Assessment Practices for the 21st Century String Educator

Accountability and data is the driving force of present-day education.  Teachers must use a variety of informal and formal assessments to measure student growth.  When evaluating teacher performance, administrators want evidence of student growth in their classrooms.  Orchestra and other performance-based musical ensembles are courses that are subjective in manner, it is a course that many teachers find it difficult to quantify student growth.

This session provides teachers a wide array of assessment practices that can be used in and out of the classroom.  This will include performance-based grading rubrics which will provide feedback to students and parents, and various types of assessment practices that are time-efficient and effective at measuring student growth, saving rehearsal time and motivating student practice.

The primary objective is to share an audio- or video-assessment practice utilizing a cloud-based infrastructure (such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or Microsoft 365, Essential Elements Interactive, and others).  Using video-assessments, students can record performances at home on their own mobile devices, submitting the final product when complete. This will motivate student practice, provide more time rehearsal on classroom instruction, and leave a record of student performance that can be referred back later.  Various mobile applications will also be demonstrated to help teachers analyze student recordings. Utilizing the rubrics provided and by keeping a portfolio of student video performance assessments, student growth can be measured and seen by teachers, administrators, and parents.

Download Session Slides (PDF – Updated Jan 2019)

ASTA Standards for Successful School String/Orchestra Teaching (2015) on assessment:

• II.H: As an educator demonstrates effective methods of assessing and evaluating student achievement.
• II.K: As an educator demonstrates knowledge, application, and assessment of comprehensive, sequential K–12 curricula with focus on string and orchestral teaching.
• III.A.3: As a performer demonstrates effective, on-going professional self-assessment.

Web Links:

• Google Forms – Create forms to collect data from your students
• Google Sheets – Form data is sent to a spreadsheet so you can manipulate (sort, rank, etc.)
• Google Form for assessment (copy, modify to fit your needs) – Teacher completes with student email address and it will send to the student.
• Google Form for submission of data (copy, modify to fit your needs) – Students complete this form to submit their information (name, email, class period, etc.) along with the URL to their performance video.
• Coach’s Eye App – App for iOS and Android that allows you to record video, then review with a variety of tools. It allows you to slow down the video, scrub, and record a voiceover. Record video from the app, or import video from the cloud. You can assess body posture, instrument position, bowing technique, shifting, and more.
• Essential Elements Interactive – Web companion to the Essential Elements for Strings/Band series. Lots of free resources and tools, including the flag ship feature – the music studio where students can have fun practicing and recording themselves playing any of the exercises. Free for EE users!
• SmartMusic
• MusicFirst
• Sightreading Factory

Presentation Outline:

Why Assess?

• Drives instruction
  • Show student learning and growth
  • Provides teachers with helpful data 
  • Administration requires data
• Motivates students
  • Students WILL practice for a playing test
• Can further legitimize orchestra as a “real” subject

Assessment Types:

• Placement: Auditions, challenges, and seating. All aimed at determine student’s abilities compared to their peers.
• Summative: Concerts, festivals, music performance assessment, recitals, solo and ensemble, etc. The final performance, or the final product of the culminating project.
• Diagnostic: Used to determine where learning difficulties exist. Most ensemble music teachers already have this mastered. The director listens to the ensemble perform, processes visual and aural feedback from the students, identifies any problems the performance, and provides the student solutions to correct it.
• Formative: This is what most music teachers struggle with the most. It is the regular monitoring of students to make sure that learning is taking place. It is the collection of data showing that students are learning and processing new material. (Goolsby, 1999)

What to avoid

• Utilizing a single type of assessment 
• Grading based on attendance
• Grading based on “participation” – how do students earn participation grades?
• Getting stuck in a grading rut
• Not grading at all

Additional Considerations

• Frequent assessments will have greater meaning
• Try shorter excerpts over longer ones
• Be clear in your expectations.  Plan ahead!
• Avoid pop-quiz tests if possible
• Use formative feedback to encourage growth
• Consider dropping the lowest test score

Assessment

• Is important for student growth and development
• Comes in MANY forms
• Is not “one size fits all” 
• Must be creative to find ways to implement
• Requires some investment of planning and  instructional time
• Can be fun for students (and teachers!)

Self-Assessment

• Start asking students to self-assess from day one!
• Students must be able to evaluate good and poor, correct and incorrect
• Most of the student’s practice time is away from you and your instruction
• Our goal should be to develop our students into independent musicians

Peer Assessment

• A powerful and effective strategy
• Can keep students engaged in class by reducing down time when they are not playing
• Examples:
  • “Fist to Five” rating system
  • Asking students to assess how the performance by another section or individual 

Grading Assessments

• Rubrics help clarify strengths and weaknesses
• All performance grading has an element of subjectivity
• Grading Scales: Consider how a 1-10 rating system impacts the grade the student receives.
• 10 = A, 9 = A-%, 8=B-, 7=C-, 6=D-, 5 and less = F
• Make a different rating system to better reflect grades

Playing Test Rubrics

• Use a detailed rubric 
• Help students better understand their grade
• Provide students with formative feedback that allows them to improve performance in the future
  • Rubrics can be specific to a particular skill (bow hold) or encompass an entire performance
  • Emphasis (weight) placed on what skills you find most important

Finding the best rubrics

• Don’t always reinvent the wheel!
• Use materials from books, resources, and others
• Create your own rubrics!
  • Online tools such as RubiStar – http://rubistar.4teachers.org
• Have STUDENTS create their own rubrics!

Rubric Examples:

Recording Student Assessments

• Record in class, during rehearsal
  • Uses class time, and creates downtime from rehearsals
• Record outside of class, during rehearsal
  • Students record in pairs outside of the rehearsal room
• Record outside of class, at home
  • Students record on their own devices at home and upload to YouTube or another cloud service
• What are the positives and negatives of each?

Individual Video Assessments

• Captures correct (or incorrect!) technique, unlike audio
• Builds a digital portfolio over time
  • Archive tracks student progress and achievements
  • Good to show students when they are considering dropping out or not seeing their progress
  • Great for showing student work to administration and at parent conferences!
• Seamlessly integrates into rehearsal time

Students record at home

• Students use their own device
• Good results because students won’t submit (too many) mistakes
• Students upload to YouTube or other cloud service
• Students complete a Google Form to provide their information and the URL to their video
  • Form creates a timestamped spreadsheet that you can sort

Grading Concert Performances

• Show up and play for 100%?
• Break down the important parts of a performance
  • Helps students understand how they are being graded
  • Create a rubric!
  • Sign-out sheets!

Essential Elements Interactive (EEi)

• Web companion to Essential Elements for Strings method
• Interactive music studio allows students to record and instantly compare multiple “takes”
• Students must then compare which take is the best before sending to teacher for assessment
• “Practice it until you get it” mentality
• Entertaining with multiple styles of the same exercise
• Essential Elements Interactive link

Coach’s Eye App

• Inexpensive app for iOS, Android, and Windows
• Designed for use in athletics
• Great tool for string player assessment
  • Captures performance
  • Allows teacher to record commentary and upload/share
• App that enables teachers to Record video, then “scrub” forward & reverse, watch in slow motion
  
• Draw over video with lines, arcs, etc.
  
• Record a voiceover the video as you manipulate speed, etc.
  
• Perfect for showing students their hand position, bowing motion, etc.

Rehearsal Assessment

• Record a portion of your rehearsal
• Listen on way home from school
• Post on blog and have students make comments (be sure to moderate the comments!)
• Technology tools:
  • Phone (with or without an external mic)
  • Portable recorder (Zoom, etc.)
  • USB Microphone for computer or iPad

Practice Logs?

• Students often don’t know how to practice
• We must explain and demonstrate practice strategies to our students
• Sometimes students need organization of their practice material

Posting a rehearsal online

• Record a rehearsal and post the audio online
• Students visit the website, listen, and provide commentary
• Create specific guidelines for feedback, questions/prompts, or a rubric for students to submit
• Ask students to compare recordings from two different rehearsals, highlighting areas of improvement

Recording and posting a rehearsal excerpt online

• Record rehearsal with Garageband or other software
• Upload audio to SoundCloud or other cloud service
• Share link or embed audio on your website with SoundCloud
• Students (and teacher!) can listen at home and assess themselves.
• Students respond via an online form (or on paper)

Seating

• My least favorite aspect of teaching orchestra!
  • “Everyone gets a seat!” and “Nobody sits on the bench!”
• Prefer to arrange seats many ways:
  • Randomly
  • Mixing strongest and weakest players
  • Finding lots of ways to vary the way students are seated
  • By rank, but dispersed through the section. Example: 10 violins would be 1, 5, 2, 6, 3 7, etc.  or 1, 10, 2, 9, etc.