Grade 3-5, Year 1 'Try This' Activities

Encourage all students to speak. Much of the learning at this stage results from students expressing themselves.

Find ways to bring out those who are quiet. "Who haven't we heard from?" sometimes helps. Or saying to a child who is silent, "We've not heard your voice today. What would you like to add?" Never push, but continuously encourage.

Be particularly attentive to when students are making inferences, including drawing conclusions from some observations. One might say, "I think that thing is a headdress." Another might note, "I think the girl is sick." Both of these enable/make it natural for you to ask the question, “What do you see that makes you say that?”

By accepting all answers equitably and neutrally, you send the message to students that your interest is in their thinking, not in specific interpre-tations or in "right" v. "wrong" answers. This gives them confidence to participate in class and take risks—which is how we all learn. Notice the difference between a discussion—perhaps with a literary story—where your questions help guide the students to a correct idea about a character or meaning. How are responses and student thinking different in that situation compared to a VTS discussion? Explore as a teacher what it is like to glean as many possible ideas from the students as possible, without assigning value to any. How do you feel about your role in this kind of discussion?”

If you haven’t already, try using VTS with images in other texts you use with students. Depending on the kind of image, the discussions may be short. But see what happens if you introduce a new lesson with a VTS discussion. This way, you can extend students’ confidence and capacities, built discussing art, to other subjects that may seem daunting to some.

Tape record this class, putting the recorder in a place where it can pick up both student comments and your voice. To ensure you’re getting good sound, take a few moments to listen for a few seconds between images. After the lesson, listen to the tape and reflect on what you hear. What can you discover about your students that is not always apparent when you are engaged in facilitating? What can you notice about your paraphrasing?

In one of your later lessons on the same day, choose an image from a text and discuss it using VTS.

If the image has a caption, use VTS questions to pull meanings from it as well. You might also pick another text; short poems are often very good for this.

The online writing activities basically ask students for descriptive, expository writing.

In addition, students might also write stories, poems, or scripts with the images as the starting point, mid-point, or the final scene of stories that they create.

Stimulated by images, some might prefer to illlustrate stories, perhaps combining their images with text—as in graphic novels or comic strips.

Pay attention to how often you have to use the second question—the frequency of you needing to use it can indicate if aspects of VTS are being internalized by students

Are they supplying evidence without a prompt from you? With the help of your notes, recall the dynamics of the first VTS classes, and consider if and how they have changed.

Also consider whether VTS skills have influenced the way students think, participate, and behave in other lessons.

Use writing samples to find concrete examples of the behaviors you’ve observed. Then examine standards for visual art, language arts, and social studies to see where matches are made.