Vygotsky TIPR

On my last observation day, I asked Mr. D if he had any last pieces of advice to give me.  Mr. D informed me that it's important to stay well-informed and make sure that students are able to use the knowledge that I have.  Mr. D was telling me to act as an effective More Knowledgeable Other to my future students.  He then pointed at his bookshelf and told me that the books there were all books that he had read to become more knowledgeable, or a more effective More Knowledgeable Other, which is also something that I observed in his classes as everything that I saw him teach he was very effective at providing scaffolding from his knowledge base.  I did not see the teachers evaluate the student's Zones of Proximal Development.  I'm not sure if I just missed the lessons where they did this, but it seemed that the teachers would frequently just assume where the students were.  I also did not see much scaffolding, but I did see the students working independently and being very effective with what they were doing which must have been the result of some scaffolding.  Mr. D was really good at using technological tools by having the students use the internet most of the classes that I was there and Mrs. S was good at using cultural tools by having class discussions and pulling in personal experiences that the students had.

Many of the lessons that I've observed don't actually use More Knowledgeable Other(s), besides the teacher, or determine the students' Zone of Proximal Development.  The teacher should use more group work and group according to the student's needs every once in a while.  I would also like to see the teachers pay attention to which students are responding and which students seem a little bit more lost in their responses, as this is not something that I observed.  In my mini-lesson, I would like to incorporate more group work and have students be the More Knowledgeable Other to each other.  I also did not see a lot of scaffolding done, as I either saw the teachers helping the students or the students working independently and not much in between.  One of the days that I came, Mr. D was talking to the class about the Socratic Seminar that they had the day before and how it hadn't gone very well.  He went over what he expected in a Socratic Seminar and some of the problems that had happened.  Many of the problems might not have happened if there had been more scaffolding.