BLOG TOPIC #4: Assessing, Reflecting, Planning

This morning I led a VTS discussion of Norman Rockwell's "Three Umpires", my first VTS experience with stage 1 viewers in a classroom.  Participation was not quite as good as I expected it to be, considering that these boys are fairly familiar with doing VTS.  I think about 1/3 of the boys made no comments during the discussion.  Those who did participate offered a mix of assertions, some evidenced and some not, as well as a few interpretations.  Most seemed to understand right away that the picture is about a baseball game being rained out.  A number of comments attempted to interpret what was going on between the two partially hidden figures behind the umpires; perhaps a bribe, some kind of deal, or betting.

Students behaved and interacted well during the discussion, as I expected.  Most of these boys have done VTS before and are familiar with the rules.  They raised their hands when they wanted to contribute, and most waited patiently to be called on.  I did notice that when one boy made a comment that I believe he knew to be silly, (I see a potato chip) other boys sort of wanted to follow suit, but the discussion got easily back on track.  Several boys drew on prior knowledge about what kinds of clothes and equipment baseball players and umpires wear.  One boy recognized the text  that appears to be painted on a wall to be advertising.  I thought it was interesting that even though he couldn't give a lot of further justification for why he identified it as advertising, he new that he was accustomed to seeing ads on the walls of stadiums. I could see that the students were really trying to figure out what was going on in this scene, not just with the three main figures in the foreground, but those in the midground and background as well, which tells me that they are looking closely.

I definitely found leading the discussion with young, stage one viewers to be a little more challenging than leading my peers.  At times their ideas were a little hard to follow, as they wanted to list several things at once or were making observations and assertions that were not completely evident or clear to me.  This also made neutrality more difficult.  When a student made an off the wall observation, I had to be aware of my reaction, so as not to give the impression that they had gotten it wrong.  Conversely, when I noticed a student putting things together, I had to be careful to not be more affirming.  For example, I think I responded with "interesting" to the potato chip comment, "good" to most of the comments, and "yes, good" to some that I felt were really getting back on the right track.

I did not have the opportunity to look closely at the image before today's VTS which I didn't think would make too much of a difference, especially since this was a classic image that I had seen before, but now I can see how helpful it is to study the image beforehand.  I was able to conduct the VTS well enough, but my gesturing to the right parts of the image was a little hesitant and uncomfortable.  Hopefully this will be alleviated next time when I have a chance to look at the image first. 

I also think I should have actually rehearsed my introduction a little more.  Fortunately these boys knew the routine, but I could have started things out a little more smoothly.

So, bottom line...preparation is key.