This information, and more information like it, is offered to our Parent Teachers via our weekly newsletter. It is curated to help our parent teachers become immersed in their experience and our community:
At TKG, differentiated learning groups and small-group learning maximizes our teachers’ ability to help students stay connected to their learning and keep moving forward. The biggest leaps are made within the student’s space of “I will try this” and the teacher’s place of “I know you can do this.” Do you remember when your child learned how to walk? Some were ready to try “early” and others were not but all learn how to walk quite well as their physical, cognitive and emotional capacities grow. Curious about Zone of Proximal Development? Read the short summary on ZPD:
The concept of the zone of proximal development was originally developed by Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) to argue against the use of academic, knowledge-based tests as a means to gauge students’ intelligence. Vygotsky argued that, rather than examining what a student knows to determine intelligence, it is better to examine his or her ability to solve problems independently and his or her ability to solve problems with an adult’s help. The ZPD concept is seen as a scaffolding, a structure of “support points” for performing an action. This refers to the help or guidance received from an adult or more competent peer to permit the child to work within the ZPD. One example of children using ZPD is learning to dance: when a person is learning how to dance, they look to others around them on the dance floor and imitate their moves. A person does not copy the dance moves exactly, but takes what they can and adds their own personality to it.