VTS1: Week 6 Blog Assignment.

4th Grade Lesson 1 Image 2

Assessing Student Engagement & Learning:

• In my video I can spy lots of kids in the back who are very fidgety and picking on each other, which is frustrating. The even more frustrating/interesting part is that once they stop and respond, their answers are great. So perhaps they are still engaged even if they are really fidgety?? I see lots of eyes wandering around from time to time, and students needing to stretch a little bit. But I also see people, especially ELL students, maintaining eye contact with the speaker or image. 
• Students noticed many things:
• The man appeared to have just been fishing because he is by the boat and holding fish.
• That the boy has a bow and arrow, aimed at the fox.
• The woman is making a dress that appears to be of Native American origins or from a long time ago, even though the clothes she is wearing look like those we wear today.
• That they might be hunters because of the gun and animal head on the wall.
• The woman weaving a basket.
• The pot/basket behind the chair.
• The pole behind the chair that could be a fishing pole because of the bobber.
• The picture hanging on the wall, that might have writing on it.
• The flock of birds flying in a V, as if they were flying south for the winter.
• That it is probably evening time because of the sunset colors in the sky and white dot that looks like a moon in the sky.
• That the people are probably a family because of the different family ages.
• Most of these responses seem to be like stage one statements, as they are content related or statement observations.
• Students are starting to offer evidence for their statements without being asked, which is exciting. They are noticing many little things. In this particular conversation, there were a lot of students disagreeing with each other. This is exciting for me to see them practice being respectful towards each other, because they tend to have a lot of student drama in this class. I liked seeing that the ELL students appeared to be engaged. And, that some different students were starting to feel comfortable offering answers compared to last time, because there's no right answer and I am looking for a whole class discussion.

Reflecting on Practice:
Honestly, I felt like this VTS lesson was more chaotic than our previous one. There were just a few behavior problems that interrupted our discussion, and I am still working on having our class talk one person at a a time. I feel like I get so caught up in listening to the one speaker, pointing, paraphrasing, and linking, that managing the rest of the class gets lost. So I'm still balancing that out, and now I know that I can be more aware of what's going on. However, I am still proud of the students' responses. They are noticing closely, providing evidence, and respectfully disagreeing with each other. I also felt like there were students wanting to make MANY observations at a time, which is somewhat frustrating because I feel like it takes away opportunities for other people to talk, and it's a lot for me to paraphrase. (Should we put a limit on how much they can respond to at a time??)

Planning:
I think I really have to keep harping on those expectations before we begin the process. Students still wanted to talk right away when we were just looking, and students occasionally talk over each other. I didn't implement any of the silent hand signals yet, because I still get caught up on making sure I'm listening to the speaker. I think I might try making a poster of VTS expectations to put by the smart board, so I can remember them, point to them during discussions, and students can look at them when they are not participating.

Summative Reflection Proposal:
I'm thinking of making my project be somewhat of an arts-advocacy form. Part of what I love so much about VTS is that it just seems to make sense, AND connect art to critical thinking as well as visual texts. Which is why it seems frustrating when other educators do not want to implement it, or administrators do not understand it enough to support it. So, I would like to make perhaps a brochure/flyer/postcard (or set of all) that can be used to educate the community about why VTS is so important in art education. It could briefly explain how VTS started, have quotes from my students about how VTS helped them, some data on pre/post assessments, the overall process, and how it connects to common core standards for literacy. I'll have a more flushed out proposal for the 18th.