VTS assignment #1

     Yenawine makes some very interesting statements about the use of teamwork and community when interpreting and digesting an image. In light of research I am doing for another class this semester, these findings in regards to VTS are very exciting and important to my development as an Art teacher. While reading a book called A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, I have realized how important it is for Conceptual Age thinkers to be amble to Symphonize their knowledge to make new and exciting connections.  I am able to connect these studies to our VTS research through Yenawines remark staitng: 

"A group of people brings a breadth of information and experience to the process, even if it is not experience with art. Importantly, the synergy of people adding to each other’s observations and bouncing ideas off one another enables a “group mind” to find possible, plausible meanings in unfamiliar images much more productively than any individual alone could do. Through the group process, the individual’s possibilities are enhanced significantly."

                     - Yenawine, Guidelines for Image Selection for Beginning Viewers

Legendary basketball coach John Wooden states that the ultimate mark of teamwork is when individuals work together to create something greater than the sum of it's parts. That is what Yenawine is describing here and is also what I have experienced in all of my experiences as part of a VTS discussion. The opportunities for students to collaborate and harmonize their understanding and knowledge base is endless in the VTS setting. This is creating a greater knowledge base for everyone involved.


     The selection of images to allow for this experience to flourish is crucial. From my experiences, I agree with many of the thoughts shared by Yenawine. In regards to Accessibility: "Viewers should be able to glean what they can from the objects without expert intervention, learning to trust that most art can be interpreted to a meaningful degree through examination, association, and deduction" (Yenawine). In short, the images we are selecting should be juicy and ready to dive into. Images that have a great deal of powerful and interesting detail allow for viewers from any background to immediately contribute to and become interested in the discussion.


      It seems that no matter what you try, students will try to create a Narrative within the artwork. We should be trying to facilitate this by projecting images that lend to this tenndency in the early stages of the time  spent with a group. Students grab onto stories. Another characteristic of the conceptual age thinker, according to Pink, is their ability to tell stories and incorporate stories into their work. We must be thinking in regards to these tendencies and attempting to cultivate within our students the desire and ability to tell rich stories within their work. 


     Another interesting note that Yenawine made was the tendency for older students to be a bit suspicious of a process where there are several right answers. The point is made that student are used to definite right and wrong answers. This makes it important for the instructor to emphasize that students are on the right track of thinking about the image in the way that the artist intended or at least they would accept their interpretations. Although I am only working with 1st through 4th graders, I do find a tendency in one of the sharper students to always ask for hard answers at the end of the discussion in regards to what the image was about. It is tough for me to not give him answers and encourage him that his thinking of the image was valid. He told me that it should be tradition that I shared what the real meaning of the picture was at the end of our discussions. I suppose that by giving answers would prove some students thinking invalid and therefore discourage them. Leaving the answers open ended tends to give validity to all students thinking and interpretations.


     As I spent some time going back over some of the material written by Sydney Walker in her book, Teaching Meaning in Artmaking, I realized a critical benefit to incorporating VTS in my classroom. Walker states: "Although we, as art teachers, may yield to student pressure to move quickly to the artmaking process itself, students will soon lose interest because they have brought little in the way of knowledge to inform their artmaking. Under these conditions, artmaking instruction becomes a constant search for new media, techniques, and gimmicks to sustain student interest." I think it will be my tendency to want to start creating as soon as we can in the classroom. However, if we aren't taking time to spike students interest before we begin, wetting their appetites, they will burn out and lose interest in their creations. By incorporating these VTS sessions, not only are we increasing their knowledge base, helping them learn to talk about art, and helping them learn to communicate, we are helping them become more effective citizens in the world of visual culture.

     My VTS experiences this semester have happened in the context of the Boys Writers Club program at Ridgeway Elementary School. In this program we seek to help young boys who are struggling with their writing development, develop by pairing their writing exercises with art making exercises and VTS discussions. This school year we have been investigating the topics of Samurai Warriors, Knighthood and Beasts.
      This is the first image that I selected for our Beast unit. I chose this image because of the combination of animal arts that are combined to create this Beast. These characteristics were helpful in getting the boys to think creatively in regards to the assignment I had created for them. They were asigned to draw the top of half of a beast on one piece of paper and the bottom on another piece. Then the boys were able to mix and match the top and bottom of their beasts with others creations.
     I also liked the nature of the photo as it contained rich detail and lent itself to narrative. The boys really enjoyed the image and it successfully unleashed their imaginations on the assignment at hand. It is challenging to select images of beasts based on the criteria laid out by Yenawine. Man images tend to be gruesome or poorly created. The selection process seems to be of the highest importance when constructing a lesson around a VTS discussion. With several little sets of eyes in the room, they truly notice everything and they are eager to share with their friends. In hind sight, I feel like this was a good choice for the first image of the Bodacious Beast unit. RWAAARRRRRR!!!!!!!

BWC: Writing Tips

Last week we had the opportunity to meet with a few ladies that have a great deal of experience in helping kids to apply themselves in the area of writing. They had heard about our BWC program and were eager to help us with our research and instruction of the Boys at Ridgeway. A few of the tips that shared with us made a lot of sense and I am looking forward to applying them to my instruction and assistance at the BWC.

#1. Jotting down critical kernels: If you are having trouble helping a student get started with their writing, one step that they shared is to have the student answer a few questions about their thoughts toward the subject matter. As they share their thoughts, you as the instructor should jot down ideas or thoughts that they share. EWHen they are done talking, you share with them the kernels that you heard them share. THen you can challenge them to write about two of them. This will help them focus their thoughts and help them indicate a great jumping off point to get started with their writing.

#2. Oral Rehearsal: By challenging the student to rehearse orally what they plan to write can help them organize their thoughts before jumping in. As they talk about their thoughts, it is important not to correct their verbiage. The ladies that shared with us indicated that incorrect verbiage is very frequent and common with students of this age and this will be corrected as they grow and mature. To grill them on incorrect verbiage at this age can derail the thought process and defeat the purpose of getting them to think imaginatively and attempt to write. Allow them some freedom and encourage lots of descriptive words and imaginative thinking!

#3. Body Language: Apparently our body language goes a long way in wether the students feel defeated or not in their writing skills. If we sit up close to them and hover over them, it is not uncommon for a student to feel smothered and corrected. This usually produces feelings of inadequacy as the teacher looks to correct them and spoon feed them answers. If we are to take a more open approach and sit back giving them a bit more space, they are more likely to feel a bit of freedom and trust form us. Giving them the space they need to spread their wings as writers and thinkers is what they need as long as they know we are there and care about the work that they are doing.

VTS #2

I had the opportunity this past week to lead another VTS session with our Boys Writers Club group. Following up our trip to the corn maze with the boys last week, we decided to have them write some thank you notes to the people that helped run the event. Before challenging them with this task, we looked at an image with them for inspiration. THe image we looked at was a painting by Norman Rockwell that was on the cover of Saturday Evening Post in 1920. The image shows a young boy busy writhing a letter with a great deal of focus and determination. We hoped that by showing this image to our group of boys that they would have an image in their minds of a boy writing that they could identify as someone similar to themselves. We hoped that they would relate to the image and realize that boys do write! I feel that the exercise was successful due to their responses in our VTS session.

As I began to ask the boys what they saw in the image, a number of them kept answering that they thought the boy was writing to the Samurai warriors (the subject of our recent sessions with them). As I asked them why they thought he was writing to the Samurai they seemed stumped and didn't know how to answer my question which to them had an obvious answer. He is like us and that is what we write about! They mentioned that the boy looked young and had a dog to play with and that is how they determined that he was close to their age. They certainly identified the boy as someone the could relate with and so we felt that this was a successful exercise in helping them gain confidence and purpose in their writing.

One of the boys also mentioned that the clothes that the boy was writing looked old and dirty. He talked about why he thought they looked old and how this meant that the picture is from a while ago. He was able to use several strong descriptive words in his reasoning for determining that the clothing was from a different generation which was very editing. For the most part it is a challenge to get the see boys to use strong descriptive words. They tend to want to pint things out in the picture instead of using their words to relay what they are trying to say. We have begun using a word wall to write any descriptive words down as the boys use them in our discussions. Our hope is to get the boys to realize that we are hoping to help them use more interesting language when they are writing. We tend to see that their is a bit of competition going on when we use the word wall as all of them hope to have a word added to the wall where everyone can see. We think that this competition is a good thing. In the instance where the boy was expelling why he thought the picture was an old picture due to the style and condition of clothing, it seemed that some progress had been made in helping him use more descriptive words.

BWC at the Shryock's Corn Maze

This past Monday, the Boy's Writer's Club set off on a big adventure to the Shryock's Corn Maze to take their Samurai training to the next level. We set up a number of writing exercises to help inspire the young writers to take new steps in their development. The idea behind taking them to the corn maze was to place them in an environment that would stimulate their minds and spark new ideas just as the VTS strategy has back in the classroom. We were able to set up a number of writing prompts for them within the maze and as they watched the giant gumball machine operate inside the barn. The boys seemed very engaged and focused on the reason for the trip to the maze/barn. The activities they were involved in seemed to enhance their creative receptors and the result was a collection of sketch books overflowing with colorful drawings of machines and stories of their adventure through the maze.

While the boys sat and watched the two-story gumball machine in process, they were challenged to begin to imagine their own machine and what types of things it would be able to do. They were then challenged to make a drawing and and write about their machine, how it was made, what it was made of, and what it could do. While they drew, I gave each one of them a gumball to chew on. I was AMAZED at how quite the room became as they drew and wrote about their own machine. The only thing I could hear was the slurping sound of gumballs being chomped. I think that the gumballs absorbed the sounds that they would typically be tempted to make, talking across the room to each other. They were focused, occupied, and inspired to put their ideas on paper. The act of placing them in front of something that consumed them visually helped them excel in the battle to focus and produce new ideas. I think that this is what makes the Visual Teaching Strategy so successful and if we can continue to find new and inspiring things for our students to focus on, we will succeed as teachers looking to expand their minds.

The big idea that we are focusing on with these boys has to do with Samurai Warriors and what they represent. We were able to teach the boys about honor, respect, tradition, and the power of the ability to write. As they made their way through the maze, they were faced with challenges to write and to express their feelings. Once they arrived at the destination point in the maze, which was the bridge located at the center of the maze with a sprawling view, the boys were presented with a pen in the shape of a samurai sword. They were reminded once again how important that the skills that they are learning in the BWC are to their future. The message that " The pen is mightier than the sword " is at the heart of the big idea of the Samurai Warrior.

VTS#1 (Fall 2011)

We are a couple of weeks into our time with the BOYS WRITER'S CLUB this fall. I truly look forward to this time each week as I have the opportunity to spend some time with these hilarious little guys. I know the program is set up for us to go into the school to help them but I feel like I am probably getting more out of our time together than they are. I am also spending time in a High School classroom this semester which is good but the enthusiasm and involvement from the students is much lower than what the BWC brings! I am energized and excited to spend my days with kids as a career after hanging out with these guys. And for that, I am very thankful.

At the heart of our Boys Writer's Club is the teaching strategy known as VTS. The Visual Teaching Strategy is a tool that helps teachers facilitate conversation and observation in students as they look at images of various artworks. The strategy works very well when students are engaged and are able to build new ideas of their own off of others thoughts and comments. Our goal with the BWC is to help the boys improve their writing by allowing them to use their artwork to inspire, entice and produce new thoughts and descriptions of things that excite them. This tool has been something that I have seen work very well first hand with our group and I am excited to utilize in my own classroom in the future. Last semester we spent a great deal of time utilizing the VTS strategy in a classroom and then we finished off the semester by taking these boys to an Art museum. When we made it to the museum, the boys were making such amazing comments and observations that the docent in charge of leading our group said that he was realizing things about certain pieces of art that he had never seen before. The amount of comments and observations that these boys were making was remarkable. It was very clear that their eyes had been opened to the things that were going on around them and they had been empowered to make statements and develop conclusions on the things that they were seeing.

Last week I was able to lead our BWC group in a VTS session and once again I was excited about the results. VTS is built on the foundation of simple questions such as "What is going on in this image?" By allowing the boys to observe and then share their findings one by one with the group, new ideas are formed as the VTS leader summarizes each students statements. The leader is not to make any leading comments or treat any response different from the others. This can be very tough when kids tend to make the same statements over and over that someone else has already made just for the sake of making a comment. Sometimes I am not sure if students are just saying the same thing for the sake of being noticed, OR if this new thought is triggering in their head and they are not aware that it has already been stated and their way of processing this new thought is by sharing it. I think that if the same idea is being repeated, this is a sign that a new idea is being shared and understood by others and the collective idea construction process is working.

Another thing that I noticed in a VTS session that we held this week, is that students respond very well to seeing their ideas posted on some type of public board. We decided to write any descriptive words that we heard from them on a big piece of paper next to the image we were discussing to promote a richer vocabulary in their writing. As the boys saw words being written where everyone could see, they began to shout out all of the words they could think of to see theirs written on the board. The incentive to explore their vocabulary was increased and the words that they were able to share was exciting. From my perspective, a bit of competition is always a good thing to get boys in to an activity. In the context of VTS, this competition is able to be controlled and allow everyone to experience success as long as the facilitator is treating each response consistently.

The VTS strategy brings a number of beneficial scenarios into the classroom. Collaborative learning in this context is interesting for all and allows students to develop ideas at their own rate as the group spends time observing a common image. Everyone is challenged, given freedom to express their opinions, and develop communication skills in addition to the benefits of exposure to new pieces of art.