Pre and Post Assessments

Pre-Assessment
The purpose of this assessment is to ensure that the first graders are ready to move
on to learning eighth notes. The teacher will test the students knowledge of quarter notes
and quarter rests. The teacher will have 10 rhythm cards, each with a mixture of quarter
notes and quarter rests. There will be a backbeat track playing to help students feel the
steady beat. They will clap the rhythms together as a class for this pre-assessment. If the
teacher is unsure about the accuracy, they may have students clap the rhythms in pairs of
two or three to be able to assess more specifically.

Checklist:

Post-Assessment
This assessment will be broken up into two parts; identification/analysis, and
composition. For the identification/analysis portion, the teacher will have a passage
printed on a piece of paper with notated eighth notes, quarter notes, and quarter rests.
This passage will be taken from one of the songs learned in the unit. There will be space
available underneath each note for students to fill in the corresponding symbol to the note
duration. There will be a symbol bank at the top of the page, giving a symbol for each
kind of note duration. Students must miss less than 3 symbols in order to pass the
assessment.
 The second assessment deals with composition. This will be similar to the first, in

that students will be given a symbol bank for eighth notes, quarter notes, and quarter
rests. They will be given a blank staff, with 4 measures of 4/4 time. The beats will be
written above each measure to help the students write only 4 beats per measure. They can
use any combination of the notes, but they must use them all, and only equal to 4 beats in
every measure. This assessment will test their knowledge of subdivision (two eighth
notes = one quarter), which will have been addressed in the unit. The students must also
write the corresponding symbol underneath each beat they write, to reinforce their
knowledge of the notes.

The teacher will have an overall checklist for each student, that has slots for each
aspect associated with the concept. Reading, writing, improvising, creating with and
performing eighth notes will be on this checklist. Teacher will use B (Beginning), D
(Developing) and M (Mastery) to label students present abilities.