After reading the Phaedrus posting below:

For those who are still confused about ZPD, maybe this article from last year will help clear it up.

\ZPD
Zone of Proximal Development is one of those buzz phrases you hear bandied about a lot in ed psych. It’s often mis-understood and probably needs some clarification.

My response was:

Your graphic of the ZPD gives a much better definition of student learning and understanding than what I had learned in a previous class. As teachers, we need to step away from the force feeding lectures and give the students the opportunity to explore learning. Teachers are a gateway to learning, facilitators, and the motivators.

When I was researching more on Vygotsky and distant teacher, I found this link which describes the concept of ZPD and strategies that teachers can use to be effective at expanding a student’s ZPD. It is:

http://www.balancedreading.com/vygotsky.html

The most significant comment to me was “The teacher must engage students’ interest, simplify tasks so they are manageable, and motivate students to pursue the instructional goal,” because this how I see my role as a teacher. I have to make it interesting for all my students, my explanations need to be simple enough to reach the student with a low ZPD, but then I need to provide a challenging question for my higher level student. So I teach a concept, then give a “what if” scenario and have them discuss it. My hope is that all students expand their knowledge of what I am teaching. Sometimes, this is most effectively done in groups, sometimes one on one. I have heard the term called math talk, i.e. getting students to talk about what they are learning in math, using the right vocabulary, but I did not know about the concept of reciprocal teaching until I read this article. It ties to the theory by Vygotsky that students learn by social interaction. We as teachers need to create an environment that is geared towards interaction between students, whether it be pair-share, group work, or round robin discussions.