Assessment Analysis and Design Project

Learning Area Visual Arts & Design (Additional) 1, Semester 1 - March

ASSESSMENT NEEDS ANALYSIS

Area of Study - Art Elements:

In this area of study, students focus on the art elements and how they work within an artwork to contribute meaning. They learn about each element individually by examining a range of artists’ work and participating in their own exploratory tasks. Students learn how to recognise elements as a group within artworks and draw upon these to form an analysis and interpretation. Students will be introduced to appropriate visual language and terminology used to interpret artworks.

Outcome:

On completion, students should be able to recognise the art elements within artworks and discuss them with appropriate terminology.

Student needs:

Key knowledge

  • The definitions of the art elements (including line, colour, texture, tone, form, shape, sound, time and light)

  • How to recognise the art elements in artworks

  • How to manipulate the art elements within an artwork

  • How art elements work together

  • Knowledge and use of relevant visual art language

Key skills

  • Recognise art elements

  • Use art elements in their own artworks

  • Discuss artworks and the feelings they evoke through the use of art elements

  • Write about art elements in artworks and develop a critical opinion

Curriculum needs

This area of study adheres to the following overall aims:

Victorian Visual Arts curriculum:

  • Visual arts techniques, materials, processes and technologies

  • Critical and creative thinking, using visual arts languages, theories and practices to apply aesthetic judgment

  • Confidence, curiosity, imagination and enjoyment and a personal aesthetic through engagement with visual arts making, viewing, discussing, analysing, interpreting and evaluating.

Victorian Curriculum achievement standards for levels 7 and 8:

  • Explore visual arts practices as inspiration to explore and develop themes, concepts or ideas in artworks

  • Discussing how artists have applied materials and techniques to express emotions and consider this in their own art practice

  • Observing and investigating how artists select and apply different visual arts techniques to express themes, concepts and ideas and considering how they could use these in their own art making

  • Exploring why artists have used specific stylistic qualities in their art works

  • Explore how artists use materials, techniques, technologies and processes to realise their intentions in artworks

  • Applying critical theories to the analysis and interpretation of artworks, for example, identifying explicit and implicit meanings in artworks

  • Analyse how ideas and viewpoints are expressed in artworks and how they are viewed by audiences

  • Critically analysing an artist’s intention for an artwork and their use of visual conventions

Australian Curriculum Achievement Standards 

ACARA: The Arts: Years 7 - Year 8

  • Students identify and analyse how other artists use visual conventions and viewpoints to communicate ideas and apply this knowledge in their art-making.

  • Students evaluate how they and others are influenced by artworks from different cultures, times and places.

ACARA: GC: Literacy Continuum: Level 5 (End of Year 8)

  • Comprehending texts through listening, reading and viewing

  • Navigate, read and view learning area texts 

  • Navigate, read and view a variety of challenging subject-specific texts with a wide range of graphic representations

  • Grammar knowledge

  • Use knowledge of sentence structures 

  • Control a range of simple, compound and complex sentence structures to record, explain, question, argue, describe and link ideas, evidence and conclusions

  • Express opinion and point of view 

  • Use language to evaluate an object, action or text, and language that is designed to persuade the reader/viewer

  • Word Knowledge

  • Understand learning area vocabulary 

  • Use a wide range of new specialist and topic vocabulary to contribute to the specificity, authority and abstraction of texts

  • Visual Knowledge

  • Understand how visual elements create meaning 

  • Analyse the effects of different visual elements upon the reader/viewer, and how visual texts such as advertisements and informative texts draw on and allude to other texts to enhance meaning

SCHOOL / POLICY NEEDS

In Year 7 at [redacted], tests are referred to as learning assessments. They are used to promote a positive and encouraging attitude towards learning and the pursuit of excellence. The aims of these learning assessments are:

  • To show what students understand and can demonstrate

  • To help students become aware of their present stage of development, to focus on achievement, to build on their strengths and acknowledge their weaknesses to be overcome

  • To actively involve students in the reporting process and thereby provide opportunities for students to reflect on their own learning and determine where they should focus their learning in the future

  • To provide information to students and parents in a way that is clear, constructive, specific and appropriate

  • To use National and State benchmarks to monitor student learning and inform practice

  • To monitor the effectiveness of learning programs

  • To monitor Federal Government student reporting requirements

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REFLECTION

Part 1. Word Bank:

This ‘word bank’ student handout would be made in collaboration with students either progressively throughout the area of study or as a reflection/review. I would prompt students to call out words that could be used to describe each of the art elements, while also providing my own suggestions. The point of this word bank is to familiarise students with visual art language and terminology that can be used when talking about the art elements. 

Part 2. Worksheet:

This worksheet also acts as an ungraded formative learning assessment. Students will use this worksheet as a practical exercise to visualise the art elements and associate them with relevant visual art language terminology. Upon completion either in class or as a homework activity, these worksheets will be collected and used to determine if students have a clear understanding of each art element and what needs to be covered further in class.

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REFLECTION

This formative-summative learning assessment would be the third and final assessment in this area of study:

  1. The worksheet provided in this document would act as the first ungraded formative assessment to indicate whether students have an understanding of the art elements.

  2. A second formative learning assessment would be assigned as homework where students would complete a series of short-answer responses to multiple artworks, while being able to refer to their notes and word bank/visual art language and terminology.

  3. This third and final formative-summative learning assessment would be completed during class time under test conditions. 

The second formative learning assessment acts as a practice to the final formative-summative assessment and provides an opportunity for me as the teacher to provide feedback to the students on how they can improve before the final assessment. The difference between the second and third learning assessment will also indicate the students’ Zone of Proximal Development and provide an opportunity for scaffolding.

CONCLUSION & SUMMARY

This area of study and the accompanying learning assessments will ultimately provide students with the resources to identify and interpret the use of art elements within an artwork, as well as strengthening their vocabulary and use of visual art language and terminology. The skill of identifying and analysing art elements is relevant in Visual Art to the Victorian Curriculum and ACARA, and the use of relevant language adheres to ACARA’s literacy standards, which is interdisciplinary. This task will also increase students' confidence when talking about and analysing artworks, which is vital in the later years’ curriculum.