Week 8: VTS To Date.

I have seen a lot of change over the past couple months in the Unit C students.  In general, the students have always been eager to participate, but it seems like more of them have things to say and those who haven't talked as much in the past are starting to jump into the discussion more.  The students that were eager in the beginning seem to never put their hands down now.  I have seen some improvement in the quality of contributions to the discussions.  Every now and then they get a little hung up on agreeing or disagreeing with so-and-so, but they seem to be moving away from that now or at least beginning to all present different ideas, rather than bouncing back and forth between only two ideas.  Because we have limited time, I have never ended a discussion because it seemed like they didn't have anything else to say, only because our time has run out.  I am curious how it would go if we had all the time in the world.

I have also noticed that it has become much less necessary to use the second question.  Students are often offering evidence for their observations before I ask.  That I think is the strongest evidence of student learning. They are learning to support their arguments with evidence.  Students are also learning to piece together new ideas from what they learned from their classmates, and to help each other.  For instance, in a discussion of a photograph of Chuck Close that Mary lead, the students concluded that there was a self-portrait in the background, but the first student who noticed it wasn't sure why.  The next student said they agreed because he had similar facial features, and a third student said they also agreed because they were both wearing glasses.  I loved hearing them really building on each other's ideas like that.

The more I learn about and use VTS, the more impressed I am by the thought and research that has gone into the process.  I occasionally have questions about how it might work in different situations, but it always seems like that has already been thought of.  I feel completely at ease conducting a VTS session now, but I do still find myself stumbling over paraphrasing before asking the second question.  I seem to have developed a bad habit! I was really consciously working on it during my last session, so we'll see how that went when I get the video back. I am also still concerned about the students who have their hands up in the air before I even ask the first question and our time constraints.  I might like to try saying something like, "We only have enough time today for everyone to get one turn to talk, so please think carefully about what you would like to contribute to this discussion before you raise your hand." That might give students who don't usually talk a chance to contribute and encourage students to really think before blurting out something really obvious.