Week 3: August 20 – August 26 Pre-VTS Assessment
BLOG TOPIC #3: Discuss your pre-VTS assessments in general. Did you notice any commonalities among student responses? Reflecting upon Housen’s description of Stage 1 viewers, did you recognize characteristic responses/thinking in these pre-assessments? Were you surprised by anything during the pre-VTS assessment?
Pre-VTS assessments:
After reviewing the responses from my students pre-VTS assessment, I was surprised at how little they wrote. Thinking about Housen's Stage 1 viewer, I was highly disappointed. It wasn't even evident if they were to this stage. I wonder how students are affected by their age and expectations of a certain course (i.e. would students write more if sitting in an English Language Arts class versus sitting in an art class were their personal expectation is to be making.) On the side, out of my own personal curiosity, I asked for a couple of ELA teacher volunteers to try the pre-VTS assessment too. Not too surprising, students wrote more in the english classes. [I did the pre-assessment with all three of my classes, even though I officially scored only my smallest (& most difficult!) class.
So in short, I recognized my students characteristic responses to be short without much in depth thought. I was surprised at how consistent this was across the board.
Interesting! I wonder if this would change if your students had started VTSing in elementary school. I really think expectations, as you stated, do have a lot to do with it. After teaching with VTS for 4 years in Blue Springs, kids just knew that "that's what we do in art" and rose to the task. Starting with high schoolers who haven't done this in years before is rough, so it really is all about grabbing them with images. I have a trick up my sleeve for our December meeting that might help!
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