Effects Of Scaffolding On The Zone Of Proximal Development

Scaffolding for this student would include activities to develop the technical vocabulary necessary to understand the reading materials, or having the teacher provide reading materials appropriate to the child’s reading level. Additional instruction may be needed in reading skills, to support the student in a reading activity. The zone of proximal development explains the need for student and task to match, making the task of learning attainable (p87). Teaching to one zone of proximal development is likely to leave some students frustrated and confused, while others can coast through the lesson (p88). It is not so important for the teacher to know exactly what the student’s status is, rather to be aware when the students are becoming frustrated, and are in need of more practice, or when the task is just right for the individual (p89).

Practitioners can support children by setting up a range of activities that include all stages of maths development and meets individual needs. In my placement, they have jigsaw hop-scotch in the 3-5-year-old room. The children need to put the pieces in the correct place to be able to complete the hop-scotch. This allows the children to work individually or together to put the number in the correct order. This allows the children to recognise numbers as well as develop the child’s physical development. Then the practitioner can observe and assess if the child can count any higher and the child’s development which will allow the practitioner to plan using the EYFS Development Matters (Early Education, 2012) for support to allow the child’s development to improve but still meeting their individual needs.

*Intellectual development: he can now understand 3 part instructions, and organise objects by type, size, colour, or shape.

In Vygotsky’s concept, zone of proximal development he explains that it is the distance between a child’s developmental level, which is determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance (Vygotsky, 1978, p174). This concept is highly used in education and in classrooms. For example, I work with a student who is eighteen years of age and has intellectual disabilities. During our morning routine he enjoys working on puzzles. He has a difficult time putting the puzzle together so I help him with clues and or prompt him to the puzzle piece that fits. He moves onto a new puzzle once I no longer have to give him clues or prompts. As I have tracked his progress he has needed less prompt than he did three months ago. The goal of this concept is that, as an adult collaborates with a child to help them move from where they are to where they should be with help by accomplishing the exercise through prompts, clues, modeling, and etc.

Scaffolding is “support that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal that would be beyond his or her unassisted efforts” (2014). Parents, caregivers, and other adults scaffold how to play with a toy, how to get dressed, how to hold a spoon, use a cup, etc. Scaffolding is being done every day unintentionally by anyone who comes in contact with a child. In the Voyager room we see the teacher scaffolding one of the girls when the teacher tells the student to group her animals by size. This was a great way for the student to work on her greatest to least identification skills. Another way a teacher was able to scaffold in the classroom was mediating a fight. A little boy and girl began to fight and so the teacher was able to show them the proper way to talk out a disagreement by walking them through the steps of turn taking when

It is important to remember that each area of learning and development does not work in isolation but they are all in fact interlinked. Good quality activities will cover more than one area of development. For example, allowing children to access the outdoors will not only support their physical development, but encourage their communication and exploration of their environment. Where a child experiences a delay in one area, it is likely to limit their learning and development in the other five...a child with cerebral palsy who experiences hand-eye coordination difficulties is likely to find completing a puzzle difficult therefore hindering

Mel Levine’s book, A Mind at a Time, describes many aspects of cognitive psychology and attempts to apply them to the educational system for young children. This book also makes suggestions for parents that have children with cognitive difficulties. The chapters in this book are designated to various aspects of cognitive psychology as they pertain to children. This paper focuses on chapter six in A Mind at a Time, which is titled “Making Arrangements: Our Spatial and Sequential Ordering Systems.” This is a very interesting chapter because it incorporates many aspects of cognitive psychology. In this chapter, Levine focuses on how children organize their world in terms of learning, thinking,

The Concrete Operations Stage, this stage was believed to have affected children aged between seven and eleven to twelve years old.

Victoria is the first child that I interviewed. She is 10 years old, in the 4th grade and attends Midland Academy. According to Piaget, she is in the concrete operational stage. In this stage, children’s reasoning becomes focused and logical. Task 11 and 12 focused on abstraction of class. In task 11, she knew there were circles in a row, the colors were all in a row, and immediately she knew the big blue circle was

The study featured collaborative patterns of 7- year old expert learner joined with 5 – year old novice learners compared to 5 – year old novice planners and same age 5- year old experts on completing delivery task that involved sequence strategies. The ultimate task was to devise a plan to deliver goods to from one start site to a delivery site using only one trip with restrictions put in place. Some restrictions included low gas preventing multiple trips than intended and one way streets. Each task involved sequencing and delivering five items to locations in a village drawn on a board. Some groups of children were allowed to collaborate with one another to devise a plan to deliver the items and some were not. All-encompassing the variety of groups (same aged novice and expert and differing ages of novice and expert). The children were placed in non-disruptive environments where researchers coded when children engaged in observational learning which includes amount of time novice observed experts ,physical intervention directiveness and suggestions and positive

I also noticed that I tend to scaffold the learning of children without even realizing it. According to the textbook, scaffolding is when an adult, “adjusts the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child’s current level of performance. As competence increases, the adult gradually and sensitively withdraws support, turning responsibility over to the child” (Pg. 331, Ch. 9- Cognitive Development in Early Childhood). For example, when I asked Zane to write his name on the bottom of the picture that he drew, at first he was very hesitant because he did not know how to draw a “z.” When I drew dotted lines in the shape of a “z” and asked him if he would be willing to trace the letter. Very willingly he did so, and within one minute he had not only traced the letter “z,” but had also written the other letters of his name. Another example of when I was scaffolding learning was when one of the younger children in the Mom2Mom group was trying to build a tower like the rest of the children, but he could not get the tower to be more than three blocks high before it would knock over. Seeing that he was becoming frustrated, I offered to show him how to make a tall tower, by having him help me place the blocks on top of each other. After doing this two times, I withdrew my help and watched him successfully build a tower with eight

Interacting with peers is a successful way of developing skills, either with adult guidance or more advanced kids help the less-advanced. However, Vygotsky never used the term "scaffolding;" instead he phrased it as "Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)." ZPD is The difference between what the student can do with or without someone’s help but cannot yet do it independently.

“Scaffolding refers to a teaching style that matches the amount of assistance to the learners needs” (184). This is when the teacher at first provides a lot of instruction to the child and then as the child starts to understand then the teacher backs off and gives less instruction. This helps the child become independent and they can do tasks on their own instead of being guided. “Private speech, comments not directed to the others but intended to help children regulate their own behavior” (185). First speech is guided and regulated by the people around the child and is directed towards him, as the child grows up they tend to start using inner speech, instead of speaking out loud. Parents can also help the child with their speech by saying certain words to help the child say them

Vygotsky’s concepts of zone of proximal development and the more knowledgeable other person has led to the idea of scaffolding. Scaffolding, which encompasses both ZPD and MKO, is seen in almost all classrooms in today’s society. Scaffolding is a temporary support mechanism that aids students when they need it and then relinquishes control when the assistance is no longer needed. According to Lipscomb, Swanson and West (2004), scaffolding is used in classrooms by the “development of instructional plans to lead the students from what they already know to a deep understanding of new material,” and “execution of the plans, wherein the instructor provides support to the students at every step of the learning process.” Scaffolding encompasses the role of the teacher. The teacher acts as the most knowledgeable other to the student and then assesses the current knowledge of the students. The teacher decides which knowledge level the students should be performing at, and that gap between current knowledge and abilities and their potential is the zone of proximal development. In order for

In the concrete operational stage between the ages of seven and twelve, children become capable of logical thought, they also start to be able to think abstractly. However they are best suited to visible or concrete objects and things they can see (Lee and Gupta). Once the child has reached the formal operations stage from twelve years onwards it becomes more practiced at abstract processing, carrying out problem solving systematically and methodically thus completing the cognitive development process.