Week Three – NHS 9th Grade English

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ZPD

I can think of a lot of examples from over the years of instances where a teacher simplified the material or slowed down the learning process so that I could learn (and actually be successful with my learning, as opposed to frustrated or discouraged) from within my ZPD. My Spanish teacher in high school was particularly good at meeting students where they were at, for example. Although we weren’t allowed to speak in English from the moment we entered the class to the moment we left, Ms. Jimenez was always really good at inferring which parts of the lesson we were struggling with just from our facial expressions and vague hand gestures. Through a strange version of charades, we’d be able to communicate where exactly she lost us in her explanations and figure out what she could do to bring us back. In other words, where she moved out of our ZPDs, and how she could bring us back into the range of our ZPDs. I think this is an interesting feature of ZPDs. Teachers don’t always necessarily intuitively know what a student’s ZPD looks like and it requires skilled observation and practice on the part of the teacher, and honesty and openness on the part of the student to understand any given student’s ZPD.

A different example of a moment when I learned successfully because I was in my ZPD is from fourth grade. I remember really struggling to find reading interesting. During quiet independent reading time, I got distracted really easily or would breeze through my book and then spend the rest of the time whispering and laughing with my friend. In this instance, instead of needing the content slowed down or simplified, I think I actually might have needed the opposite to move into my ZPD. The school operated on an Accelerated Reader (AR) system. (For those who aren’t familiar with it, books are assigned a certain amount of points based on level/difficulty and length and students can earn points by reading books and taking quizzes. After you get a certain amount of points, you get a reward – either beads on a necklace or eventually a stuffed polar bear.) I remember not being particularly incentivized to read until my teacher started giving me books at a higher level. (Fun fact: The series that really got me into reading was A Series of Unfortunate Events. And I still remember how determined I was to read Inkheart because it was apparently considered by the other fourth graders to be a really difficult book. It was worth like thirty points I think!) I’m wondering now if I wasn’t motivated to read until that point because I wasn’t being challenged and the content was almost too straightforward for me to find it interesting. It didn’t feel like a challenge.

 

Scaffolding

I talked about this in class a bit, but one example of scaffolding that I saw in class was when students were using the acronym R.A.C.E. (restate the question, answer the prompt, cite evidence, explain the evidence) to answer a journal prompt. The acronym helped guide the students through the paragraph long response they were accepted to give because students who don’t have a lot of experience with analytical writing don’t necessarily have the tools to know what it should look like. The acronym was able to break down the process into more manageable steps (steps that were comprehensible to them within their ZPDs) so that they were able to do what they otherwise might not have been able to do on their own.

MKO

The main example of a time in the classroom where I acted in the role of a more knowledgeable other was when I was helping a student with their writing. I was able to point out features of this student’s writing that could use improvement and would help clarify his point. The simple fact that I’d had more practice with writing than he had meant that I was able to notice things that he couldn’t. Because I’ve had more practice, I could also offer tips for future writing. One skill that we talked about was reading work out loud. I noticed that he had a number of run-on sentences and a generally disorganized and repetitive way of writing. Even reading his work out loud with him, he was able to notice where he needed to take things out or break up sentences. I pointed out to him that this was a strategy he could use when he was working on his own too, and that I often found it helpful myself. I think that a feature of being an MKO that is particularly helpful is being able to guide someone through a process that you yourself have struggled with by offering the tools that you used to overcome that struggle.

Additional comments

This Friday, during independent reading time, I worked with a student who had quite a few missing assignments. Before we stepped outside, Sean explained that this student’s father had recently passed away so he had (understandably) been having trouble focusing on his work. I’ll be honest – I was a little nervous about working with him. I don’t always know how to act around those who are dealing with heavy things, especially grief, and I was worried I’d say or do the wrong thing. In the end, I think that half hour went fairly alright. I was able to talk with the student about his struggles with writing and focus (he mentioned that he had ADHD so that made things even more complicated), sympathize a little with the slightly painful process that is getting work done in class when you have no other options but to focus and get it done, and offer ideas for his personal journal entries that he hadn’t yet considered (the hardest part, he told me, was coming up with topics so I was glad I was able to really help with that).

One thing that I’m having a little trouble with is knowing how much to help and how much to back off and let students just work when the teacher has me work with individual students. I know that I wouldn’t like a teacher to hover over me as I work on assignments, so I try not to do that. At the same time, I want to make sure that they know I’m available to help and that they stay focused on their work. It hasn’t been a problem yet, but I have been thinking about it a little, if only because I feel really awkward just hovering.

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