"Observations of Vygotsky's Ideas in Teaching"

Scaffoldings
- The teacher provided examples and back round information in the beginning of class to stimulate creative writing ideas. The teacher broke up the class into groups and walked around to check on productivity. Teacher's assistants were stationed at each group to read over the student's work and to help improve their writings. The students worked alone to explore their individual creativity but were allowed to approach the teacher or the teacher's assistants when they needed help.
Material Tools
- The teacher went through the steps to organize their writings such as making paragraphs and indenting. The class had read science fiction novels as research for their writings. The teacher described what a theme was and how to carry the theme through the story. These science fiction novels became the stepping stone for their stories.
Cultural Knowledge
- The teacher did not identify or encourage cultural knowledge in the classroom. He did not try to relate the student's writings to their personal or home cultural life. He could have asked the students to gather information about their home culture and to write a story or poem about it. The students may have been more interested in their writings if they could have incorporated their home culture and back round to them.
Dialogue
- The students were broken up into groups where they were able to give each other suggestions on how to improve their stories. They asked the other members of the group questions and discussed each other's stories. The students were allowed to make collaborative stories with a partner or in a group to tie in everyone's ideas. The teacher checked on the student's progress while students were improving their social skills by helping each other.
Proximal Development
- All of the students are capable of writing stories and poems with a little assistance from the teacher and teacher's assistants. The students produced remarkable work but were given assistance with grammar and writing structure to perfect their work. The teacher provided examples and suggestions to increase creativity. He goes over information from previous classes to refresh the students' memory. The stories and poems that the students read aloud were incredible, this is because of the tools and strategies the teacher used to promote the structure and creativity of the class.

Option 3 Cognitive Development
1 Hour Observation
Gifted Youth Program Writing Class