Grade 3-5, Year 1 Facilitator Reflections
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Reflect on Practice
Their are multiple ways to write and record your reflections on your experience this lesson: you can post your thoughts on a facilitator forum so that others can learn from your experience; you can download and fill-out a PDF and save it for yourself or share with colleagues or VTS program directors; you can send an email to yourself or others who you might want to share your ideas and experiences with. In addition to the core questions that are part of the core lesson plan pages, we have posed further questions asking you to focus on what you and your students do over the course of a VTS discussion. Although you might not respond to each or any of these questions directly, we hope you take the chance to read and consider most of the questions to support your development as a VTS Facilitator. |
Reflection Links
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 1
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
Why am I supposed to use all of the questions as written? Why do I use “What’s going on…” only once at the beginning, and then follow up with “What more can we find?” Why am I supposed to keep repeating “What more can we find?” even when hands are raised? What’s the difference between repeating and paraphrasing? Why is pinpointing observations helpful to the discussions? What students did: Did students say things I didn’t expect? Give examples. Did I learn things I did not know about my students? Give examples. Who participated? What aspects of the images interested them most? How might I describe interactions between and among students? |
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 2
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
Am I remembering to ask “What more can you find?” frequently, and not repeating “What’s going on…” as the discussion progresses? When do I need to ask “What do you see that makes you say that?” When is it not needed? Why is it important to include all of a student’s ideas when I paraphrase? Given that I am asked to remain neutral and simply facilitate, how do I know my students are learning? Have students challenged me in any ways? How have I responded? What students did: What am I learning about what students know? What am I learning about what concerns them? What kinds of comments do I hear most: observations, inferences, associations, etc? What are ways to assess oral language skills? How do I assess students’ abilities to listen and respond to one another? |
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 3
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
Is the class set-up working? What am I expecting students to learn from my open and neutral facilitation? What is the benefit of allowing students to contribute any ideas, including far-fetched ones? How does the question, “What do you see that makes you say that?” discourage silly comments and encourage serious ones? How would I describe my relationship to students during VTS classes? How did it feel to me when I asked students to ‘VTS’ images in their readers? What students did: Has speaking out in VTS classes had any impact on behavior during other lessons? Explain. Did asking students to discuss cover images or illustrations in books elicit productive responses? What insights did I get from this? Make a list of the kinds of comments I hear: simple identification, more descriptive comments, interpretations, stories, and so forth. |
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 4
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
Have I memorized the questions and variations so that I don’t have to worry about remembering them? How comfortable am I with the open-ended nature of VTS? Explain. How would I describe the behavior of my students during VTS to another teacher? What am I learning about art as a subject of discussion for my students? What other images or texts lend themselves to a discovery process? Has doing VTS impacted my interactions with students in other lessons? Give examples. What students did What kinds of issues and ideas arise out of their discussions? What concepts and information seems to stick with students? Who’s participating now? Any changes at all? How are they handling differences of opinion? Do they refer to each other’s ideas? How would I describe the oral language skills of my students to another teacher? Do I notice any shift in the types of comments students are making? For example, are they becoming more descriptive or offering more interpretations of what they see? Can you see your students benefiting from VTS in other lessons? |
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 5
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
How do I feel about VTS as a strategy applied to reading? How do I feel about the pace of the discussions? Am I hearing from enough of the students? Do they continue to seem engaged? If there are aspects of the process with which I am unsatisfied, how can I improve? What could I learn when listening to a tape of a lesson? What have I learned about my students that I might want to share with parents? With individual students? What students did: How would you describe participation levels compared to more normal discussions of reading assignments? Any difference in who participates? Activity: Choose two students at different achievement levels, including a student who struggles with language literacy. Reflecting back over the past five VTS lessons, describe the participation of each student. Include comments or examples about their willingness to contribute, typical examples of their comments, any patterns you recall about their interactions with the group, and a general assessment of oral language skills. Note particularly any changes in each student over time. |
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 6
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
What do I learn about a student’s language when I paraphrase? Give examples. Why is oral language ability important? What new information about language ability do I get when I study writing samples? What students did: Was there any hesitation on the part of students when asked to write? How did you handle that? Did all participate? How would I describe their levels of effort? Achievement? How did students respond to being able to choose an image to write about? What can I learn from that? What is the impact of using the computer to write on student performance? Compare to pen and pencil samples. What differences do you see in student behaviors when they write compared to how they contribute in the discussions? Give examples. Reconsider the two students you made notes on after the last lesson: what observations are confirmed? What’s different? What do you learn from this additional source of information? |
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 7
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
In general, have I seen changes in the complexity of observations and inferences during discussions? Give examples. Do I hear students providing evidence without my needing to ask, “What do you see that makes you say that?” What do I learn about thinking from trying to link comments? For example, where do new ideas begin? What happens when I allow disagreements to co-exist as reasonable, if argued in evidence? What do I notice when students discuss images or texts in other lessons? Why might VTS discussions nurture thinking more generally? What students did: Do students listen to each other more now than in the first lessons? If so, how does this manifest in their behaviors? Do they build on each other’s comments? How have I seen this? Do they seem interested in each other’s comments? Give examples. Are there more differences of opinions among students than when we began having VTS discussions? How do the students react to these differences? Have I heard students revise their own first thoughts or admit to changes of mind? Why might this be happening? What might this indicate? Which of these behaviors do I see students applying in other discussions? Do any of these behaviors show up to writing? |
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 8
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
What does it mean to paraphrase using “conditional language?” Link to FAQs Conditional language What are my reasons for trying to link comments? During lesson 8, what comments do I think I linked well? Where might I have missed an opportunity? How does VTS affect the way I think about my students and their capabilities? How might it affect how they think about themselves and their peers? What do I learn from talking about VTS with fellow teachers? How can I use writing to see if behaviors employed during discussions are internalized by individuals? What students did: Using writing samples, assess the capacities of your students to observe, infer, argue with evidence, and consider multiple possibilities. What do you find? Take another look at your comparison of two students at different levels in Lesson 5 and 6. Update your notes comparing how both students then and now. Think about their behaviors in other lessons as well. What changes might be attributed to VTS experience? |
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Reflect on Practice - Lesson 9
Think about VTS:
You might also consider:
How did I feel leading discussions in the museum? What does connecting to such a resource bring to my teaching practice? What does the museum visit add to my understanding of VTS and its impact on students? What have I learned from this year’s teaching that I want to apply next? What changes do I think will make it a richer experience for both me and my students? What students did: What do museum visits offer to students? How did the students manage the experience? What more does seeing students outside the classroom in a new environment tell me about them? About VTS? What skills should I anticipate students coming to my class next will bring, given a year of VTS? |
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