Grading and Showing Growth in the Art Room

Showing growth in our students has become a huge part of my job as a teacher. Sometimes in an art classroom environment, it's hard to show a student's growth. In other classes a before and after test is done, and I have done that in the past. It shows a student's understanding of concepts or facts, but it doesn't measure their growth in relation to the skills that they are learning. Another age-old debate is how to grade artwork, especially at an elementary level.

This year I decided to do things a little bit differently. Last year, I received a lot of confrontation from parents when grade cards came out. And because I didn't have specific documentation of how I graded the students artwork, I ran into some problems. So this year, I decided to be very specific and very proactive.

In order to show growth, I selected a sampling of students to monitor for the entire year. Basically I made a Digital Portfolio for each student, with images of each project they did throughout the year, in order. This way I can see if the student's skills are improving and if they're using more skills as they progress. To keep a Digital Portfolio for every single student I teach, would be just crazy. So I selected two students from each grade; a high performing student and a low performing student. Each student has a folder on my Google drive in which I keep their artwork photos, in order of completion. I photograph them immediately when they're done.

I also wanted to show growth in my student's thought process when it came to creating artwork. I decided to have my kids write artist or process statements for some of their work throughout the year. I'm only doing this with the upper grades (3-5). Again, I chose a high performer and low performer for each grade and I am documenting their progress by keep photographs of their writing and artwork that they are writing about. An example would look like this:

Lastly, I have to give grades for each student three times a year in their report cards. I give grades based on skills or concepts learned, participation and effort, and behavior in my classroom. The skills and concepts grade I give based on how I grade their artwork. I grade each piece of artwork using a little code that I made up; each student receives a number and then a letter code to remind me why I gave them that particular number. These grades are just for my records, I keep them in a spread sheet on Google docs. I don't publish them to parents, but they are there if I have a parent call and I need to back up the grade I gave their child. Here's the code I use:

1	Demonstrates complete understanding of concept, work is neat and completely finished.
2	Demonstrates partial understanding of concept/work is mostly neat and/or completely finished.
3	Does not demonstrate understanding of concept, and/or work is sloppy, and/or unfinished.
UF	Unfinished
S	Sloppy
ND	Not demonstrating concept
M	Misuse materials

To grade a student's participation and behavior, I use an online program called Class Charts. It's similar to Class Dojo, but it's free. Every day I log on and make a positive comment or a negative comment for each child's behavior for that class. Every couple of weeks, I read through the data and contact the parents of students that are getting a lot of negative marks. When I sit down to make report cards, this program is really nice because it provides you with graphs and charts to show you how a student's behavior has been through the term. Check it out here!

So that's what I'm doing this year, I like the amount of information I have to use. However, I think the system might be a bit clunky. I hope to streamline it in the years to come. I've looked into Artsonia, as a great way to keep digital portfolios for every student and show parents artwork as well. But I just don't have time to take everyone's picture right.

Does anyone else have a system they'd like to share? Ideas? Thoughts? I'd love to hear what you think!