The goal of the lesson was to broaden students understanding and appreciation for abstraction as it applies to art. The most important questions on the assessments is also the most difficult to graph because it is hard to chart a student’s changing perception of abstraction. Instead I have complied responses that exemplify the learning that took place in between the pre and post assessment.
Pre- Assessment Responses
Abstraction is using shapes to make a piece of art
Abstraction is anything that is different
Abstraction is a picture taken from a different point of view or weird angle
Abstraction is any art that makes people think or second guess what it is
Abstraction is using a different point of view to express something
Post- Assessment Responses
Abstraction is a removal or separation from real objects to portray emotion
Abstraction is feeling or ideas put down on paper
Abstraction is breaking free from conventional traditions and using specific concepts, like color and light, to create art
Abstraction is more emotion than anything else. It is used to express what the artist is feeling.
Abstraction can be used to convey feeling or thoughts about something. It can be based off an object, idea, or just a form of expression.
In order for the pre and post assessments to yield more graphable results I needed to ask more questions. I could have a much prettier graph if my assessment were full of questions requiring rote memorization, but is that really the point? I did not want to overload the test with busy work because I wanted students to mainly focus on defining abstraction. Regardless, the questions should have been more closely related to my standards. I wanted students to compare and contrast art periods, but I didn’t really ask them to think about it. There was a question asking about the term impasto but I failed to describe it during the lesson second period. This all tells me that I have to be more careful and prepared with the questions I ask my students.
I think I may have underestimated some of my students. I was very honest with them and asked them to tell me if they learned anything. Several of them said they knew most of what I had mentioned. Perhaps my lesson did not reach every student, but I know several students learned something new. My lesson was more basic than I originally thought, but it was still worthwhile because several students still needed to catch up on the basics.