Week 13 Critical Evaluation of Image

Cascarones by Carmen Lomas Garza

Reflecting on Yenawine’s article on image selection, was it an appropriate choice for your students, considering their age, stage, interests, and abilities? Explain why or why not.

I do believe that this was an appropriate image for my group. For the very first time I believe every single hand was in the air for this session of VTS. Students could identify with and enjoy the narratives of the piece. As Yenawine suggested, the imagery was animated, spare in terms of things depicted, contained a small group of people with relatively equal gender representation. The activity and emotion of the piece was familiar, the setting timeless.

In what ways did it challenge them?  Was the challenge too great, too little, just right?

I think this image challenged students just enough. Students were challenged in attempting to identify the family members, one student observed that the figure others had identified as being the father might instead be a guest, or a teenage boy. She then backed this up by stating that the size of the figure seemed too small to be the father. (I wonder if this noticing of size relationship is an indication that this student may be advancing more toward becoming a Stage 2 viewer?) Other students were then intrigued to explore this possibility. They explored the fact that it was night, possibly late, and perhaps that this family was behind schedule for getting the eggs decorated. The sleeping child was also thought provoking.

What features/aspects of the work of art and its narrative did the students notice? What intrigued them?

Students observed that this was a either a family – Mother, father, and children, mother and children, or a family and a guest. They noticed the cat; the time of day, the eggs, art supplies, and that one girl was engaged in the act of cutting. There were a couple of narratives that developed, one that this was a family engaged in decorating Easter eggs for an egg hunt that might be taking place the next day. The other was that this was an ‘artistic’ family that just enjoying decorating eggs together. The boy that appeared to be sleeping intrigued students. Some children thought that perhaps he was asleep because it was night, and others thought that he was bored from decorating so many eggs.

Were there any surprises?

My administrator entered the room right before the start of our discussion.  He stayed, listening for far longer than his usual, brief classroom visit. He is pleased that I am using VTS and has previously expressed seeing it’s value as a way of increasing the development of higher order thinking skills. I was also surprised that the image I had appeared slightly pixelated when enlarged to the SmartBoard. It wasn’t extremely bad, no child commented on it, and it did not appear to interfere with VTS. Never having experience this problem before, I was annoyed with myself for not checking the image. Next time I will look for one with a higher resolution.

Would you use this image again with a similar class of students?  Explain.

I had hoped that students would observe that this was a Mexican or Mexican-American family and perhaps speculate that the eggs were tied to a cultural celebration. Given the age and cultural diversity of my group, they focused instead on the aspect that this was a family, engaged in a family activity, concepts well within the realm of what is familiar. I believe my students concluded their viewing experience as Yenawine stated in the article, “thinking that they had legitimate insights”. (p.5) I would use this image again.

Strangely enough, not one student observed that this was our second piece by Carmen Lomas Garza.