Focused Teaching

Promoting Accelerated
Learning
 Questions to Guide our
Thinking
• What is the Zone of Proximal Development?

• How does it help learners?

• What does ZPD look like in an NISD

classroom?
 Principles of Learning
• Effort produces achievement.
• Learning is about making connections.
• We learn with and through others.
• Learning takes time.
• Motivation matters.
 The Principles of
Teaching
• The teacher matters.
• Focused teaching promotes accelerated learning.
• Clear expectations and continuous feedback
activate learning.
• Good teaching builds on student’s strengths and
respects individuals’ differences.
• Good teaching involves modeling what students
should learn.
 Principles of Curriculum
• The curriculum should focus on powerful
knowledge.

• All students should experience a

“thinking curriculum.”

• The best results come from having an

aligned instructional system.
 Focused Teaching Promotes
Accelerated Learning
• What type of feedback is given – descriptive or evaluative?
• Is the learning goal communicated clearly? How does the
feedback move the student toward mastery of the learning
goal?
• What opportunities are provided for students to reflect and
self-assess regarding learning difficult concepts?
• How are the other students engaged in learning when the
teacher is providing specific feedback to an individual or
small group?
• Do the student responses demonstrate deep understanding?
 Theorists

Lev Semoyonovich Vygotsky Jean Piaget

(1896-1934) 1896-1980
 Piaget’s Theory
• A focus on the process of children’s thinking, not just its
products.

• Recognition of the crucial role of children’s self-initiated, active

involvement in learning activities.

• A de-emphasis on practices aimed at making children adultlike

in their thinking.

• Acceptance of individual differences in developmental progress.

Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice by Robert E. Slavin

 Piaget’s Work (con’t)
Self efficacy:
• People are more likely to engage in certain behaviors when they
believe they are capable of executing those behaviors successfully.
This means that they will have high self-efficacy. In layman's terms
self-efficacy could be looked as self confidence towards learning.

How self-efficacy affects behavior:

• Joy of activities: individuals typically choose activities they feel
they will be successful in doing.
• Effort and persistence: individuals will tend to put more effort end
activities and behaviors they consider to be successful in achieving.
• Learning and achievement: students with high self-efficacy tend to
be better students and achieve more.
 Zone of Proximal Development
• Vygotsky maintained the child follows the adult's
example and gradually develops the ability to do
certain tasks without help or assistance. He called the
difference between what a child can do with help and
what he or she can do without guidance the "zone of
proximal development" (ZPD).

www.ncrel.org
 Zone of Proximal
Development
The distance between the individual’s actual and potential level

Scaffolding occurs
through the support
potential developmental level
of the ‘more
Level of challenge t knowing other’
en
pm
e lo
Where learning
d ev
l occurs
a
im
rox
p actual developmental level
of
ne
Zo

Level of competence
Source: Vygotsky, 1978
 Zone of Proximal
Developoment
• When you assign a task and the students successfully complete it without
help, they could already do it. They have been taught nothing.
• Teaching is leading development instead of responding to it, if teaching is in
the Zone of Proximal Development.
• Learning always proceeds from the known to the new. Good teaching will
recognize and build on this connection. (Scaffolding)
• Students have a need to develop and exhibit competence. Teachers must
assist them to develop competence as they engage in challenging tasks in
which they can be successful.
• A meaningful learning context is crucial. Learning is purposeful and situated.
• Learners can only begin to learn within their individual zones of proximal
development, current interests, and present state of being. But humane
teaching can develop new interests, new ways of doing things, and new states
of being.
 Stages of the ZPD
Capacity Capacity Capacity
begins developed internalized
Zone of Actual Development

Zone of Proximal Development

Assistance Assistance Internalization

provided by provided by and
more the self automatization
capable
others

Source: Adapted from Tharp and Gallimore, 1988,

p.35
 Inner Speech:
Social Private
Assistance The student’s
Speech: Speech:
provided by silent,
- Adult uses Student uses
more capable abbreviated
language to for himself/
others: dialogue that
model herself
teacher or he/she carries
process language that
peer or some on with self
- Adult and adults use to
other type of that is the
student share regulate
model essence of
language and behavior (self-
conscious
activity control)
mental activity
 Continuum of
Strategies
Capacity begins Capacity developed

Teacher Student

Read To
Shared Reading
Guided Reading
Partner Reading
Independent
Reading
 Inner Speech:
Private

Zone of Actual Development

Zone of Actual Development

Social
Assistance The student’s
Speech: Speech:
provided by silent,
- Adult uses Student uses
more capable abbreviated
language to for himself/
others: dialogue that
model herself
teacher or he/she carries
process language that
peer or some on with self
- Adult and adults use to
other type of that is the
student share regulate
model essence of
language and behavior (self-
conscious
activity control)
mental activity
 ZPD in the ELA Classroom
potential developmental level The teacher is
working with this
child to make
predictions based
on what they infer.

Inferencing en
t
Level of challenge

opm
vel
de
al
im
r ox
f p
o
n e
actual developmental level
Zo

The teacher is working

with this child to build their
background knowledge
and knowing how to
activate it.
Level of competence
 ZPD in the ELA Classroom
potential developmental level The teacher is working
with this child to make
connections between
multiplication and
division.

Multiplication en
t
Level of challenge

opm
vel
de
al
im
r ox
f p
o
n e
actual developmental level
Zo

The teacher is working

with this child to show the
relationship between
repeated addition and
multiplication.
Level of competence
 What NCREL Says About
Scaffolding
• Gradual Shift of Action

• Build upon what you know they know, or what

they may have just said

• Appropriately Worded Guided Practice

• Metacognition
 What is teaching?
• Teaching is effective only when it “awakens and
rouses to life those functions which… lie in the
zone of proximal development”. (Vygotsky,1956,
p.278)
• Teaching may be defined as “assisting
performance through the ZPD. Teaching can be
said to occur when assistance is offered at points
in the ZPD at which performance requires
assistance.” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, p.31)
 Forms of Assistance
• Modeling
• Contingency Management
• Feedback
• Questioning
• Instruction
• Cognitive Structuring
 ZPD in our classrooms
• Planning for Capability and Possibility
(Expectation)

• Plan for building

• Ways to Plan

Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice by Robert E. Slavin

 Questions to Guide our
Thinking
• What is the Zone of Proximal Development?

• How does it help learners?

• What does ZPD look like in an NISD

classroom?