So much of what you learn from educational theorists sounds like a foreign language until you are in a classroom setting. Then it all starts to make sense. At that point, you have to decide which information you find most useful. That does not mean that you have to pick one theorist and hold tight to his ideas alone; it means that you draw from all of them to develop your own teaching strategy. You may, however, draw from one more than the others. If I had to choose one theorist that sums up my instructional strategy, it would be Lev Vygotsky. His ideas about social learning and scaffolding are essential in my classroom.
Teenagers are, by nature, social creatures, so I keep that in mind when planning my lessons. I like to let my students work in groups and see what they can accomplish on their own. I would rather they see me as a participant in the learning process rather than a dictator giving instructions and demands. The setting in my classroom is very relaxed so that the students feel comfortable to speak freely and give their opinions and interpretations. Students often learn best from each other, and this gives them the opportunity to do so. If I can catch them in the Zone of Proximal Development, I will uses whatever methods I can to get them to understand. For example, when I teach figurative language, the students already know figures of speech. They just don’t know the literary term for those figures of speech. I put them into groups and have them identify figures of speech that they use everyday and classify them as simile, metaphor, etc. According to Piaget, they should have no problem doing this, and working in groups helps them to go beyond what they already know to what I want them to know.
The other idea that I draw on from Vygotsky is scaffolding, which is a very broad term. I see scaffolding as anything that I have to do to help my students learn. In a way, this draws from other theorists. A part of scaffolding is making the learning relevant and meaningful to the students (Dewey), or else they will shut down. Teaching students the why is just as important as teaching them the what. A part of scaffolding is always being able to answer the why. Every lesson should build on something they already know-taking them a little further into that knowledge or skill.
Building on prior knowledge or teaching requires planning. You must plan your lessons logically and be sure to foresee any problems or misconceptions that might arise. For example, I can’t give my students an essay assignment and just expect them to know what to do. I have to teach them how to write the essay first. To do this, I borrow an idea from Albert Bandura-modeling. I model an essay for the students on the overhead. I then have them write an essay on a transparency. Then we look at them on the projector and critique them as a class. This idea worried me at first because I was not sure how the students would react to having their work viewed publicly, but it has worked out very well. After we have done this and the students have a rubric on which they will be graded, I can give an essay assignment. The next time they get a similar assignment, we won’t have to go through the same process because the students will have learned how to critique their own work.
In all honesty, so much of this sounds like common sense, but in many classrooms, teachers are doing the equivalent of teaching reading before spelling. That doesn’t make sense. And of course students learn best when working together. Most teenagers do everything together because they like it. Learning is no different. If they are allowed to learn together, they may just like it. I draw from Lev Vygotsky because he put the “common sense” into words.
