VTS1: Week 16 Blog Assignment.

Word Count

 

Technically, this is statistically significant. The average went from 25 to 31. However, I was disappointed to see that some students decreased in word count, or just barely improved. 

I believe this happened for a few reasons.
1) It was the Monday after Thanksgiving break, and they were not in working mode.
2) They were disappointed it was an image they had already seen, & didn't want to do it again.
3) Lots of our ELL or kids at a lower academic level dislike writing.
4) Students took three questions on the paper as a list they needed to complete one time. They made one statement, provided evidence, then mentioned one more thing they could find and thought they were done.
5) Students wrote more concise/coherent statements.

Interpretations with Evidence

I decided to look at how many times my students actually provided evidence for one of their interpretations. I noticed right away from our first VTS pre-test and discussion that students were making lots of interpretations. Even when students made a simple observation during a discussion, I really tried to make sure that I included the second question when possible. And, this is the most interesting part of VTS to me.  I noticed that some students would provide one or two reasons for their observations, which helped them become more concise. Usually, there would just be evidence for one of their observations on their written assessments. I think this was partially just because of the written form, and them feeling like all they were supposed to do is write one thing. I was much happier with how this went during our discussions.

But even in this written format, many students improved and as a class it was statistically significant again.

Pre/Post-Assessments

I am very proud of my kids. As mentioned, I have complete faith in their abilities, especially if we could VTS with them individually or in smaller groups. Small improvements are still improvements. We might take a little longer to make some of those improvements, but that's ok. The statistics show that there is in fact growth, even if on paper it's not as high as I would like it to be.