Live Office Hours: 06|09|24 Exams, Juries, & Graded Recitals (and other lies education systems t...

Exams, Juries, & Graded Recitals Are Meaningful Measurements of Learning Acquisition (and other lies education systems tell us)

the one where I talk about:

➡️ my beef with exams, juries, recitals, auditions, & all those graded assessments where students get a number, letter, or a rubric score

➡️ how integrating the graded assessments into our studios without mindfulness limits student learning & impacts our perception of our teaching effectiveness

➡️ 3 steps to *reframing graded assessments* to achieve deeper learning AND mitigate impact on our ego �

Two (well-documented) issues with graded assessments are:

1️⃣ **Feedback loses its meaning**: Once a grade is assigned, learners only focus on the feedback as a means to get a higher grade next time.

2️⃣ **It’s all about the checklist**: The grades reflect how well a student meets a predetermined checklist, not their learning.

WHICH IS ALL WELL AND GOOD … if that’s what we communicate the graded assessments are for.

INSTEAD, we believe that graded assessments are meaningful measures of learning …

The result of believing that graded assessments are something they’re not?

� Students become grade-chasers

� We teachers end up teaching learners how to pass a test rather than how to learn

AND?

� All parties judge the effectiveness of our teaching by whether or not our students can pass tests.

Here are three steps to making graded assessments more meaningful so we can get back to supporting learning, rather than teaching to the test:

1️⃣ *Acknowledge What the Graded Assessment IS and IS NOT*

2️⃣ *Co-Develop Meaningful Assessments that are Relevant to the Graded Assessment*

3️⃣ *Support Students to Make Choices About How to Use Those Assessments to Transform a Graded Assessment Experience into a Learning Experience*

Want to learn more? Watch this space for my upcoming SubStack Article on the same topic.

Want to talk about how to implement these concepts in your teaching? Inquire about Pedagogy-Infused Voice Lessons or Voice Pedagogy Consults.

Want to learn how to implement these concepts in your teaching while in a supportive cohort of voice teachers who are doing the same thing? Let me know you’re interested in The VoicePed UnDegree - Class of 2025

#TeacherTalk #LearningOverGrades #StudentCenteredLearning #VoiceTeaching