Reading, Writing, & Oral Communication

A key part of art education is learning how to evaluate works of art---your own work, the work of your peers, and even the work of professional, well-established artists. I designed this critique reflection for my middle school classes to help students frame their thoughts in a way that could helpfully be presented to the group during discussion, and to help them assess their own work to determine which criteria they met and which they did not---I've found that giving students the chance to identify their own areas for improvement before offering them constructive criticism is a wonderful way to build agency and accountability, and makes your feedback feel more like a collaborative, helpful dialogue, and less like a judgment. Entering the critique space can be a very vulnerable experience, and this kind of reflection helps students to prepare for it and have a sense of autonomy throughout the process. It also ensures that feedback is constructive, as the questions I ask are very restrained to the realm of identifying the artist purpose and evaluating if that purpose was achieved, if the craftsmanship was  strong and the technique/concept that was covered was demonstrated, and staying away from vague and unhelpful ideas of whether or not a piece is "good" or "bad." 

This demonstrates indicator 6P, which states that the competent teacher, "teaches students to develop written text appropriate to the content areas that utilizes organization (e.g., compare/contrast, problem/solution), focus, elaboration, word choice, and standard conventions (e.g., punctuation, grammar)." The text that students are producing for this reflection are highly organized and focused, and follow the habits of thinking and writing practiced by professional artists when critiquing work, which prepares young artists to enter the discourse by familiarizing them with a very specific way of thinking about, writing about, and evaluating art. By asking students to fill in the blanks to discuss the specific techniques, academic vocabulary is also encouraged, and reinforces the learning objectives by reminding students that the goal of the project is to explore, apply, and demonstrate mastery of the targeted skills. 

I developed this assessment choiceboard for 6th and 7th grade students to prepare them for the experience of a group critique, where the whole class gathers to discuss and offer feedback for each artist's work. Students can sign up for 1 of the 3 self-assessment options based on their preference for organizing their thoughts in writing, in conversation with me, or by talking through their thoughts in a voice memo or video. This ensures that students are preparing for the critique and framing their reflection in an artist's practice, but gives them options to do so in the way that is most natural to them: if writing was tedious, they could record themselves, if they wanted feedback as they went, they could talk it over with me, but if they were more shy or introverted, they could fill out the reflection handout. 

This demonstrates performance indicator 6Q, which states that the competent teacher, "integrates reading, writing, and oral communication to engage students in content learning." The choiceboard activity allows students to engage in both reading and oral communication, and students will follow up with oral and written communication during the group critique, as well, even if they chose to only write or speak for the self-assessment. Self-assessment reflections engage students with the content even after the project is finished, reinforcing the skills and ideas learned and connecting what was learned to why it was learned, and identifies any areas that still need to develop.