Blog 15 Preliminary VTS findings

I was really impressed with the result of our VTS pre/post scoring rubrics.Many of their word counts have either doubled their word counts or gotten close.  I have one student who had less.
Many individual students have Interpretations w or w/o evidence on their post test which did not exist on their pretest. Many students had no Interpretations/Inferences on the pre vts but had 1 or 2 on the post vts.  Outside factors could also be that the students have been focusing on writing heavily this year in their classrooms which could have greatly influence my outcome.  I have a student who is a teachers child who I showed both writing samples and the scoring rubric and she was very impressed.  I had several students who didn't write in full sentences on the pretest, they just listed things, now they are writing all sentences.  The class as a whole has grown a lot.  They are able to readily give evidence during VTS much of the time, they did not start out that way.  As a teacher I have learned how to comfortably facilitate a VTS discussion and am improving all the time.  I find myself being able to focus on improving on certain aspects mindfully
as I get down the basics.  I have learned about all that VTS has to offer, which seems never ending.  I love that I am differentiating learning while doing VTS.  I have found the kids to be engaged in the discussions and often are begging me to go onto the next image.  I feel as though something was missing in my art classroom previously.  I feel like I can always have a more enriching art program and VTS really helps to fulfill what I felt was missing.  The level of critical thinking is amazing with VTS.  I may have done some constructed critical thinking before but have always struggled to have an open ended discussion.  This has helped me to get a good grip on what an open ended discussion would look like and I hope to be able to phrase other introductions for projects this way as well.  It is a work in progress.