VTS Week 8

The Group B BWC I feel are progressing along quite well. Since a majority of the boys have already been apart of Boys Writers before this hasn't been their first go with it. The one(?) new member of Boys Writers seems to have advanced to the same level and participation of the rest of the boys. Some boys are still a bit reluctant to respond during discussion and I think it is due to shyness. I think with time we will be able to get them to become more responsive.Generally the boys seem to approach all the images the same way either by creating a story with image or approaching the images with prior knowledge from other forms of media.
They quality of discussion has only seemed to get better. I think it does help that the boys are getting more comfortable with me leading the VTS as well as myself becoming more comfortable with leading it. The boys do sometimes get hung up with disagreement though it isn't disrespectful by any means. When it comes to the boys artwork they seem to be producing pretty high quality work, they are working on panel story books, and at least one boy in particular has been working on the inside of it REALLY hard for the past couple of weeks.
At the very minimum the boys are definitely organizing their thoughts more thus becoming more confident and clearer with what they are saying. When we started this semester some boys were all over the place when they were describing what they saw. It seemed that when we started they seemed to go into a type of "information" overload, trying to literally say everything they saw/thought was going on sometimes without seeming to finish their train of thought. Now we don't seem to jump around the images as much, though we still will get at least one student in particular who would say everything he saw if he could, and seem to complete a thought spoken on one thing before trying to move onto the next thing.
Other then the 2nd and 3rd graders being awesome, I've learned that they all have ideas and every single one of them might be different. I think that due to all of the knowledge I have acquired throughout life its really easy for me to look at something and think "blank" is "blank". However the boys remind me a lot of Magritte's "This is not a pipe" and remind me that we don't all see everything the same way and prior knowledge and "growing up" can take the fun out of alot of things.
I do use them and they really do help. I also have tweaked my statement to have the boys hear what Mary tells them when she does VTS and to also to be tweaked when something might need to be address from week to week. I think time has just made them it more comfortable for me. These boys have been through this for awhile for the most part and they don't really notice when I "mess up" my opening statement.
Though I am not actually "teaching yet" I've noticed that image selection isn't easy. When I helped out with Group C they responded to a Yeti image really well. However when I met with my group later that day we used the same image and it didn't seem to get nearly the same reaction. I think it just shows that you definitely have to find whats right for your age group as well as your own students personalities.
I am a bit surprised by the pace of the progress they are making. When we started out the writing itself wasn't the greatest. Now I am already seeing signs of improvement and wondering where they will be at the END! If they keep this up I think you will have a hard time knowing if some of them had trouble with writing at all.