Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Article link about 'Zone of Proximal Development'

Thanks for sharing this story OHG! What a beautiful picture of a lovely summer of learning! When are you opening your farmschool for troubled gifties?

I think that you are doing the real human contact and wisdom that a true ADP program would want, and what irony to have a cookbook SDP program to compare it to!

Anyway, the bottom line is that your GS is learning and loving it! I'm so glad to hear about that!

Smiles and grinding teeth,
Grinity

Yes OHG, what a fabulous summer for you all. My understanding of ZPD would indicate that your relationship with your grandchild gives you the ability to help him find his ZPD and work within that, with your assistance. Even if your assistance is just recognizing the interest and pointing him in the right direction, you have made the learning a social construct (which I think is a good thing). No teacher can do this for 27 students a year, but the mentor/friend/interested person doesn't have to be the classroom teacher. Oh, and you might not end up with something concrete that can be assessed at the end of the month! but we all know when real learning is happening. One thing you wrote about the STAR (is this the same as AR?) is:

"
My kids were involved in this program also, and while it is much better than having everyone read the same book, it is being sold to schools as more than it ever can be. Every child's ZPD is different, so a computer that calculates vocabulary and sentence structure difficultly can't tell you what it will be for your child. With direction, your grandson was probably reading far above what the test said his ZPD would be. Under other circumstances, other topics, other children, the ZPD may be only slightly above the lower limits of the test.

Both my boys have been avid readers and their reactions to AR programs were interesting. Each of them, independently as they are 4 years apart, decided after a few months that they would only read the minimum required for AR and then chose books not on the list to read for fun. They didn't like their fun reading time being turned into an assignment or a competition. Fortunately, they had teachers who were able to recognize that something that's good for some kids doesn't work for all. And they still read and still like to read, and sometimes they read books that are much too "difficult" by the AR standard, and sometimes they went back and read a bunch of easy books on a rainy afternoon just for fun.

It's great that you fell into this great summer by yourselves! What a gift!

There's a restricted supply of "certified" master teachers but there are a number of people who have this ability (like OHG ). I'd like to see rules change so that schools have an easier time getting rid of teachers who can't do this and bring in more folks who can. This would require getting away from the mindset that the traditional certification process is the only way to produce quality teachers. I see this as a big pro for charter schools.

OHG's story highlights this criticism of the AR program:
http://www.frankserafini.com/ShortArticles/ARstatement.htm

Oh my goodness! What a terrific article to express my position!

I have backed the AR program wholeheartedly up until last year. But last year, the use of the point goals started to be a hindrance to GS10's reading. I saw it as GS10 had matured to a more adult approach to reading; he'd sample books, find an author he liked and read everything by that author, he'd pick up anything from picture books, to Poe, to 'age appropriate' books, to adult non-fiction. That kind of reading is not easily tracked by AR, and does not contribute points so they're not as valued. But it was exactly that kind of reading this summer that gave a measurable response on the STAR assessment!

Inky, thanks for that link. I'm going to print it and use it to help make my point that GS10 will no longer have 150 points as a goal in one quarter(as he does this quarter!).

I just got the official OK to rework my son's participation in AR.

His teacher, after looking back at prior year history, decided to start ratcheting up the quarter point goal, bumping it up to "keep it out of reach." [WTH????]

After all this goal line moving, Mr. Teacher had the gall to comment on the fact that DS's AR test scores were dropping below the targeted 85%.

DS has about two weeks left in the quarter, and should finish at 185 points, 1.4million words and >85% correct. This will be more than double the last goal set (when I got the teacher to STOP moving the target). I let DS "run up the score" all on his own just to dispense with all this nonsense about AR once and for all.

Back before this loony AR goal-setting excitement, DS used to average 95% correct and was consistently 2.5-3+ years ahead in grade level. DS read so much more non-AR stuff strictly for pleasure... no strings, tests or grades attached. AND nobody paid any real attention to word count. There were always a couple kids who had higher word counts, and it was nice to have DS not worry about it (like he did this year).

So... as long as the school has been in an accommodating mood, I took the opportunity to remove point and word count goals from the conversation -- and grading -- altogether. Instead, he'll be focusing on NOT burning through books, keeping his accuracy where it was in the past, and advancing his "reading level." This will free him up for all the fun reading he used to do. (And, yes --GROAN-- that includes the occasional Captain Underpants "novel" when he so desires!)

I nosed around our district in preparation and found the top annual score achieved for elementary was >500, and that was a few years ago. (The top end was generally in the 250-300 range.)

After letting DS chase the rabbit over the last few weeks, I emailed the teacher with his projected annual totals and said - essentially -- "This is nuts. Enough is enough!"

I explained that I don't consider this to be a worthwhile goal, and if nothing else, that it is grotesquely counter-productive to our efforts to SLOW HIM DOWN in everything else he does.

Yeah... I wanted to "floor" him. But I think DS proved the point better than I could have.

Things are a bit different this year for setting AR goals. GS10 has a long term sub, I think his regular teacher will be back around the start of the 2nd quarter. A woman he does not know came to their classroom after the STAR tests and set the goals with each kid. That was several weeks after school started. He was ready to take AR tests on the Eragon series, which would give him just over 100 points, so he bragged and got the goal of 150.
What drives me really crazy, he's supposed to log how many pages he reads each day in his AR books. The teacher said the log would be part of their grade. His teacher last year tried the same thing. I wouldn't outright tell him it was OK not to log it, I did try to change the teacher's thinking on that, in the end I told him the teacher said it was part of the grade, if he wanted the grade he had to fill it in. He didn't bother keeping the log, the teacher didn't knock down his grade, and he took more AR tests than anyone in his class.

Yep, I have given GS permission to forge my initials on reading logs and notebooks, as long as there is no note for me to read.

This is just so sad...

From a teacher's blog post about trying reach students in their zone of proximal development. Read the entire post and you'll laugh, you'll cry.

http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-gerbils.html