BC Education - Dance 11 and 12 - Appendix D: Assessment and Evaluation

Sample 2: Performance Grade 12

Topic: Push Your Boundaries

Prescribed Learning Outcomes:

Elements of Movement

It is expected that students will:

refine techniques specific to two or more genres

Presentation and Performance

It is expected that students will:

demonstrate technical accuracy and aesthetic quality in performing dance
articulate a clear interpretation of choreographic intent
adapt a performance for a chosen environment

Dance and Society

It is expected that students will:

demonstrate the skills and attitudes necessary to participate as a dance performer within society:
- assuming leadership roles in a variety of context s
- actively seeking and applying constructive criticism
- refining personal goals for performance
- practising individual and group rights and responsibilities in dance performance
- respecting diversity

Overview

As a culminating project for the course, the teacher asked students to create dance performances that "pushed their boundaries." Evaluation was based on the individual projects students designed, prepared, and performed.

Planning for Assessment and Evaluation

The teacher asked students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses as performers. Students were then asked to set individual performance goals that would require them to work beyond their usual levels of comfort.
Students worked alone or in small groups to identify potential areas for personal growth. The teacher encouraged them to work in unfamiliar dance styles or genres, to use improvisation in new ways, to work with challenging music, to experiment with unusual staging or relationships to the audience, to take new leadership roles, or to design all the stagecraft details personally.
The teacher then asked students to design dance projects that would allow them to reach their performance goals. The teacher distributed a dance performance rating scale to help students choose appropriate projects. On planning sheets, students identified their goals, described their visions of the final performance, and explained how their projects would demonstrate success in meeting their personal goals. Students also established rehearsal schedules and technical and stagecraft needs.
As students created their pieces, the teacher circulated, facilitating production needs and observing student responses when confronted with various challenges, both expected and unexpected. The teacher and students made notes of their individual observations in anticipation of student-teacher conferences.
As students worked, they gave one another feedback and assessed their own progress based on performance criteria they had set for themselves and negotiated with the teacher and other students.

Defining the Criteria

Projects were assessed in terms of the criteria that individual students developed for the design, preparation, and presentation of their dance performances. To some extent, each project was measured on a slightly different basis, depending on the degree of risk taking involved. The following criteria appeared on most students' lists.

clear movement
effective focus
ability to cope with mistakes
attention to dynamics, expression
effective stage presence
ability to relate to musical score or soundscape
effective use of stagecraft

Assessing and Evaluating Student Performance

On the performance date, students were individually evaluated by the teacher, using students' own performance criteria. Students assessed and evaluated their own success in relation to their performance goals, then met to discuss their conclusions with the teacher. During conferences with students, the teacher asked questions such as:

During the creation of this project, what went especially well?
What obstacles did you have to overcome?
How successful were your solutions?
What new skills or knowledge have you acquired?
How might you apply this new learning in the future?
How has this project helped to round out your abilities as a dancer?

At the end of the conference, the student and teacher used a scale to help them agree on an overall rating for the project.

**Dance Performance**
Rating	Criteria
5 Outstanding	The student purposely chose to set a challenge involving a high degree of personal risk or growth, and the challenge was met successfully. The student demonstrated creativity and self-discipline in overcoming the obstacles encountered in the creation process. The final performance was masterful: creatively conceived, thoroughly prepared, and dynamically performed. There was excellence in all three criteria.
4 Very Good	The student chose to set a challenge involving a degree of personal risk or growth, and the challenge was met successfully. The student demonstrated creativity and self-discipline in overcoming the obstacles encountered in the creation process. The final performance attained excellence in two of the following criteria and competence in one of the following criteria: creatively conceived, thoroughly prepared, and dynamically performed.
3 Satisfactory	The initial challenge demanded less from the student in terms of problem solving and self-discipline, but was met successfully. The creation process demonstrated competence, and the performance was well prepared and skillfully performed.
2 Minimal Evidence	The initial challenge demanded less from the student in terms of problem solving and self-discipline, but was successful. The creation process demonstrated competence, and the performance was competent in two of the following areas, with minimal evidence in the third: creatively conceived, thoroughly prepared, and dynamically performed.
1 Unsatisfactory	The project requirements have not been fulfilled. The creation process was haphazard and the performance poorly prepared, or the performance was competent but did not clearly demonstrate a relationship to the initial goal.

Revised: January 25, 1999

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