Assessing, Reflecting and Planning- I'm playing a little catch up here, getting used to a different rotation this year and still having plenty of time to make art, means I have to really consider where I'm putting my VTS.... But I think I might finally have an idea of where we are headed.
http://vtsweb.org/lessons/g301# this was our image.
I must start off by saying, that my little think tanks are surprising me more and more with VTS! There has always been something I absolutely loved about the 4th graders (each year) and now this age level is proving perfect for this class! My pilot class had 26 kiddos in it and it's a packed house. I invited them to scoot up, but many chose to stay at their spots, some in the back as much as 20 feet away. Note to self, next time have them move closer. I had a great participation from about 18 of the kids, wanting to keep adding more, but there were those few that never said anything, several of those in the back. We actually had to stop after 16 minutes, I think they could have kept going!
Discussion- Several students would just list until they were able to Ping off another students idea. In the beginning they were all on the idea line of the woman in bed being sick, then it moved to what the relationship was between the people in the painting with the people in the photographs. Eventually ideas of money, and jobs came up. We did have to stop and review that it was okay to disagree, but that they needed to raise their hand. One of the kids said " I think there are feet under the bed" and about half the class said out loud "I disagree" "no it's not" etc. But after my reminder, they were much better about waiting their turn and then saying "I disagree because." Our discussion concluded with me saying that I would take you (pointing to the last three hands up) and then we will have to stop for today. After we were done I asked the kids, "how many of you thought we would be able to talk about this piece for 15 minutes?" and no one raised their hands. So I congratulated them on really looking at the piece and having a fantastic discussion! They all seemed surprised and proud. This observation tells me that my kids are starting to realize how much they can find and learn about a piece from looking at it and discussing it for a while with others.
Reflecting- When the kids walked in the door, I remembered right then, that they were going to VTS the image I had looked at thennight before. So I didn't want to waste time, and I had them get pencils ready and their pictures out from their previous visit. This allowed me enough time to sign into my account and get the image up. Lesson learned because then I felt frantic and needed to be more focused. Next time get it ready to go before my day starts, since my classes are back to back and I don't have time to find it before their class comes in. Once we got started it went well overall, I didn't have any "quiet time" in fact it was hard to get to all of them as their hands kept shooting up without them getting frustrated for not being called on yet. I used our three questions, but forgot to say "what more can we find" until about 7 minutes into the discussion.... they kept raising their hands so I didn't need to. Eventually I remember and this felt redundant to me, but I did notice that new hands were showing up when I used the last question. I struggled a bit with paraphrasing, and was totally surprised by one of my little story tellers response. He gave this like 2 minute long answer and I tried really hard to get everything paraphrased and then closed with good, he says, "And there was the soup thing" so here is a kid who noticed the one thing I left out of his paraphrasing.... lol I just said, "yes, and this looks like it might be soup, good" and he gave me the head nod of "okay I'm good now." This just proved to me that there are kids who really pay attention to and appreciate the validation that the paraphrasing gives. Also keep in mind this is a kid who cannot go 15 minutes without a neighbor tattling that he is bothering them or making noises. And he almost never pays attention to directions. He was totally sucked in the entire time and silently thinking! I am working so hard on being neutral, and keeping "good" as my ending to each child's response, but every once in a while something different slips out. Working on that one.
Planning: To be more prepared for future VTS lessons I need to work on the following:
*Spending at least 15 minutes studying the work, to really be ready for the paraphrasing and pointing.
*Getting my beginning speech set to memory.
*Staying neutral.
Overall I felt it went great, and my kiddos and I still have a lot to learn with VTS. I'm very proud of them :)
Wow. 26 kids is a lot for VTS! You might use that argument to encourage kids not to give you a laundry list of things when you call on them. LOL!
ReplyDeleteI was so excited when you said of your student with the long-winded answer, " Also keep in mind this is a kid who cannot go 15 minutes without a neighbor tattling that he is bothering them or making noises. And he almost never pays attention to directions. He was totally sucked in the entire time and silently thinking!" Perhaps this student should be the focus of you Portrait of Possibility beginning next week? I'm so anxious to see how the semester goes for that kiddo!
Sound like you are right where you should be right now - engaging the kids with the discussion, cognizant of "the routine," metacognitive and reflective. Yay! Sounds like you have a great class to work with, too. Keep up the good work!
It sounds like you got off to a good start and that your students were engaged. I can bet that even though you had some that didn't raise their hands, they were also focused and listening.
ReplyDeleteSomething you wrote made me think about my little kiddos. You asked your students if they thought they could talk about an art work for 15 minutes. It made me think of how powerful VTS is and how I have 5 and 6 year olds looking at two works of art for nearly 20 minutes.
I too have been working on limiting responses. It's hard not to let them share all they have to say and I have have had to preface the lesson by telling students to state one response/observation/item and let others have a turn. I think this helps the paraphrasing.