Using the elements of movement to assess students

Before learning more about drama strategies, I had a conception of drama as being a difficult subject to assess students on. One of the main reasons for this is because creativity is difficult to evaluate, as the nature of being creative means thinking and acting outside of the box.

I have been fortunate to receive some tools for assessing drama education. One of them is using the Elements of Choral Work chart to evaluate how students are incorporating these into their dramatic interpretations. The Elements of Choral Work are as follows:

Duration	Slow	Medium	Fast
Pitch	High	Neutral	Low
Dynamics (volume)	Loud	Medium	Soft
Timbre	Male		Female
Ensemble	Ensemble	Pairs/small groups	Individuals

Teachers may choose to use an Embodied Scale drama strategy as a pre-assessment. They would ask the students to line up from most comfortable, to least comfortable, or most knowledgeable to least knowledgeable in relation to the topic addressed in class. 

Then a teacher could introduce the lesson, and encourage students to use whichever elements they see best fit. The effectiveness of the chosen elements, and the amount of various elements used by students could give the teacher a good overall impression about how comfortable/knowledgeable the students are about the different The Elements of Choral Work, as well as about the task in general.