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.