Entry 6 Part 2

A look at Assessment through Nicholson and Kempe

To end this entry, I also want to look at assessment and the problems in assessment in Drama.

There has been an ongoing debate on whether or not Drama should be appreciated for the progress it gets out of people or just plainly for the final performance that the Drama leads up to. For me, it is the right mix of both.
Some forms of assessment i will be looking for will be formative and some summative.

I will look at what Nicholson and Kempe (2007) call Assessment for Learning in my classroom. Students in classrooms sometimes tend to struggle to reflect on their own work beyond the classroom. In drama where there will be games played, we may see students not being interested in anything else but the "fun" aspect of Drama. What is the point of students enjoying a lesson if they take nothing away? Assessment for Learning requires the "use of peer/self-assessment to identify own strengths and areas for development" (Nicholson and Kempe,2007). On top of these,Nicholson and Kempe also suggest sharing lesson objectives with students and gaining their feedback. This helps me monitor their understanding while ensuring that students know what is going on in the classroom and how it impacts them. Based on my Practicum experience, I noticed how the teacher clearly specified the objectives at the start of the semester and illicits feedback. This, however, is more challenging for weaker students. The weaker students do not respond well went we try to gain feedback. Thus, we look at things like Journals with prompt questions provided weekly to help gain the students' feedback. With good prompting, students can improve and provide better feedback.

It is no secret that we, in Singapore, are currently in the Criterion-referenced (Nicholson and Kempe,2007) mode of assessment in Secondary level where the assessments are set beforehand and expectancies are laid out. However, beyond this, there are other forms of assessment like feedback and teacher's observations. This is classified other formative assessment by Nicholson and Kempe. In a Singapore classroom, giving students marks for class participation could be handy in getting the quieter students to participate in the lesson. It would be unfair for a teacher to assess based on his/her own observation especially if he does not stay with the class through the whole year. If he does, however, it is inevitable that that would also play a part in his assessment of the student. The use of a base assessment as prescribed by Nicholson and Kempe may also come in useful in seeing where the student is at the start of the semester so that a good comparison can be done with what he has achieved at the end of the semester, and allow a teacher to properly gauge a student through his observation on class participation.

I will try to award marks to students that i feel meet the criteria effectively and also through formative assessment, show the most effort. There must also be a common consensus that is well developed amongst all the Drama teachers in the school pertaining to the rubrics so that every student is properly assessed.

Striking a balance between measuring the end product and development might be tough, but it is attainable.

References:

Kempe, A., & Nicholson, H. (2007). 5. Learning to teach drama 11-18 (2nd ed., pp. 122-154). London: Continuum.