the students met this (figure 6). I created, for each student, a word document that showed the criteria and their grade.

I also added an individual comment for each student with more feedback on their artwork and what they could have done to improve their grade. This was uploaded to Daymap for each student. Most students had not completed the final stage of the task, so their grades were lower than they could have been, but my placement time was over, and I had already allowed extra time for them to finish the task. Due to the nature of clay and the time needed to dry and fire the pieces, we were able to utilise the time we had available to work on the other tasks making up the unit, as well as the extra TPA 4 task as well.

For this task it was based on a project that spanned 3-4 lessons to allow for creation, firing, glazing and finishing of the pieces. There were other classes related to their major artwork creation in between this clay lesson. The rubric meant that I could mark each students work based on meeting, exceeding, or not, the required parts of the task. (Figure 8-Clay pieces).

EVALUATION

Demonstrate the capacity to interpret students’ assessment data to evaluate student learning and modify teaching practice (APST 5.4)

This then led to the next task with clay due to the student’s success and enjoyment of the first clay lesson, and the second one was slightly more technical and had a shorter timeframe. For the second class/ lesson I ensured to stress the scratch and slip technique for attaching clay as some students had not done it well in the first lesson and needed to improve this technique. Improving the explanation and delivery of it with explicit instruction (AITSL, 2017), helped with the increased success of the second clay class. The task has been left open for the students to use a class or lunch time to finish their clay and get a higher grade. But this has been left for the individual to decide and the grade will stand. No student failed the task, although there were 4 that obtained no grade for this task as they were away when we started it and did not get to make a sea creature. Those students did get to participate in the second clay task.

I needed to address some students that were talking or distracted in class as these were the learners that needed instructions re-explained. I stopped talking when students were talking, and when they were still talking, I walked over to where they were until they realised and stopped talking. This was a successful way to manage this behaviour. My mentor praised me on this as a successful way to manage talking, and moving myself to where they were meant I did not need to ask them to stop and listen, and they knew that they had been given the opportunity to make good choices.

Demonstrate understanding of a range of strategies for reporting to students and parents/ carers and the purpose of keeping accurate and reliable records of student achievement (APST 5.5).

Reporting on daymap means teachers, students and parents have a live snapshot of where they are at with their learning and completion of work. Ensuring paper copies of notes/ calendars/ reports are sent home as well as via email so that there are alternate ways to just receiving information online. Data is collected by the teachers and reported within the school on assessment tasks. This enables the school to monitor teacher performance as well before too much time passes so that if there are discrepancies or issues, they are able to be rectified quickly. This is reflective of the style of teaching with formative assessment and ongoing feedback. It is the best way to monitor progress and alter what is happening to correct things in real time. Keeping accurate records and up to date ones means that students that may be struggling but have not been picked up yet are able to be helped before it’s too late. It also allows for intervention if there is a whole class that is not getting expected results and then the teacher can be supported to achieve better outcomes for both the students and the teacher.

STANDARDS

REFERENCES

AITSL. (2017). Explicit instruction. AITSL. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/tools-resources/resource/explicit-instruction-illustration-of-practice#tab-panel-1

Australian Government. (2024). The Arts | V9 Australian Curriculum. V9.Australiancurriculum.edu.au. https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/teacher-resources/understand-this-learning-area/the-arts#visual-arts

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2017). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/standards

Department of Education and Training. (2023). High impact teaching strategies. Department of Education. https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/practice/improve/Pages/hits.aspx

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203887332. Chapter 3, visible teaching and visible learning.

NSW Government. (2022, April 12). Design thinking and project-based learning. Education.nsw.gov.au. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/stem/early-stage-1-to-stage-3/project-based-learning-and-design-thinking

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of all Learners (2nd ed.). Pearson Education. Figure 2.1 Differentiation of instruction diagram.

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