Blog #1: Getting to Know My Class

The class I am working with for my VTS research is a  Unit C (4^th and 5^th grade) class at Ridgeway Elementary.  There are 24 students, 14 girls and 10 boys.  There are 11 5^th graders and 13 4^th graders.  I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time with this class in particular, but I almost always see a Unit C class when I visit for my field experience.  Because they are on a rotating ABC day schedule, it is always a different class, and seems to always happen to be not the class I’m really focusing on.  Anna is also working with one of the Unit C classes, so between Mary, Anna, and I, we make sure that all of the Unit C classes get the same VTS experiences so that our data will be relevant at the end of the semester.

My experiences of these classes is that they are all generally excited to be in the art classroom, and eager to work.  There seems to be two or three students in each class that have a hard time focusing, who talk all the time, or generally cause a ruckus, but even these students seem respectful and interested in the classwork.  There are also students who are very bright and meticulous.  I assume these students have always had art classes, but I’m not sure about how much art viewing they have done in the past. Mary has a great classroom with lots of posters of artwork from all over the world all around the room and I have done VTS almost every time I have visited, so I know they are getting a lot of it this year.