More recently, I think that I have been in my ZPD a lot while taking French classes at Carleton. In my high school language classes, I think I was rarely in that zone. We were almost never pushed to speak out loud in class and were not corrected on accent problems. At Carleton, though, we were forced to speak out loud often, and professors would stop us if we pronounced an r or something else wrong. Though this was often very uncomfortable, the guidance was necessary in moving us to the next level of conversational French. We were also given specific exercises to practice making those specific sounds, which provided a path for improvement.

I think what is being taught in Amy’s Prairie Creek class about coding is a great example of scaffolding. Last week, they learned some basic coding commands, and practiced trying them out with one person blindfolded. This week, because they knew those basic commands, they were able to move up to the next level. Pairs of students made courses on the ground out of jumpropes, wrote out commands to follow, and then switched with another group to try each others’ courses. Additionally, Amy realized that the first round of instruction was not enough when students were confused with what to do with the jumpropes. She called all of the students back to model (!) for them what she had meant with her verbal description. This was clearly helpful right away, and afterwards students had no problems following her directions.

Most of what we have done at Prairie Creek has been observing, but I do think that I could have been an MKO especially today, during the nature journaling and coding activities. While students were nature journaling today, they were supposed to be looking at the big picture of the landscape. A couple of them felt that they ran out of things to draw or that parts of their drawing were not matching the landscape. I tried to encourage them to look at maybe different areas with details they may be missing, as well as to consider what was on the landscape more closely (e.g. Does it look like there is a lot of corn on that field or just a few stalks?). During coding, I tried to encourage them to think back to the lesson they had learned last week, which was that computers take commands very literally. One group had begun to use a more human common sense in their instructions (saying right 5, which would actually mean turn right 5 times but they were turning right and then moving forward 5 times. They needed to say right, forward 5). I think that by reminding them of what they had learned previously, they were able to think through what they were doing wrong.

Here’s an image of Prairie Creek:

I think that the kids at Prairie Creek seem to have a lot of freedom, much more at least that they did at the summer camp I worked at. I definitely felt a bit of anxiety in myself rise up at students doing certain things (playing with fire without an adult around, throwing sticks, etc) that would have never been allowed at my camp. However, I always thought we were too strict, and that the kids lost some of those trial-and-error learning moments that come from having a bit more freedom to follow your ideas. While I wouldn’t encourage anything outright dangerous, I think that the freer atmosphere at Prairie Creek probably gives students more experiences/opportunities to learn about different tools, materials, cause and effects, and other similar things. It also could help make them more curious and willing to try out ideas, similar to what Eleanor Duckworth wrote about.

One thing I wondered about, and that Liz and I talked about, was the role of students choosing their own partners. While I could see some sort of social learning coming about from this – maybe balancing other people’s desires with your own, maintaining multiple friendships, letting people down gently – it also seems like this could leave some students vulnerable. Because I had just read about Erikson’s psychosocial crises, it seems potentially damaging to put students in a situation where they may feel socially inferior, if for example, they often don’t get picked to be in a group. If Erikson’s theory is correct, these experiences could stick with them throughout their lifetime. Today, it seemed like there was one student who was kind of passed around through partners and ended up needing to be assigned – the dynamic seemed familiar, like maybe this had happened before. I wonder how teachers balance the merits of social learning with the potential damaging impacts of struggling socially and it being on such public display.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by admin.