Dancing Around Assessment: Bridging the Divide Between Points and Feedback
Melinda Criglar, Angela Dauphin, Janet Rothwell, and Tiffany Van Cleaf - Fine Arts Division
In the early days of dance assessment we struggled with using the school’s system of points to reflect and communicate to students their grade and more importantly to provide them information for growth. Our old system did not aid in our assessment of students’ learning or understanding of dance material. A student could just naturally be a great mover but that did not mean they understood more in depth dance concepts and movement within the body. We teach dance beyond imitation and want our students to truly embody movement for themselves.
This being said we needed to create a rubric where students would know course expectations and take on the responsibility of achieving the goals of the class. In the past we had rubrics for every assignment and the downfall was that the goal of every assignment would shift and we found ourselves constantly re-inventing the rubric wheel. We began to create one rubric to go beyond numerically scoring a student and instead one that would encapsulate the expectations of the course and would simultaneously provide important feedback for the students.
We started with what the pillars (standards) for the course are: Technique, Choreography, Content Knowledge and SEL. Next, we categorized all the rubrics we had into these Standards and then finally outlined the learning targets. We then changed the language from very specific to more broad and all encompassing. We were careful to use language that was user-friendly and changed the tone of the rubric from what students could NOT do to what students could DO.
This is an evolving process which has lasted for few years and still continues today. We started with 143 targets then scaled to 60-70 targets. In order to limit the amount of targets, we developed rubrics that scaled the expectation and only list the success criteria instead of the reverse. We now have approximately 16 targets that we assess at different times throughout the year.
What we realized from all of this is that “Content is the variable and the target is the constant.” This is the fundamental principle of quality formative assessment that we have determined throughout this process. We have one set of rubrics for all Dance class levels and although the content and rigor increases as students progress through the year and through the levels, the target remains constant for everyone. See example of our current rubric below.
This being said we needed to create a rubric where students would know course expectations and take on the responsibility of achieving the goals of the class. In the past we had rubrics for every assignment and the downfall was that the goal of every assignment would shift and we found ourselves constantly re-inventing the rubric wheel. We began to create one rubric to go beyond numerically scoring a student and instead one that would encapsulate the expectations of the course and would simultaneously provide important feedback for the students.
We started with what the pillars (standards) for the course are: Technique, Choreography, Content Knowledge and SEL. Next, we categorized all the rubrics we had into these Standards and then finally outlined the learning targets. We then changed the language from very specific to more broad and all encompassing. We were careful to use language that was user-friendly and changed the tone of the rubric from what students could NOT do to what students could DO.
This is an evolving process which has lasted for few years and still continues today. We started with 143 targets then scaled to 60-70 targets. In order to limit the amount of targets, we developed rubrics that scaled the expectation and only list the success criteria instead of the reverse. We now have approximately 16 targets that we assess at different times throughout the year.
What we realized from all of this is that “Content is the variable and the target is the constant.” This is the fundamental principle of quality formative assessment that we have determined throughout this process. We have one set of rubrics for all Dance class levels and although the content and rigor increases as students progress through the year and through the levels, the target remains constant for everyone. See example of our current rubric below.