Collage

BLOG TOPIC #3 "Visual Art and Student Centered Discussions" by P. Yenawine

After reading the article "Visual Art and Student Centered Discussions" by Philip Yenawine I was encouraged and looking forward to implementing Lesson 1 with my students. The students in the article seemed very eager to participate and speak freely about the art. My fear with taking this course has been that my students will not be so inclined to discuss so openly.

So I went into Lesson 1 optimistic and was quickly met with silence. The few things that my students did say were along the lines of Stage I Accountive viewers. Their statements were concrete observations and narratives. There were no questions or statements with any references like the students in the article. My students didn't form opinions and certainly didn't speculate. This was exactly what I was fearing.

I read through the article again after implementing Lesson 1 with my class hoping to find some insight. I really worry that my class will never have a twelve to twenty minute VTS discussion. I also wonder if there has been a study of VTS with high school students. It seems to me that there is such a difference between high school students and elementary students when it comes to feeling free to speak openly and aloud in class. The level of insecurity that most high school students have prevents them from participating freely, at least this is what I have observed.

Also the article mentions that "VTS is designed for use by general classroom teachers and requires no prior art background." and that "when an "expert" --someone with greater knowledge-- is present, discussion among peers seems generally truncated." Does that fact that I am an Art teacher with greater knowledge keep my students from openly discussing?

I am really hoping that I just need to practice and that this gets easier otherwise VTS may become a four letter word in my classroom. :)

 

BLOG TOPIC #2: Discuss Pre-VTS Assessment

Pre-Test Image:

A Meeting, 1884 by Maria Bash

I teach high school visual arts and I chose to do VTS with my photography class this semester for several reasons. They are my smallest class at 21 students and I have already had all of these students in Art I. I hope that both the size of the class and the established relationship that I have with these students will help to encourage discussion. If you have never taught teenagers before I can assure you getting them to actively discuss in class is very difficult. 


The VTS pre-test went well but I feel like they wrote very little. Most students wrote between 40 - 100 words with very few adjectives, 1-6. I was expecting more conditional language but found very little. As far as assertions with and without evidence they were about half and half. I found very little revision of thought maybe because they were writing rather than discussing. There were few multiple interpretations in their writings. As far as the comprehension strategies some used visualizing with very few questioning. I did see some students making connections but most were inferring.  


Here are some statements that they wrote:


"It looks like an older schoolboy showing younger boys the things he's learning or even showing off a little."


"To me it looks like a group of younger boys meeting up for something they probably shouldn't be doing...because of the scenery around the boys. The fence makes it look as if they are in an alley. It just simply looks sketchy to me."


"A group of young boys are talking and coming up with ideas to have fun. There is a big city around them so they have a wide playground"


There were a lot of commonalities among my students' responses. Almost all of my students referred to the boys in the image as having a meeting or gathering. Most of my students' responses referred to the boys in the image as classmates or neighborhood friends. Another commonality in their responses was that the older or taller boy was showing something to the rest of the group. 


Looking at the description of Stage I viewers my students certainly fit the description of storytellers. However, I saw very little emotion in my students' writings. 


I wouldn't say that I was surprised by anything during the pre-VTS assessment but more so disappointed by my students' efforts. They are used to writing in art classes and used to looking at art so what we did wasn't completely foreign to them. I really hope that discussion   goes better than the writing in terms of their participation. Actually, I was surprised by how few adjectives they used in their writings. That did surprise me.

BLOG TOPIC #1

Dad's Coming, 1873, oil on wood,

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 

Winslow Homer

http://www.nga.gov/feature/homer/zoom/zoompicturedad.htm

1. Did your colleagues notice what you noticed in the painting?
Yes. My colleagues noticed everything that I noticed. We all observed a young mother with her children waiting on a shore. We observed the young boy waiting with anticipation on his father. The shore seem to us to be a fishing dock or harbor and therefore Dad must be a fisherman. We all felt that Dad must have been gone for a while and that maybe the family had been waiting there for him for a while. 


2. Did they notice details or offer insights you had not considered? How did you respond to these?
Yes. My colleague, Lacey, said "Mom appears to have started to doubt or give up on waiting with her gaze straying from the sea, she has started to turn away. Realizing she now has two mouths to feed alone." Based on VTS I remained neutral even though I thought it was a great insight. I rephrased her comment back to her and all of the participants.


3. How did you feel about facilitating this discussion and what did you learn from the experience?
Initially I felt apprehensive about doing this practice with my colleagues because it felt so elementary. Once we began that apprehension quickly went away and the discussion flowed. From this experience I have learned that even with my high school students the VTS questions are still going to be applicable which is something that I was worried about. 


4. Were you surprised by anything related to this discussion?
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the VTS lesson and discussion. It wasn't something I was looking forward to doing. Because the process is so open-ended and neutral it really was relaxing and enjoyable for me as the teacher and the participants. This is something that I as a teacher need to do more often with my students so I'm really glad that I'm taking this course this semester. 


5. What would you like to work on in your next facilitation and how might you do that?
I want to work on acknowledging responses. I feel like I need to be more natural at being neutral with student responses and rephrasing. I was never aware of it but I must have been strongly guiding student discussions in my classes prior to this. 


-Comments on feedback from participants during practice lesson:
The participants in my practice lesson were very positive and did offer a little feedback. One colleague commented about the fact that I needed to pause for longer and she is right. I struggle with the amount of time to let there be silence in a discussion. Another participant suggested that I practice rephrasing so that I am more comfortable with the process. 


Participants: Lauren Peters, Lana Peppers, Lacey Jones, and Ann Turley