One example of a time I was successfully taught something because I was in ZPD comes from my fourth grade math class. I remember learning about long division, and for some reason it was really difficult for me to understand the concept and impossible for me to actually follow the steps. When I tried to do it after just listening to the teacher’s lecture, I was totally lost, but when the teacher came to give me one-on-one guidance I was able to do it. She walked me through the steps, and we did some problems together, and afterwards I was able to work through the long division steps on my own, and I also understood the process.

One example of scaffolding that I observed in the classroom was when Mr. Dube went over how to write an effective paragraph for an essay. It was really interesting to see the way he broke a paragraph down into a very clear and replicable formula. He used the RACE acronym, which stands for Restate, Answer, Cite, Explain. Mr. Dube went through the process of writing a paragraph himself in front of the class, acting as the MKO and demonstrating how to follow the formula and write an effective paragraph. He demonstrated how to write a good topic sentence, how to integrate quotations and then accurately cite them. After this lecture, Mr. Dube had the students write their own paragraphs. It was here that I was able to act as an MKO as well. I went around the classrooms and checked people’s paragraphs, giving them tips for writing things like writing stronger topic sentences or being more clear with their evidence. With a few students who were especially struggling with writing paragraphs, I spent time demonstrating these things to them myself.

Overall, observing the class and helping out this week was a great experience. I feel like I’m becoming more aware of the classroom dynamics, and it is clear to me that the students all really like and respect Mr. Dube. He is really good at communicating with them about why he has assigned certain work and why they are doing what they are doing in class. This seems to make the kids who are already invested in the class feel more involved and respected, and it makes the kids who don’t like the class at least feel respected. I definitely noticed, however, what Mr. Dube was talking about last week when he said that students are behind where they usually are. Especially when working with the students who needed the most help on writing, it was very obvious that they had never done any sort of writing for a class before and were starting completely from scratch.