Forum Post 4 Ashley Gremore

It was interesting learning about VTS and ways to encourage students to make their own assumptions about what they see. I find it fascinating how the teacher was more of the facilitator in the video, and really allowed the student to do all the talking and really dig deeper into their thoughts. I think this really improves students’ confidence in speaking, problem solving skills, and ability to make wordly connections. I will utilize this strategy in the classroom when teaching about how families are alike and different, and have students explain what meanings images hold for them about different cultures and traditions within a family.

https://www.writingmindset.org/blog/2018/7/2/using-visual-thinking-strategies-for-writing-workshop 
Although this website was more of a blog post, I really liked how the author included ideas and ways to incorporate VTS into writing workshop. I also liked how she gave the example of how to help struggling writers with sentence stems. For Example: "I see____ in this picture" and "One thing that makes me say that is___" to help students form their thoughts. In the primary grades, I think providing students with the support they need, but still allowing them to do the talking and critical thinking and the teacher serve as the facilitator is important.

I really like the website that you included about using VTS in writers workshop. While I was checking out the blog, I started to realize that this is something I have done a bit in the past but could definitely improve on. Sometimes during writing, I would show a picture. The class would take turns talking about the picture. We would brainstorm a list of words from things they observed in the picture. Then we would use the words to write a sentence about the picture. The next day, each student would write their own sentence about the picture. My Kindergarten class loved doing so I can definitely see myself including VTS more during writer's workshop!