Back to School Data, Assessment, and Review
After the getting-to-know-you activities, after the name games, after the routines….. what’s next?
How do we know where to start the year from a musical content perspective? How will we know what students remember? How can we review and make sure kids aren’t bored? What if we’re at a new campus and we don’t know what students have done? How do we take information from singing games in a way that’s usable?
We probably all have at least a few of these questions, so let’s look at some possible ways to answer them.
This episode is a continuation of two other conversations:
Today we’ll emphasize the data-collection piece of the process.
Elemental Questions
Let’s break this down based on a few core questions:
What do we care about?
How will we get information about what we care about?
How will we use that information to tell us what to do next?
Types of Assessments
Three types of assessments can help us figure out what students need next: diagnostic, formative, and summative. The lines between between these assessments blur, both throughout the year and throughout the program as a whole.
Step 1: Active Musical Experience
Our first step is an active, collaborative musical experience - singing songs and playing games. During this phrase, we’ll primary listen and observe three key areas:
To what extent do students keep a steady beat?
To what extent do students match pitch in their singing voices?
What is the vibe of the classroom - how do students interact with each other?
We can use individual or group data, and those data can be qualitative or quantitative.
Data Collection for Checkpoint 1
As students are actively musicing, we can collect data that are either qualitative or quantitative, and apply to the whole group or to individuals.
In the first weeks of school, whole-class assessments are likely the most valuable.
Inside The Planning Binder there’s a PDF Seating and Assessment Chart. There’s also a free PDF download in this blog post.
Checkpoint 2: Aural Awareness
Are students aware of what they are doing as they music? How are they thinking about the musical sounds they hear?
Most of us listening follow sound-before-sight as a guiding principle, which in practice, functions as “musical thinking before symbol.” If we’re going to be on the same page later, we want to see how students are constructing musical maps before we move on.
This is where data get a little more concrete for us. What do students recall? How are they thinking about musical sounds?
Other Quick Ways of Collecting Data
Thumbs up, thumbs down
Numbers
Shapes
Self-Assessment
Checkpoint 3: Vocabulary and Symbol
In this third step, we emphasize a shared understanding of musical communication.
Importantly, students have already done the heavy lifting in the previous steps as they actively music and develop the musical definition of the target element.
Facilitating Checkpoint 3
This is a great time for students to be the teachers!
During this phase, we can facilitate think-pair-share activities and gradually transition to group discussions, using specific questions on the board.
Checkpoint 4: Creative Application
In the final checkpoint, we provide students with creative invitations to utilize the musical elements consciously. We might think of t his step as both a summative and formative assessment, as we get information on how we have done as teachers and what we need to do next.
Data Collection Approaches for Checkpoint 4
Data collection methods in this phase depend on the specific creative tasks assigned to students. We consider data related to content objectives, self-assessment by students, and broader concepts explored in the unit. Performance evaluations, self-reflections, and exit tickets can be incorporated to gather valuable information.
Wrapping Up, Moving Forward
We’ve talked today about answering three questions:
What do we care about?
How will we get information about what we care about?
How will we use that information to tell us what to do next?
And we’ve looked at several different types of data that we can weave into the assessment process.
The important thing about this approach is that it prioritizes what students do with music and how they think about music, over which symbols they have memorized. My administrator referred to it as “hands-on music” and I think that is a great way to describe it. This is hands-on assessment, and hands-on data, that we can use to let us know what to do next.
