3-1 Assessment

The candidate understands how to use multiple measures to monitor and assess individual
student learning, engage learners in self-assessment, and use data to make decisions.

Assessment in the classroom is most important but can be something misunderstood in

the music classroom if not appropriately applied. Assessment comes in many forms in most think
that comes only in grades at one time in the semester, but that is not how it works in the music
classroom. Assessment in the music classroom is an ongoing process that must be checked daily
or weekly depending on the lesson being taught.
Though in many forms, assessment is the analysis of how the student is progressing in a
content area. In music classrooms, this looks like performing solo, group performances, daily
feedback, journaling, music checks, recordings, and many other ways to check music
proficiency.
Assessment types very based on grade level. Those in elementary school are usually not
comfortable doing solo assessments or using technology to record themselves outside of the
classroom. But in secondary classrooms this can become a norm if well implemented and kept up
with throughout the year. If an assessment is talked about in the classroom and is assigned as
homework but then is not graded properly or implemented enough students will forget about it
and the teacher will have no record of how the student is progressing in their classroom.
Assessment is important to both students and teachers but as well as the administrators in
your school and the parents of the students you teach. Around the time of parent teacher
conferences parents will want to know how their child is doing in the music classroom and
administrators will want to know how you are checking that your students are learning the
content in your class.
By keeping track of how the teacher assesses the student throughout the year, students
will then see how they progressed and what areas they could work on for the next year as well as
the competency of music that they are learning and what they are getting out of the teaching that
is being provided to them inside the classroom. Consistent assessment allows teachers to adapt
their teaching and lesson plans so that their students receive the best education they can.