Assessment. Yay.

In weeks two and three of my practicum my experience and my abilities have definitely improved. The challenge has become assessing the drama work I have assigned. I have already assessed a grade 4 unit, and will have one more next week, as well as a grade 6 unit on rap (yes, I taught rap). Still to go are the two grade 7 classes and their war scenes and the two grade 8 classes and their YouTube spoofs. My issue is that even having a rubric I find assessment difficult. For one, I am assessing them on the spot during their scene presentation. Which means that I have about one minute while the students are performing to follow what's happening, make observations, and assign a grade. My AT gives them their grade on the spot. I've given feedback but have opted not to immediately assign a grade.

The grade 4s began their drama rotation at the same time that I started my practicum. Ultimately the assessment is to help figure out which students should be directed into the drama stream next year. Their war scenes with me were their first drama scenes and therefore I think I must take that into consideration. I had a mini conference with them after their scenes were all presented so that we could debrief on how it felt to perform for the first time and how we can improve for next time. They were able to recognize that nerves came into play and that their focus was off. However now we have a starting point for further work and having observed them during rehearsals I know that they are all quite capable. Still I wonder if giving the majority a B is too harsh.

Debates on harshness of grades will definitely come into play for the older grades. I was very clear in my assignment expectations and have provided students with extra rehearsal time and individual guidance. I have talked repeatedly about what I'm looking for, which I think is fairly simple: a plot with a beginning, middle and end, well-planned depictions of violence and distinct characters who each have some dialogue. They all have a copy of the assignment as well as the rubric. Yet I continue to watch rehearsals where they engage in random violence with absolutely no plot direction and no relevant dialogue. So the question becomes do they all get really bad marks? Was the assignment too difficult? Should my standards be lower? Was it too much to ask to try and steer them away from video game violence towards more thoughtful work in honour of Remembrance Day? In part its hard to tell because I don't have anything to compare this work to. I've seen a few other grade 7 and 8 scenes that my AT has marked and I think he's more generous than I'm inclined to be.

I'll assign grades and then discuss them with my AT before entering them in his logbook. I don't want to be unfair by judging them at a standard that is too high for their level of learning, but I also don't want to devalue what I've been teaching by assigning grades that are too high. That's the challenge with something perhaps more subjective like Drama.