DI-with VTS- woo! Way to kill two birds with one stone!
To me VTS gives all of my different thinkers the ability to think on their level, but also be a part of the thought processes of students who are on high levels of thought. My focus group does not contain a large spectrum of learning levels, only about 4. But I am happy to see that some of my basic thinkers are able to listen to their peers (especially the high leveled peers) and begin to understand what they are thinking. They are also actively participating and connecting to these ideas. What a great example for these basic thinkers to have.
For example- I have a student, student S, and she rarely participates in the discussions, she only wrote 2 sentences for her pre/post vts assessments. Basically she does the bare minimum to get by and tries to fly under the radar and not get noticed. Then there is student C, she is a very high level thinker. When she responds to the questions, and usually has more than one response to provide for each vts session, she has a well thought out answer with a lot of evidence of her thinking. She is also a very outside of the box thinking, high achiever, and for the pre/post vts writing assessments, she practically filled both pages. Well during one of my first lessons I was VTSing this image:
http://vtsweb.org/lessons/g301#
sorry could only copy a short cut, but it is from VTS curricula, Grade 3-5 first year, lesson 1, the image of a person lying in bed.
So student C gives her opinion of the image, and one of the things she points out was the photos on the wall, and the dresser. She believes that the 2 photos on the wall are the girl in the beds grandparents. Then the picture on the dresser is the girls husband. She explains ow this is her mother taking care of her and that she is sick. and that the little boy by the foot of the bed is her son. Then all of sudden student S raisers her hand and says I agree with student C, but I don't think the girl in the bed is sick, maybe her husband died and she is sad in bed. That would make sense for the mother to take care of her and her son to want to be with her too. I have to say, I really don't think student S would have been able to come up with that answer, without student C helping her connect some of the dots.
Another example would be when I decided to VTS with my first grade students for the first time... during the end of a class that I was being evaluated for... why I thought this was a good idea, i don't know, but at least it didn't totally train wreck. I will add my image that we VTSed latter, it's on my work computer.
But the basic overview was a painting of 3 Native American men on horses, but the horses were just standing in the middle of the water. The first few kids simply listed off things they were seeing, but then one students say he thought that the Indians were heading home and maybe got lost, when I asked him to provide evidence he said because they all seem to be looking in one directions like they thought home was that way, but that he thought they were lost because it didn't make sense that they were just standing in the middle of water. This totally opened up our discussion, tons of hands shot up... the next one said no they are hunting, see his spear in his hand, and they must be looking at an animal over there, and I think the horse is helping them, because he is looking down at the fish swimming around his feet. At that point the possibilities kept growing, but it took a high level thinking to show some of the others that there was a possible story in the painting, not just things.
I'm still working on the whole DI idea, because to me I was differentiating my instruction all the time to all the kids, I had not been making things more challenging for my students who needed it. I think my biggest problem here is time. My class is only 50 minutes, and getting around to everyone at least once is difficult because I have a lot of students who seem to struggle with taking steps without my opinion. "mrs. schotte does this look okay, is this right, like this?" and I am trying so hard to break them of this need, but wow they are really consistent with this need. I think my 5th graders are the worst, maybe it's their developmental stage, but it can really cause trouble with me making it around to help all my students. I would love any suggestions you might have. I feel like my students are not quit self sufficient enough for me to really be able to push some of them (without great help and explanation)?
What a victory!!! That would have been very hard not to do cartwheels when Student S offered her interpretation after her tendency to fly under the radar. Yeah!!!! The horses in the water discussion sounded fascinating as well.
ReplyDeleteOne thing you might try for DI to challenge your brighter kids is to divide them up into cooperative groups once in a while and have them VTS. You could choose the groups ahead of time; like put the brighter kids in the same group. Then you move around and check on groups. You'll be setting the same high standards for all, but the brighter ones will push each other a little harder. Something to think about.