The Self-Assessing Music Student
Student assessment has always been difficult to accomplish in instrumental music classes because music often subjective. Many music teachers have literally hundreds of students to grade and assess. Here is one solution to this problem for the elementary/middle school band and orchestra educator.
Do Your Research
Whatever level of musician you are teaching, it is important to know the sequence of learning over a set period of time. Many of the new method books do this for you so find a good teaching method or method book that you (mostly) agree with. For elementary/middle band I recommend "Sound Innovations" and for classroom strings (all 4 instruments in one room) I recommend a combination of "Essential Elements" and "Learning Together"
Categorize your Assessments
Some examples of musical assessment categories are:
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Performance Objectives (performing your identified sequences of learning)
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Scales
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Technique Builders (Instrument specific exercises)
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Skill Builders (Online activities or worksheets that focus on a specific non-performance based musical skill like identifying notes or rhythm.
Add other important components of effective learning like:
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Practice Journal or Chart
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Mini-Concerts (having a student play for an adult at home)
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Fingering Charts
Creating Student Assessments Using Relevant Technology
The modern day student isn't as impressed with technology and apps like adults because many are growing up with a device in their hand. Students expect any use of technology to be simple, fast, and with little text.
Option 1 - Google Sheets
Create separate tabs for each category with links to documents like practice journals and fingering charts so everything is in one simple document.
The easiest way to distribute them (especially if you have a lot of students) is to create it as an assignment in Google Classroom and make a copy for each student.
Option 2 - Airtable
AIRTABLE gives you the "ability to create your own databases and adapting them to your specific needs." That it does! It is spreadsheet-like and very easy to use. It has the functionality of Excel and the flexibility of Google Sheets.
Look at this online example of how Airtable can work for self-assessment
Airtable is more graphically pleasing than Google Sheets, has clickable fields for self-assessment, a very powerful app for smart devices, and can even insert a video from an IOS device (iphone, ipad). I've urged them to make the same video functionality for Android devices, but it hasn't happened yet.
Airtable takes some time and effort to set up. You have to create your assessment template (make sure they are absolutely correct) and share with each student individually. However, the student can share their assessments with their parents so everyone is on the same page. I would go more in-depth, but if you look at the example, you should get a good idea of it's functionality. I would suggest creating a free account and playing with it