Week 15: Statistically Significant

Word Count:

Conditional Language:

For word count, the difference is considered to be extremely statistically significant!  For conditional language, the difference is also considered statistically significant.  Again, I have trouble to with the written formatting of these assessments because the students' progress is much more evident to me than it is looking at what the students have written, but even so the proof is in the pudding, or statistics.  I have seen amazing progress in the Unit C students this semester and to me the increased use of conditional language is most apparent.

As the statistics show, the students have generally grown over the semester.  I was surprised that the calculations came out the way they did, however, because there were a handful of students who wrote less the first time around.  They were all students who had fairly low word counts to begin with though, and many of the students who wrote more wrote drastically more, tipping the scales a bit.  Some of the best examples of increase in word count are 23 to 94, 13 to 82, 52 to 172, and 39 to 136.  I believe in VTS, but I can hardly believe these amazing results.

Some of the most interesting responses include:

"Two guys that are in war getting food when they gotten away from war to be safe...They both have bombing helmets on and a whole fish on a net so they can have food... I can see four towers and right in front of the boat an orange gas tank."

"A big storm is happening while the fishing and there probaly in the middle of noware and they probaly lost the bukket full of worms to catch worms or a bucket of water to drink."

"It looks like it is a picture done with pastel because of the smootheness of the colors and the way the colors blend into each other.  It looks like the sun is coming from the right side of the picture because there is a shimmer on the right side and shadows on the left."

"I see a blue type liqwid. It looks like water. I think that because it is wavy and of course blue."

Clearly the vast majority of the students show dramatic improvement with only a very short period of VTS.  I have seen the students grown in the discussions, and the assessments also demonstrate that growth.  They see more, use more conditional language and often support their ideas with evidence.

As a teacher, I have grown most, I think, in comfort which is a big thing to me.  In the past, I felt more comfortable talking to a group of academics than I did with school-aged kids.  I think I would be equally comfortable now, and I can't wait for the museum to re-open so I can facilitate more VTS learning experiences with a variety of groups.  This semester as my first in art education has been so enlightening as a whole that it is difficult to pinpoint what is a precise effect of VTS but it has been an important part of my own growth and change.