Katie McIntosh- ESA

ESA - Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky maintained that children follow adults’ examples and gradually develop the ability to do certain tasks without help or assistance. He called the difference between what a child can do with help and what he or she can do without guidance, the “Zone of Proximal Development.” According to Vygotsky, a classroom that makes the best use of all of its students’ ZPDs includes a teacher that acts as a scaffold.
The concept of scaffolding is the assistance that helps children complete tasks they cannot complete independently. The idea is to assist without denying the student’s need to build his or her own foundation. The challenge for the teacher is to find the optimal balance between supporting the student and pushing the student to act independently.
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development can be applied to third grade instruction. For example, to effectively scaffold a student, the teacher should stay one step ahead of the student, always challenging him or her to reach beyond his or her current ability level. If third graders were asked to write a three-paragraph story about a personal experience, the teacher could model how to begin the first paragraph with a topic sentence. To effectively scaffold students within their ZPDs, a teacher should also have an awareness of the different roles students and teachers assume throughout the collaborative process. For example, students could be asked to write a cinquin poem about winter on the computer. The teacher might allow the students to put any kind of computer graphics on their paper, but the teacher would assist the students enhancing the vivid vocabulary in the poem. In addition, the classroom should be set up in such a way to foster group work and student collaboration in order to allow students to take on the role of instructor with their peers as they master the skills at hand.