I am surprised how much discussion my post
generated....Think about why those kids fail art (this
is mainly for elementary teachers - middle school,
too)
Someone along the way has failed....A parent? A
teacher? All students are born with the abilty to
create - someone has ruined that spark early on in
those children. If you have students failing your
classes....take a good look at your curriculum and how
you teach. I only taught elementary two and a half
years - but never had a student who received an
"unsatisfactory" (or failing grade)....Yes, I did have
some "needs improvement". If elementary students are
failing art - you need to take a good look at what
your "standards" are.
Standards Based Assessment.... I did do a search to
see if I could find some samples for visual art. How
are you going to decide what the "standard" will be?
Based on what? a preconceived idea of what the
standard should look like? Have fun.... I did find
lots of stuff on Standards Based Assessment (related
to NCLB). Art is always going to have some
subjectivity in the grading....
I agree.... If a child sits there are does nothing,
he/she deserves to fail.... but I would want to know
why he or she is sitting there doing nothing before I
fail them. Are you talking one on one with these
children who do nothing to find out why? I only had
two kids fail art in my years as a middle school
teacher -and that was because in their eyes doing
nothing was "cool" (and their parents didn't care what
grade they got in art, either).
