I am using VTS for the first time with my fifth graders. They discussed the image below after finishing a collage about popular culture. We are currently touching upon the Ashcan artists to pave the way for pop artists, who we will study for the rest of the year. We start class by VTSing the image. I then give them a short excerpt to read from a Scholastic book which we discuss as a class. Then they look at the painting again and compare what they said during the VTS session with the information they read. For the two classes that have done this so far, the students have made many connections with their initial observations and the class reading. It has been fun to hear the comments linking the two, and the comments have all been positive so far.
George Luks, Allen Street, 1905
The big differences between fifth grade and kindergarten have been
- Management: The older students don't wiggle and have better manners.
- Linking: The fifth graders linked their comments to other students voluntarily during the initial VTS session
- Evidence: after hearing me ask, "What do you see that makes you say that?" twice, the students automatically started giving evidence
- Personal experience: The fifth graders started their initial statements by saying, "I have been to a festival that looked like this, " or, "I have been to an outdoor market."
- Movement in the pictorial space: The students have experience with overlap and other levels of space, so it was easier for them to move around in the painting.
Hi Beth.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine it is quite a jump from Kindergarten to fifth grade. I was mentioning to Essex it would be an interesting experience for each of us to select an image and then take it to everyone else's classes (same image but all different age groups) and document the varying responses. You can almost do that here!
Im always looking for ways to tie VTS into lessons, while keeping with the intention of VTS. Im curious about your reading selection. What was it about? Was the motivation to expand their ideas about the painting or was it more specific? Did you VTS the reading selection? (I guess that would be RTS...LOLOL) Id love to hear more about what they said about the painting before and after.
Thanks for sharing! Its given me ideas!
Interesting adaptation of VTS. Is the reading about the image they just discussed? If so, I wonder if reading immediately after VTSing will have a downing effect over time; that the reading might reinforce the idea of a "right" answer? Let me know if I understood correctly and if so, how it goes in the weeks to come.
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