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.