EBR’n with Art’s PLC
Jon Grice - Fine Arts Director
Over the past year, our Visual Arts teachers decided to take twenty different Art classes and adopt Evidence Based Reporting across our curricular sequence. Similarly to our colleagues in Dance, Theatre, Orchestra, and Guitar, we took the all in approach to create common learning targets that would be used across all of the Art department classes. The process demanded collaborative participation from all team members and as a result, I was able to observe added benefits of how our teachers develop and use common curricular language, while realigning their assessment and grading practices.
To begin this process, we accepted that we would move away from using course specific learning targets and move towards a holistic set of learning targets. This was a major change since all of our previous Art department semester exams had close to 30 different categories that students were evaluated on! While the variety of outcomes reflected all of the singleton courses we offered, it also reflected a lack of common language throughout our program. We recognized that moving to EBR quickly changed this! As we began developing our holistic learning targets, the Art Teachers began to change the way we spoke about our curriculum immediately.
Our teachers were able to unify their language and speak about their lessons, instructional strategies, and assignments using common learning targets. I also saw this common language being used during observations, Open House, and when conversing informally with students and faculty. The unified language illustrated that the team was on the same page and able to articulate the department outcomes clearly and easily.
The other major result of moving to holistic learning targets for our Art Department was that teachers focused on their assessment and grading practices. From the initial stages of moving to EBR, the Art Team decided to unify the format of their rubrics to allow space for both teacher and student scoring and written reflections. While student involvement and reflection was always valued as part of the Art Department strategies, the new common unified language allowed us to achieve higher levels of assessment practices amongst all team members.
The Art faculty then considered how their holistic rubrics would be used for different course projects and in their grade books. They began to include specific success criteria that would be listed near each learning target on the rubric. The added list of keywords and observable traits continued to help both our teachers and students to understand the specific expectations for each project. The team then began to layout their grade books and worked together to develop a plan of when and how often they would enter scores for each class. Together they developed unit by unit plans of when each targets would be assessed. Most impressively, towards the end of the first semester they opened up their grade books to determine how their initial plans ended up working out. Together they shared their grading practices and when their plans diverged from one another discussed ways to improve alignment.
Finally, the Art team has worked to continuously improve their inter-scorer reliability. During team meetings, they have discussed course projects and specific qualities that would earn a student a 4, 3, 2, 1 for each given target. While the team initially used this as a time to share, they have now began asking teachers to score the artworks first, then discuss reasons why they assigned a specific score.
This process has actively involved team members to engage in collaborative activities that allowed team members to align scoring and address concerns if a learning target was not as clear as it should be. While the process has not always been smooth the Art Team has continued to refine and improve their team’s grading practices.
To begin this process, we accepted that we would move away from using course specific learning targets and move towards a holistic set of learning targets. This was a major change since all of our previous Art department semester exams had close to 30 different categories that students were evaluated on! While the variety of outcomes reflected all of the singleton courses we offered, it also reflected a lack of common language throughout our program. We recognized that moving to EBR quickly changed this! As we began developing our holistic learning targets, the Art Teachers began to change the way we spoke about our curriculum immediately.
Our teachers were able to unify their language and speak about their lessons, instructional strategies, and assignments using common learning targets. I also saw this common language being used during observations, Open House, and when conversing informally with students and faculty. The unified language illustrated that the team was on the same page and able to articulate the department outcomes clearly and easily.
The other major result of moving to holistic learning targets for our Art Department was that teachers focused on their assessment and grading practices. From the initial stages of moving to EBR, the Art Team decided to unify the format of their rubrics to allow space for both teacher and student scoring and written reflections. While student involvement and reflection was always valued as part of the Art Department strategies, the new common unified language allowed us to achieve higher levels of assessment practices amongst all team members.
The Art faculty then considered how their holistic rubrics would be used for different course projects and in their grade books. They began to include specific success criteria that would be listed near each learning target on the rubric. The added list of keywords and observable traits continued to help both our teachers and students to understand the specific expectations for each project. The team then began to layout their grade books and worked together to develop a plan of when and how often they would enter scores for each class. Together they developed unit by unit plans of when each targets would be assessed. Most impressively, towards the end of the first semester they opened up their grade books to determine how their initial plans ended up working out. Together they shared their grading practices and when their plans diverged from one another discussed ways to improve alignment.
Finally, the Art team has worked to continuously improve their inter-scorer reliability. During team meetings, they have discussed course projects and specific qualities that would earn a student a 4, 3, 2, 1 for each given target. While the team initially used this as a time to share, they have now began asking teachers to score the artworks first, then discuss reasons why they assigned a specific score.
This process has actively involved team members to engage in collaborative activities that allowed team members to align scoring and address concerns if a learning target was not as clear as it should be. While the process has not always been smooth the Art Team has continued to refine and improve their team’s grading practices.