A Note: What Do They Know? The six steps of successful theatre class assessment (Green)

A Note: What Do They Know? The six steps of successful theatre class assessment (Green)

​Designing thoughtful assessments that focus on key learning objectives can not only provide accountability and let students know what they've learned, but can also help you become a more effective teacher.

To this end, we have created six sequential steps that provide priorities and guidance for developing effective theater assessments, along with examples to help explain and demonstrate the approach.

1. Start with the end in mind.

We borrowed the first step from Stephen Covey, who wrote the popular self-help book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

A more effective strategy is to plan this exercise by introducing lessons about pantomime, space use, and movement to create a feeling or story that builds on these key learning outcomes.

“Who do you think is the most important person in this staged picture and why?” “Who is in the weakest position on stage and why?” “Who is the least important person and why?” By having students discuss and demonstrate their understanding of these body positions on stage, you can introduce the concept of strong and weak stage positions while assessing their understanding of the concepts as they contribute to the discussion. Depending on the clarity of your answers, you can review and re-teach or move on. These practical demonstrations can be great teaching and learning tools to spark discussion, connect activities to assessments, and apply these instructional concepts to the classroom.

2. Create a pre-assessment

  When a new year begins or a new unit begins, you will always want to check what theater skills your students already have.

Have each student partner with someone they don't know well. Ask to find out your partner's name, age, and two unusual facts about him or her. Then ask your partner to describe three things they know about acting. Finally, have each student take a turn standing up and recalling seven things about their partner. This activity serves as an ice breaker to demonstrate the student's ability to memorize information, vocal skills (pronunciation, vocal variety, volume, breathing support), and comfort level with performance. Any pre-assessment should also be mindful of what skills you are building in your students.

3. Create a scoring guide to assess proficiency

Grading guides or rubrics aren't just useful for paper/pencil tests. Using well-designed rubrics can not only improve your teaching content but also provide a more objective structure to your assessments. Creating specific grading criteria tailored to your learning objectives can easily be applied to theater performance tasks. This is a useful tool for both you and your students. One way to decide on a rubric is to first present it in question form.

4. In-class evaluation

Some teachers believe that assessments should only be used at the end of a unit (so-called summative assessments). However, we believe that “checking things out as we go” also provides valuable information. Formative evaluation is an evaluation of learning that occurs during class, while summative evaluation is an evaluation of learning that occurs after class completion. Formative assessments can be powerful. Recent research has demonstrated that continuous assessment can be as effective as intensive educational interventions, such as one-on-one tutoring, in promoting student growth. As students learn what is evaluated in rehearsal, they become more aware of what makes a good performance.

Finally, the final important step in formative assessment is providing students with the opportunity to apply feedback to achieve their goals.

5. Teach students to engage in peer and self-assessment.

  As instructors, we want our students to be able to function independently when they leave school and are no longer under guidance. In our experience, developing the ability to evaluate oneself is one of the ultimate goals of education. This teaches students to look beyond their own perspectives and see themselves in relation to the standards. It also teaches empowerment. When students eventually understand and internalize the standards, they will no longer rely on teachers to suggest corrections or pass judgment on their work.

6. Evaluate yourself.

  In the book The Drama Classroom: Action, Reflection, Transformation, Philip Taylor makes a powerful case for reflective theater practice. Willingness to modify teaching methods, open-mindedness, and flexibility are all characteristics that he suggests can improve teacher practice. Teacher self-assessment is something every educator should do. If all or some of your students seem to be struggling through self-assessment, you should definitely consider adjusting your teaching style.
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