VTS, how to do it and examples

 Good afternoon,

In today´s post we are going to give you some examples of VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) with the photo below. 

To use VTS, we ask ourselves three open ended questions about a photo.  The first question gives the viewers a chance to interpret on their own what they are seeing (What’s going on in this picture?). The second question encourages evidentiary thinking (What do you see that makes you say that?). Finally, the third question pushes them to think further and deeper that the first layer of a piece. (What more can we find?)

First of all, let's look at what is happening in this image.

As we can see, there are several pupils in a classroom, with a teacher sitting in a corner at the teacher's table.  The children are looking up at the ceiling. The teacher seems to be correcting some exercises or preparing some extra activities for another lesson.

We can see that some of the pupils are in uniform and some are not.

Finally, we can see that the image was not taken in Spain because of the facial features of the pupils.

In the classroom we can see that the floor is old and that there are bars on the windows. The desks also show signs of age deterioration.  

What all this leads us to think is that the facial features of the pupils do not correspond to Spanish facial features. Furthermore, it gives the impression that it is a middle-class town or school because of the basic dress of the pupils. It also leads us to think two things, firstly, that it may be the last day of the school year as not everyone is in uniform, or that due to economic difficulties not everyone can afford to pay for it. 

We believe that the pupils are looking up as they may be watching a video projected on the blackboard or a photo they are taking from another perspective, as we can see several children posing with their hands. It seems that there is another teacher apart from the one sitting at the table, as that is why they are looking up in the picture. 

Finally, we can think more deeply that students are finishing the course, due to one of the reasons mentioned above, and that is why they are doing other kinds of activities and why they are standing up instead of sitting at their desks. Furthermore, there are no books on top of the desks, there are only sheets of paper and pencil cases, which may lead us to confirm that they are doing some kind of different activity.