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Assessing Dispositions – Week 10
I most closely identify with Stiggins title, “The Student Who Lacks Confidence” (p. 210) in Chapter 8. Although
I certainly have ability, I typically had a heavy sense of not measuring up. My Mother was a middles school music teacher
who often commented, “I can’t believe you don’t understand this math stuff. It’s easy. This is stupid.”
Ah, no wonder I couldn’t or wouldn’t do math! I knew I would just fail miserably, so why try? Although I put a
value in learning, I was so afraid to make the mistake and be yelled at for not being smart enough, that I chose to not really
try.
The more difficult something was for me, the more I decided that I was just not really very smart anyway. I was mostly a B
and C student, even though I had the ability to get As. I try to keep my own life lessons in mind when dealing with my teenager
who is very much like I am!
My least confident students are also the students that won’t speak up or comment negatively in an evaluation. They feel
that they, like I, should give the teacher what he/she wants to hear. This “pleaser” trap is a very difficult
place to get out of. I want to provide my students with an opportunity to be heard, regardless of how confident or not they
are.
1. I would focus on assessing Attitudes with my students.
2. I would ask students to create a product about their likes and dislikes of musical choices and performance.
3. The performance criteria would be evaluating:
1. Quality of the performance for the setting
2. Ability of the group as a whole
3. Thoughts on needed improvements
4. I would analyze several different aspects of the disposition in order to make a more informed judgment about music choices
5. I would use a rating scale for most parts of this. I would also provide an accessible format for students of all writing
and reading levels. I would also incorporate a rubric to explain what each thing meant in simple student terms.
Reference
Stiggins, Richard J (2005). Student-involved assessment for learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc..
Week Ten: Assessing Dispositions and Involving Students in the Assessment Process
Identify strategies you could use to involve students in assessment.
Currently I use the following methods to involve students in assessment:
• Students use a Peer and Self Evaluation Rubric that is not graded at Grades 4 and 5.
• Students in Grades K, 1 & 2 listen to their vocal assessment recordings and score themselves in the same three categories
that I do. They use the Happy Face, Neutral Face, Sad Face scoring as shown by Stiggins on pg. 216.
• Students in Grade 5 use the same scoring rubric that I do and share their own opinions and thoughts with their peers
and with me.
• Students in my Grade 4 and 5 Choruses make suggestions in music choice and staging after each concert. This provides
me with a better sense of what I should be striving for with students.
As a result of my readings in Chapter 8, I know that I must use the information that I receive from students more fully. Often
the sheer numbers of students that I see inhibits me as to how much of the information I can wade through. This should not
be an excuse for me, however. I need to compile results more fully and determine how I’m going to record both positive
and negative comments. I could use a data chart to provide that information. Anonymous responses would be far superior to
the named papers I collect now.
I found the questionnaires on pages 213-215 to be of great interest to me. I could easily adapt these for my classroom use
and have a much better idea of what my student dispositions are. Collecting the data for 500+ students several times a year
in just the performance area alone has been a difficult task. Personal communication is something I highly value, but I often
have such huge time constraints due to traveling between buildings, that a written assessment/evaluation would be more beneficial.
Reference
Stiggins, Richard J (2005). Student-involved assessment for learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc..
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