Blog Topic #6: Assessing, Reflecting, Planning--Video A

Assessing Student Engagement & Learning

I used image #3 from Lesson #1, grades 3-5, year one for my video because I had already used image #2 with this class.

As a whole my class was very engaged during our lesson.  The session lasted about 15 minutes.  Just about every student had something to say and those that did not were still very attentive.  The students began by noticing simple objects in the image such as the people and cactus. But they soon began to give a narrative to the image by offering suggestions such as:

-figures are a mother and child
-man and child
-aunt and child
-unrelated woman who rescued child
-They are sad.  The adult is comforting the child.

As far as the setting they speculated that:

-It's in the desert.
-There was a fire in the desert and they are escaping.
-It is sunset in the desert.
-There was a storm and lightning caused a fire in the desert.
-They were cooking dinner and went for a walk and forgot about the stove and it caught on fire.
-They are poor because they have no shoes or clothing.

Because of these many possible stories or explanations of the image I think many of my students are Stage 1 viewers but showing signs of Stage 2 viewers as well.  They are Accountive viewers by making a story, but they are Constructive viewers by using their own knowledge of the natural world to figure out the image.

I also had students give purely concrete observations without any hint at storytelling such as:
-The cactus looks like a noodle.
-The cactus looks like a banana.
-The cactus looks like a man's face.
-I think the word at the bottom is a name.

I think that the students are continuing to learn how to "VTS".  I think they are becoming more comfortable with VTS and are not worried about saying the wrong thing.  I think they are really looking and observing and trying to make sense of the picture.  With this image in particular they were able to bring in prior knowledge of what a desert looks like to help explain the picture.

Reflecting on Practice
I felt very comfortable facilitating this lesson.  I used the three questions just as written, although I did not always have to use question #2 because the students sometimes gave evidence first.  I think I repeated and paraphrased what the students said and offered new vocabulary when I could, i.e.--the word "cloak" for "some kind of blanket wrapped around".  I try to use the word "good" after each student's comment as my neutral word, but I noticed I did not use it a couple of times so I want to make sure I remember to do that in the future.  It feels comfortable to use that word--I just need to make it a habit.  I also had a hard time ending the discussion.  There were still some hands up--but no new hands--and the comments seemed to be degenerating to mostly silly ones about the shapes of the cactus.  I tried to acknowledge those comments equally but I did want to end the discussion at that point before we went too far down that path!  I do think the class had some great comments and really listened well to each other. Of my two students who I chose as "portraits of possibility", only one, Student A spoke up.  I was very pleased to hear his comment as he is my student who is very unsure of himself. (He had a very insightful comment about the possibility of fire in the background.)
Even though Student B did not have anything to say, he seemed to listen well and was attentive and not disruptive.

Planning
I want to really try to stay neutral and use my word "good" with EVERY student next time.  I also want to be able to "wrap up" the discussion at the right time--yet still give everyone a chance to speak.  I want to discourage "silly" comments by acknowledging them the same as other comments and not letting the student get extra attention for the silly comment.  All in all, I thought it went really well and I'm anxious to see what happens next time.