Week 3: Reading Reflection and Image 1

As what Desantis and Housen’s said, the environment plays a very important role in the development of children. According to their theory, my kids are in the beginning of concrete-operational stage, during which the child develops the capacity to have abstract thought about concrete experiences. This greater coordination of thought is limited to operations performed on objects. I think VTS practice can give them a supportive environment in this stage.

       I really love the idea that creating a curriculum based on big idea and related to the artist's background, artistic context and social context. The part I am most interested in is the artmaking unit: changed meanings. I think in this unit students will have great opportunities to explore the areas above. Moreover, they can find the relationships between object and meaning. It will develop their ability of thinking and creative mind.

Image 1:

·       Reflecting on Yenawine, was this image an appropriate choice for your students?

·       I think this image was very appropriate choice for my students.

       According to Yenawine’s article, there’re some special considerations for young viewers. My choice image has something familiar to them that they can name, count and list. What they are doing are some actions they can easily interpret for the reason they learn Chinese traditional painting and calligraphy with me.  It is very realistic, so they can make up stories by observation these things. It is a painting from Japan, so it can broaden their horizon to other culture.

·       Did this image motivate rigorous & engaging discussion for students?

My students are always interested in Japanese culture and painting with ink and brushes. So they love this image at the first sight. They are very familiar with the action people did in this image. But they made more interesting narratives like they think one woman was selling painting to the other two, and they even supported it by the idea that the box in the image was used for keeping money.

·       Did this image satisfactorily introduce Big Idea, Key Concepts, & Essential Questions for the unit?

At first, I thought it might be fine to introduce the big idea memory, because the woman was using a traditional skill to present an image, and she paint from memory rather than paint from life. But it may be too hard for kids to find some relationships with memory from this image.  So it was not suitable for my unit.

·       Was the image rich enough to encourage continued discussion &/or independent student investigation? If so how might you provide for continued inquiry?

I think the image was rich enough to let kids do more investigation on, because the culture behind it is very rich. They seemed very interesting with the apparel of the women in the image, we can continue this area, talking about the traditional outfitters in Japanese culture.

·       Did this image invite opportunities to explore the BIG IDEA through artmaking? Explain.

As I mentioned before, this image was not suitable for my second grade kids. But it might be good for older students to explore the big idea memory. If so, I will let them make a picture based on what people’s life looked like in old days. I will let them do some research first, and it will also let them gain some knowledge about history.

ü  EVALUATE Image #1 and the VTS discussion:

·       Would you use this image again to introduce the BIG IDEA?  If so, why?

If Image #1 did not elicit what you were expecting, what image might you use in its place?

For kids in elementary school, I will not use this image to introduce the big idea. It is too hard for them to relate it to memory. I think next time I will use images closer to the big idea instead.

Week 2: Reading Reflection and Choices for VTS Unit

Housen’s article is developed around these three questions: “What is the nature of the aesthetic response?” “How can one best study or measure this response?” ”Can studying the aesthetic response help us teach or develop it more effectively?” According to Housen’s aesthetic stage, my students are in the Stage II. In this stage, viewers can not only tell stories, but also can build a framework for looking at works of art, using the most logical and accessible tools: their own perceptions and their knowledge of the natural world. They are beginning to be aware of artist intentionality, and interested in how things are made. They focus more on details. At this time, the selection of images in VTS and the way I lead them to read images are crucial to develop their aesthetic response. I hope I could create a suitable curriculum to help them at this point in this semester.

VTS Unit

·      Big Idea: Memory

·      The reason I chose the big idea “memory” is that everyone has memory even little kids, the concept is easy to understand, people has different memories and has multiple feelings of it, and the various memories made everyone became unique. When they understand the process of how to make contemporary artwork, they can easily create artworks to express their own thoughts.

·      Key Concepts (3-4)

·      1. People have different memories, the unique memory makes who you are. It helps us identify ourselves.

·      2.  Memory is something happened important to you that can hardly forget.

·      3. There’re good memories and bad memories, some make you happy and some make you pain.

·      4. There’re individual memories and common memories.

·      Essential Questions (3-4)

·      1.What is memory?

·      2. How different artists express memory in art?

·      3. Why do artists use their own ways to express memory?

·      4. What solutions and perspectives can be used to express memory?

·      5. What things do you think is the most important part in your memory?

·      6. What memory do you think people have in common?

·      3 IMAGES to support the Big Idea

·       

Anticipated STUDIO ACTIVITIES that support the Big Idea by targeting Key Concepts & Essential Questions

Create a journal 2D or 3D express a serious of memories you had.

Week 1: Reading reflection and Self-assessment

1. Big Ideas and Artmaking

The Big idea is always the core of art works. I consider it as the soul of artwork. It let artmaking be meaning-making rather than simply the crafting a product. Many professional artists created body of work based on one big idea, and it made these works more powerful and profound. To understand this, students will read artworks in a new way. When we are doing VTS, they will relate details in the image to the big idea, and build more narratives. And they can also develop an art-making project based on one big idea they are interested in. When they do this, their works will not limit by technical skills, formal choices and materials. They can express the essential questions in any way they like. They can think about one question really deeply and do art in a meaningful way.

2. Personal Connections

I always consider artmaking as a kind of personal expression. Because if your artwork is not related with your life, if it has no connection to what you are interested in, you won’t have passion to do it. And if no passion when doing art, it will hardly do a great work. So when we introduce big ideas to student artmaking, we should encourage them by asking questions as: How does this idea related to my life? Where am I in this idea? What would I want to know about this idea? Also, we should offer some related essential questions to expand their thoughts of this big idea. On the other side, we should let students know, a great artwork is not just connected with personal things, it also care about larger ideas, the common human experience. When expand the personal into social, more people will be touched by the work.

3. Building a Knowledge Base for Artmaking

A solid knowledge base is the foundation of exploring big ideas deeply. I think the requirement maybe too high for young students have so many knowledge base before art-making project. (There’s a start list at page 42.) But I think it will be a good idea if we plan a unit investigate one big idea, know the history and other knowledge around it first, then begin the artmaking project. One thing I will take use from the book is I will plan some activities to stimulate students’ prior knowledge, such as discussion in a group and do a paragraph writing. It will let their dormant and inert knowledge put in use. And I also think VTS will do some help during the process. When we VTS one image based on a big idea, we can see many details in this image related with the big idea. We keep asking “What more we can find?” And in artmaking, we do it in a similar way, when we ask “What more can you say in this image?”, it pushes them to think deeply and add more elements in their artworks.

Visual Thinking Strategies II

SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY

Video # __3_ submitted by _________Chuting Cao_____ Date __Dec. 7, 2012__

INSTRUCTIONS:

View your own VTS lesson video critically. For each student response, place an “x”  to document each facilitator behavior as it occurs from left to right. If a behavior does not occur during an interaction, leave the column blank. If a question or teacher behavior is not appropriate (ie Q#2 is not necessary if a student lists a simple observation w/out interpreting), place “NA” in

the corresponding column.

Example:

The example below indicates that, after asking Question #1, the teacher gestured to area being discussed by the responder & paraphrased her/his comment, but failed to ask for evidence (Q #2) and did not ask Q #3 before calling on the next student.

Response	Gesture	Paraphrase	Q #2	Gesture	Paraphrase	Q#3
Example:	x	x
1			x	x	x
2			x	x	x	x
3	x	x	x	x	x	x
4	x		x	x	x
5			x	x	x	x
6	x	x	x	x	x	x
7	x		x	x	x	x
8	x	x	x	x	x	x
9	x		x	x	x
10			x		x	x
11			x	x		x
12			x	x	x
13			x	x	x	x
14			x	x		x
15		x	x	x	x
16			x	x	x
17
18
19
20

Reflecting on practice:

1.    Based on the data recorded on the table above:

·      Which facilitator behaviors are you using consistently and well?  What impact is this consistency and skill having on the discussion?

Through the assessment, I found I always asked them the second question “What can you see makes you say that?” whether they make a narrative or just list an item. I think it is good for them to practice describing an object by asking this question. It will also help them build things when making art. When they make narratives, the second question will help them find references and help them do the logical thinking.

·      Which facilitator behaviors are you omitting or using less consistently or successfully?  What impact is this having on the discussion?

I am so surprised that after I asked the first question, I rarely paraphrased the responses, but moved on to the second question and paraphrased directly. I thought maybe I wanted them found the reference so much that I omit this part, and I thought it was more important to paraphrase the second part. But I think I should work on more on the first question, point the part they mentioned and paraphrase it, it will help a lot for them to find the references.

22.    What did you learn about your own practice while watching this video?

I didn’t realize a lot of things before I did this assessment, I think I should do more gestures and improve my skills to paraphrase the first responses to help them move on to the second question.

3.    What did you learn about your students’ engagement and/or participation while watching this video?

Since my group is really small, they have lots of chances to talk. They are really patient and focus on reading pictures, and they also enjoy doing VTS. They even offered more narratives than bigger group did.

4.     Did anything surprise you as the result of watching this video?

The students always surprised me by reading the picture so detail with amazing insight. And I was surprised I often omit the part of paraphrasing the first response.

5.   Did the video reveal anything you might need to work on and how do you think you might be able to accomplish this?

As I mentioned before, I rarely paraphrased the first responses, and moved on to the second question and paraphrased them directly. I think I should get used to point the part as they noticed at once, and improve my paraphrasing skills to help them find more references to support their narratives. It is also important for me to improve my own language and help them with vocabulary.