I’m back! I ended up taking two weeks off instead of one, I know. 🙂 But it felt great. It feels great to be back too.
At the MTNA National Conference in NYC this year, one of the sessions I attended encouraged teachers to do yearly or quarterly assessments/evaluations of their students. Some teachers accompany these assessments with a parent-teacher-student conference. A few of the session’s attendees raised their hands to comment on their method of assessment and the benefits they’ve seen. I was quite intrigued with the idea, and decided I wanted to give it a try this year.
The only time when I’ve done something similar to this is when I was worked at a summer music camp in my hometown. I was the Theory & Composition Instructor, and the camp director asked each of us instructors to create some kind of assessment that we could send home with the students for the teachers and parents to be able to see what the student learned at camp. These assessments were very short and sweet, since we had only had contact with the student for four classes over four days.
I started looking around the internet for ideas, and eventually formed a template I’m pretty happy with. This assessment is not designed to do that same thing that standardized music testing is supposed to do. It’s much more general. It’s about communicating to the student and parent about the progress the student is making in various areas and the goals that I have in mind for them in upcoming months. It is a bit like a report card, but with no actual grades.
Once I created the template, my goal was to be able to complete each one in about 10 minutes. After all, doing assessments needs to be feasible even for teachers who might have 30 or 40+ students! I didn’t quite make the 10 minute mark, though. I averaged more like 20 minutes each, although I did get faster at the end.
Here’s a peek at a sample assessment. I used a fun, handwriting font to help distinguish my comments from the template.
page 2:
Do you do some kind of evaluation or assessment? What kinds of things do you include?
If you’d like to download my template, visit the Printables > Studio Business page and scroll down to the S’s for “Student Assessment Sheet.” Or, click the link below.
Student Assessment Template (119.5 KiB, 16,504 hits)
Welcome back, we missed you.
Welcome back, Joy! Thanks for sharing your assessment sheets with us. I’ve only done this a few times with a few individual students and sent it via email. I like this idea a lot and also like the way that you broke things down into categories.
Yes, we missed you!
I’ve never done an assessment of students – though often thought I should. This looks good – I have 5 weeks till the end of the year so I will have to give it some thought.
For me, it was well worth the time and effort. I like the idea of the student collecting these assessments over the years and being able to see their progress from year to year. The made-up sample I posted above was a pretty positive one. For some students, there might be more statements about how we are working on improving certain areas.
Anyway, doing this was very beneficial for me, too! I feel more focused about each student’s progress and goals, which will help me better plan out their curriculum for the future.
Hi Joy! I love your site. I tried to contact you via your contact page and get messages returned with an error.
I have been using your musical dice, and would love to see an 8-sided version with Solfege: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, and Wild — similar to the musical alphabet dice.
Do you have a blank template (word doc, etc) you could send to me? I would love to learn how to create these types of templates for myself.
Thanks!
Hey Ryan, check your email inbox. 🙂
Hi there Joy,
I would love a copy of the blank template as well… do you still have that by any chance?
This is really wonderful information. I just decided I would do monthly progress reports (to make up for the fact that I teach lessons with no breaks in between to talk to the parents). This template will be really helpful and keeps things so nice and neat!
Thank you!
Aura
Whoops, never mind, I found it!
Hi Joy,
I have been reading your site since I started teaching piano just over a year ago. I am still new at this and greatly appreciate the assessment template. Many of your ideas have been quite useful to me.
Do you have a blank that I could use and adapt?
Thanks again for your assistance.
This is a wonderful template. Do you also have a list of various comments applicable to different students of different levels and achievements?
~Love your creativity!
thanks for uploading this, I have never done a progess report for a student before in 5 years of teaching so far, and this got me started.
Practical suggestions – Incidentally if people are requiring a a form , my colleagues edited a template form here http://goo.gl/MOk4O0
Thanks Joy! I attempted to upload your template -End of Year Assessment- twithno success. Is it possible for you to send the template to me via e-mail? I appreciate all that you do to help others including yours truly!
Geraldine Scott Jackson
Sure, Geraldine. I just emailed you.
Thank you for this post Joy. Although it’s from 5 years ago, I still find it really useful! A parent just requested that I send a process report and I decided to check online. Yours is the first I opened and it’s very helpful. I will really appreciate if you can email me a blank…
Have you changed this over the past few years since you made it, or have you kept the same format? Do parents appreciate these?
How do you deliver these? Talk about it during a lesson with the parent? Email it?
Thanks!
Thank you for sharing this! We used to use these at an after-school piano program I taught in (until it got cut). I love having a template to follow and ideas for professional, encouraging wording.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful information! It is very helpful! However I tried to download from the link but it doesnt seem to work. May you please sent to my EMail?
thank you very much !
Thank you for this template, it helped me do my evaluations in a timely and organized manner.