10/3/11: Reflection

The boys were very high energy today and not super keen on following directions.  Before we could even begin the VTS a couple of the boys had to be coaxed down to the carpet from their tables: "But what if we can see fine from here?"  I gave a quick reminder of expectations during VTS, then asked Ms S to click the PowerPoint over to today's image.  A couple of hands shot up right away but I reminded them to take a moment to look at the image and that I would begin asking for their observations shortly.  After this pause, I asked, "What's going on in this image?"  Nearly all of the boys hands shot up this time.  "I see girls fighting," was the first observation.  I tried to be careful to stick closely to the exact VTS question sequence and had reviewed them just before going into it, but mostly the boys just pointed out details which made using the sequence a little tricky.  Instead of conjecturing a narrative or speculating about the image's intentions, the boys pointed out objects and their physical attributes, which made using the "What do you see that makes you say that?" a little awkward.  The was some conjecture over the genders of the two figures and some initial speculation about whether they were fighting on a bed or a roof though and that seemed to provide a little more richness and detail for elaboration within the VTS sequence.

Following the VTS sequence, I went over the slides with the historical/contextual info on Japan and reminded the boys of the Daimyo in the Samurai Cats book.  After that, Ms. S took up the Samurai Cats story where I'd left off last week then went over the map making prompt/labeling prompts.  I turned the lights back on and the boys got to work, though there were initial questions about whether they would be allowed to finish up the Samurai cat drawings that they'd begun last week.  We told them that they could return to these drawings if they finished today's prompt and had extra time at the end.  At least one boy (O) seemed to hurry through today's work so that he could get back to this drawing and we had to coax him into elaborating, first on his drawing, then on his writing.  The writing that we wound up having the boys do was not included in the lesson plans, but since the boys had jumped right into labeling as they made their maps and had already begun to tell stories about the Daimyo's travels on their maps, we went ahead and added a full-fledged writing assignment as well.  This made for some awkward transitioning, since we ended up prompting some of the boys to write the tale of their Daimyo's travels by way of extending the activity early on and then made it a general expectation in the last fifteen minutes.  All of the boys seemed to have a story to tell and it seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up getting in some quality writing time, so I asked Mr T if he thought we should make an announcement about expecting them to work quietly on writing for the remaining time and he agreed.  Several of the boys jumped into the writing without any additional prompting (B, B3, O) though O required some coaching to elaborate on his story.  The other boys generally had to be encouraged to write and I tried to have them tell me their stories before asking them to write it down.  For most this was enough and W actually seemed to transition into the writing activity more easily than he did the drawing activity (though he was only slightly more communicative overall than he'd been during our last meeting).  B2 had a wonderfully complex set of places for his Daimyo to stop at and possible outcomes for having done so and verbally worked out and revised his story very well, but I had a hard time getting him to focus on writing it down (though partly this may have been due to O's near-constant conversation--they shared a table).  Most of the boys were able to tell their stories more clearly than might be suspected from the written versions that resulted.

It should also be noted that Mr. T worked independently with B3 for much of the drawing/writing portion of the session.  Mr T explained later that he suspected that B3's ADHD medication patch needed to be changed.