Let me preface this whole discussion by reminding you that these 3rd grade students have done VTS with me since they were in 1st grade, so even though I did these pre-VTS assessments with them before doing any VTS with them this year, they have done VTS before. There are three new students in the class however, who have never had VTS before. That being said, from this class of 21 students the pre-VTS assessment reflections ranged in word count from 18 words to 120 words! (Interestingly, two of the new students had high word counts of 57 and 70.) Over half of the class's word counts were in the 30-50 count range. Even though many of the students wrote a lot, most of what they wrote were simple observations with quite a few detailed observations as well. The student with the most words, 120, had 8 simple observations and 9 detailed observations, but no interpretations w/or w/out evidence. By contrast, the student with the least words, 18, had 1 detailed observation, 1 interpretation w/out evidence and 1 use of conditional language. Generally these students were providing me with a "list" of what they saw which would put them right in Housen's Stage 1--"list makers--making simple, concrete, observations." I think for 3rd grade students, this is just what I expected. (Actually, I was very impressed with with many of them!) My 120 word student wanted to write more the following week because she felt like she wasn't finished!
I did have 9 students give interpretations w/ evidence such as: "The man is painting a picture, I figured it out because I saw a paintbrush", or, "The dad is painting a picture of the mom and baby because the dad has an easel and paintbrush and the mom is posing." Still, they are Stage 1 viewers because they are creating a story with their observations.
I did have one student who "blew me away", however. Her comments were hard for me to classify because they were neither simple observations, nor were they supported with evidence, but they were definitely her unique interpretation of what she saw in the image. Here are some examples: "The fur on the cat makes art look so fun."; "The baby's eyes glow in my mind."; "It takes love to believe in this."; "The colors glow when the man paints."; "There is love in this house.", WOW! I showed this to her classroom teacher and she seemed "blown away" too!
Most of the students responded to the image much the way I expected them to--with a list. But I was surprised that some of the students really took a long time to write everything they saw. I think this has a lot to do with an emphasis on writing in our school's curriculum which is reinforced with their experience with VTS.
Wow! I think we all want to adopt that student with a 120 word count who wanted to continue writing next week! We'd also like to adopt that child with the unique answers. If you don't mind, I'd love to share those comments w/ Philip Yenawine and see how he would classify them (with your permission. My guess is that he would be blown away as well. Is this a child you've had since grade 1?) =0) Since you have so many experienced VTSers, lets look for nuances in the post-VTS writings as well as the standard measurements. You might also be able to get some writings from their regular classroom teacher to look for transfer. With 2 years of VTS under their belts, you could begin to see this in their writing. Very excited about this!
ReplyDeleteOf course, please share her comments with Philip Yenawine. I'll be anxious to hear what he has to say! I have had this student since Kindergarten, but I don't really know what her classroom written work is like. Her classroom teacher seemed as surprised by her comments as I was. Our reading resource teacher wanted to have a copy of several of the assessments as she works with some of these kids too. I'm excited to really observe them over the semester.
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