Week 11: Preparing for Teacher’s Choice

Title     “Night Revels of Han Xizai”

Artist    Hongzhong Gu

Source for the image  the Palace Museum, Beijing

Respond to the following questions as you anticipate “VTSing” this image with your students:

1.Why did you select this work of art?

As I mentioned before, the students really love Chinese culture and really like Chinese traditional painting, so I think they will be interested in this painting. In addition, this painting is one of the most famous paintings in China, it represents some parts of Chinese culture so it is worth to read and have a discussion of it.

2.Why do you believe it is appropriate for your students, considering their age, stage, interests, and abilities?

I believe this image is appropriate for my students because it is realistic, they can easily identify what the people are doing, they can even tell a story about it. Students in their age (age7-8) always like stories and can express something in the real life. Moreover, according to my students’ former performance, they have ability to observe some details and analyze them. This painting has many details, I think they will have fun and come up with some interesting narratives from them.

3.Why is it a good choice for the content/curriculum you are currently teaching? 

Actually, I am teaching them Chinese traditional painting, so this famous Chinese traditional painting will certainly do some help to their painting study.  They can know some Asian culture through observation. (Since they have half Asian blood, it is important for them.) And it will also support other curriculum in their elementary school such as writing and language.

4.In what way(s) do you believe it will challenge your students?

It will challenge my students by the context. The story happens in ancient China, so the life there is very different from now. And the original story is complicated, there’re many figures in the whole painting.

5.What features/aspects of the work of art and its narrative do you believe students will notice?  What might intrigue them?

I think they will notice people in the picture are going to eat something since it is very obvious. They will also find someone is playing music, because they are good at observe details. I think the only trick is all the people are listening to the one playing instrument. It maybe hard for them because listening is an action that is not so obvious.

Week 10: Assessing, Reflecting, Planning

·      Student  Engagement Learning:

o   Describe student willingness to participate in the discussion. Are you witnessing change?

They are always very active and have a great passion to make some narratives. It took us 20min to do VTS this time!

o   What did students notice about the featured artwork?

First they find a guy is sick and lying on the bed. (I have to explain that the there’s something wrong with my camera, so we retake the first few seconds. Actually they noticed the medicine to prove the man is sick.) Also they noticed a woman is holding some leaves. And then they find many objects in the room like bag, sewing machine, flower, photos, painting, cross, candle, towel and hot water.

o   Are you seeing more careful observation and deeper noticing?

Yes. They inferred that the woman maybe pick the leaves outside window, because the pattern of the leaves are the same. And they think maybe the leaves are used to heal the man. They noticed two portraits on the wall, and think they are the man’s mother and dad. They also the little boy is the man and the woman’s son, because their skin color is same. They think deeper about this, then they found the woman and the kid are sad since the dad is sick. They even noticed the content in the painting is about Jesus, so they believed the family is Christian.

o   Are students expressing their observations conditionally as they gain experience looking at art?  (i.e. “It could be…” “It might be…” “It’s possible…”  “I wonder if maybe…”

Yes. Sometimes they will use it maybe, and it looks like.

o   Are students demonstrating more flexible thinking? (i.e. “At first I thought, but now I think…”  “It might be…, but it could also be….”)

Yes. I remember when one kid noticed something on the floor, he said it is something hot. Then he thought for a while, and changed his idea to say it may be soup, because the steam.

o   Describe student interactions during the discussion.  Are they linking their own responses? Are they respectful and democratic as they construct meaning?

Yes, they linked their own responses like first one noticed the woman was holding some leaves, and there’re some leaves outside the window, then he found the leaves were in the same pattern, so he said the woman got the leaves from outside the window.

o   Were you able to vary the questions from time to time without altering the meaning? 

I think I sometimes I changed the question like “what more is going on here?”, ”What is happening?”

o   What do you think students learned from this discussion?

They learned to how to make different items together to make more meaningful narratives.

o   What did you observe that makes you say that?

Once they continued listing some items that seemed separated. I want to them can make more connections, so when they just said they could see leaves, I asked ”What do you think about the leaves? What happened?” It works great, they make a meaningful narrative about this.

·      Reflective Practice:

o   How did the VTS discussion feel and what did you learn by facilitating the 4^th lesson with your students?

I feel they improve a lot. I learn to change the questions to lead a better discussion this time.

o   Are the questions and prescribed teacher behaviors becoming more natural and comfortable?

Yes. I became more confidence and comfortable.

o   Have you tried to reword the questions without changing their intent/meaning?  Did the change impact the discussion in any way?

Yes. Actually, I think it is more useful to ask “What more is going on here?” than “What more we can find?” Because “What more we can find?” let them think more about individual items than make meaningful narratives.

o   Were there any surprises?  Will these impact your practice moving forward?

It took us 20 minutes doing VTS, we really got a lot. When I thought we could finish, they still had lots of things to say.

·      Planning:

o   What do you want to work on as you plan for future VTS lessons? How do you think you can accomplish that?

I think this time I chose a higher level picture for them. (They are in Grade2, but I choose the curriculum for Grade 3) But they still did an impressive job. In the future I will do more research on selecting images and let them improve more

Week 9: Teacher’s Choice Proposal

This is one of the most famous Chinese traditional paintings collected by the Palace Museum, Beijing. The name of this painting is  “Night Revels of Han Xizai”, and the artist’s name is Hongzhong Gu who was living in the Southern Tang during the period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907-960 AD).

When thinking about what should I choose for my twins, I remembered that the reason why they come to me to learn art. Maybe because they have half Asian blood, they are very interested in Asian Culture, especially Chinese and Japanese. They like Chinese traditional painting so much, so I think they will be certainly attracted by this painting.

The whole painting is a long scroll painting. It has five parts, every part has a particular scene. I choose the first scene, it describes Han Xizai and his friend were listening to a Chinese traditional musical instrument----Pi Pa.  And as the Yenawine’s guidelines recommend, this piece also has stories artist intended, diversity, realism and series and theme so this painting is worth dealing with. I think they will like the story and I believe they will have some interesting narratives from their rich imaginations.

Week 8:VTS-to-Date

I just did two VTS discussions with my kids for the reason that they began their school after Labor Day. Actually, I did four, because I did that with two groups in different ages and both of them did two. It is interesting to compare the differences between the two groups at different levels, and also comparing their growth from beginning to now. I think the summative reflection can be well presented from the comparison.

At the beginning, Group 1(the class I have in a Chinese Language School where most kids are around 5-6) seemed not so interested in reading the image, some of them were using their color pencils painting on their papers, maybe because they thought it is a art class, and what they should do is finish a piece of picture. They didn’t care about what I said to read the image on the screen and find what’s going on in this picture. And some of them were just staring at the image, but do not want to talk about it (maybe they were just afraid to make some mistakes). After encouragement, one kid said something then I praised her, then more and more kids began to talk. Although most of them can just describe what they can see in this picture, and cannot explain too much, I think it is still a good start. In the second lesson, more kids participated in our discussion, they showed more interest in the image, maybe because they think it is a good chance to let others hear their voice, and during the discussion, they became more confident, and even compete with each other. I mean sometimes one offered one opinion, another kid would give an opposite opinion and try to prove only he is right. I think it is a good phenomenon, because in this way, they can think more deeply, and know when we meet a same thing, people will have different ideas from different perspective and how to do critical thinking. And I think they will know better about art, art is not only about the skills, what we do in art class is not only drawing or painting or practice some other skills (as many kids in the first lesson just want to painting), what more important in art is about thought, the big ideas.

Group 2 is two kids in almost 8-years-old, actually they are twins. I know this group is too small, even cannot be called a group, but I still want them to do VTS, because I think they are really talented little artists and should have the chance to meet VTS. These two kids always surprise me. They showed great interest when the first time they do VTS, they wrote a lot and have a great discussion. Although there are only two kids, they find even more details than the Group1 (maybe because they are older and with more passion). They are twins, but they have different perspective, and also sharing the different information. In the second lesson, they can connect the different information and build a new one through it. As twins, I think they can identify themselves better by this way, they look almost the same, but they are two different persons, they have different ideas and personalities. I think they will understand themselves better and even look at the world in a different way. Because it is an art class, I also teach them how to make art, I try to make a good relationship between VTS and art-making. I  think I raise a high requirement, but the result come out amazing. After doing VTS, I ask them to create a painting, that present the same idea in the VTS image and make details to let others know who are they, what is the time, when it happened, what they are doing. They did an impressive job and I am really proud of them. I think VTS really help a lot when they making details in a picture, they think things in a different way and I guess when they do writing, the same thing will happen. I think after I learned VTS, I learn more about art myself, and I find the influence of art education is more powerful than I thought before.

I think it is still a long way for me to know VTS better, and I encounter some challenges during teaching. For example, some of my students in Group 1 still don’t want to talk and some just speak a little. And some little kids will point one thing and say they can see another thing. I try to lead them to a right way by paraphrasing, but it is still hard. And my language is still a problem, since some of my students cannot speak Chinese, I should use both languages. When I’m using English to paraphrase, I cannot do it so well as my intention. But I think I can do it better through continuous practice.