Blog 11: VTS and the Common Core

It is truly amazing how well VTS meets each of the Common Core State Standards for Speaking and Listening:

Comprehension and Collaboration
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
This is really the heart of a VTS discussion.  Students participate in a conversation about a work of art with all of their classmates.  They are invited to agree or disagree respectfully with each other to develop and express their own opinions.

2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
As we've often discussed, our students are not afforded the opportunities to view art in the classroom often enough.  VTS is a vehicle for doing so, and here the Common Core is calling for teachers to specifically offer these opportunities.  The importance of teaching students to "integrate and evaluate" information visually is critically important in the world today as visual literacy becomes a more and more essential skill for functioning in our media-laden society.

3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.
As I said before, by inviting students to agree or disagree with their classmates, but asking them to do so respectfully during a VTS discussion, we create a safe environment for them to begin considering their thoughts on the validity of other's ideas.

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
The second VTS question, "What do you see that makes you say that?" is the one that really addresses this standard.  By asking this question, we are asking students to ground their thoughts and ideas in the material that has been presented to them.  By holding VTS discussions often, and continuing to ask this question, we develop a habitin our students of supporting their ideas with evidence to the point that asking this question becomes unnecessary because they do it automatically.  It seems pretty clear that this habit would then spill into other discussions and assignments.

5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
 As an art historian, I would argue that a work of art is its own form of visual data, and VTS discussions encourage students to consider them that way as well. Students could easily extend these skills to find works of art that display information that supports their ideas in history, literature, or other humanities, or begin to consider how graphics might express information or enhance understanding.

6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
VTS discussions offer students the opportunity to speak about their thoughts and ideas in a way that they might not often have the opportunity to do in their regular classrooms.  VTS asks them to think carefully and communicate their ideas and thoughts with others.  Speaking in front of others is something that takes practice and class discussions require that students do so.

Clearly, VTS meets all of the Common Core Standards, mostly clearly and completely.  In order to incorporate technologies organically and authentically, I might leave up an image over the course of the class session, and offer students (assuming they have access to smart devices) the opportunity to continue the discussion via a platform like www.todaysmeet.com.  This could allow students who don't feel comfortable talking out during the discussion the opportunity to still share his or her thoughts through a sort of text message. It would also encourage students to continue thinking about the discussion and the work of art beyond the context of the initial discussion.