Week 9

ü Reflect on Hadjioannou through a VTS lens.
Blog about insights, epiphanies, surprises, questions in response to these principles.

I think VTS discussion is a kind of authentic discussion according to Hadjioannaou’s definition. “During such interactions, participants have opportunities to express opinions and ideas, and contributions are often built on ideas express by other participants.” It describes exactly what we do in a VTS discussion! During VTS, every viewer has chances to share their own opinions. There are no wrong answers. They could say whatever they want based on the evidences they have seen. And they could relate different ideas together to build new ideas. Mr. Enthis’s classroom is really impressive to me. His beliefs about teaching, literary analysis, learning and discussion are all similar what we believe in VTS. “If lots of those people all thought the same thing, then it wouldn’t be really opened up to the other possibilities because usually the person that has an idea, they stick to it and they don’t really think about anybody else’s ideas. But if somebody else shares their idea then you sort of get to hear about other things and sometimes that changes your mind.” It was totally my feeling when I was a viewer in VTS discussion. This discussion broadens my horizon and let me find deeper meaning and interpretation in an image. The article also talked about the relationships among members during the discussion. VTS also have the same function, let members listen to others’ opinions carefully even if their thoughts are in the opposite way with yours. It developed students’ respectful mind in this way.

ü RESPONSE TO BRIGHTON
· Brighton’s Pre-assessment Tool Box contains 3 tools: Pencil & Paper Pre-Tests, Entrance/Exit Cards, and Interest Surveys. VTS is, of course, not one of them.
· Add VTS to Brighton’s ToolBox by writing a one-paragraph addition to her article. In it briefly introduce VTS, how VTS would be implemented as a pre-assessment strategy, what evidence of student knowledge might look like, and how the discussion might help the teacher plan for instruction that addresses identified student needs.

In your Tool Box: Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a method initiated by teacher-facilitated discussions of art images and documented to have a cascading positive effect on both teachers and students. The facilitator only uses three basic questions: 1. What’s going on in this picture? 2. What can you see makes you say that? 3. What more we can find? It is perhaps the simplest way in which teachers and schools can provide students with key behaviors sought by Common Core Standards: thinking skills that become habitual and transfer from lesson to lesson, oral and written language literacy, visual literacy, and collaborative interactions among peers. VTS as a pre-assessment tool will help teachers to know the situation about students. How is their ability of reading an image? What kind of experience do this student have? What is the student’s previous knowledge? What are the students interested in? What do they need to learn? ? How is the relationship among the students?