When the students reach a certain comfort level with this, the teacher can introduce more structured assessments such as checklists or rating scales. And the teacher's assessment should focus on encouraging and helping the students improve both the products and their assessments. In middle school and high school performing groups, students can write critiques of their performances, with the teacher assessing both the performances and the critiques. Some music educators in middle and high school have found it easiest to introduce this in the weekly individual or small group lessons. The teacher then critiques the recording and the students' comments and returns both to the student for guidance in the next week's practice.
Teachers report both enhanced student engagement and performance.
At some point more structured assessments of both performance and student assessments, ranging from checklists to rubrics, could be developed by the teacher and students. This would help students internalize performance targets, and assessments based on the rubrics would better inform both teaching and learning. When students achieve a degree of comfort in assessing individual performance, small or large ensemble critiques could be introduced. The teacher tapes a segment of a piece during rehearsal and asks the students to listen to it during free time and describe the strengths and problems they hear in their own performance, their section's performance, and the entire ensemble's performance, followed in each case with any suggestions for improvement. As above, the teacher comments on both the performance and the student's critique and returns it to the student.