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Let’s say you have a class of juniors and seniors in a high school theatre class. The assignment is to create scenes from a Shakespearean play. There is a group of 4 juniors who have never done Shakespeare, but have been in theatre long enough to be competent in all other aspects of acting. By placing them with 3 seniors who have acting the in last falls production of Macbeth we are closing the gap between what the juniors might be able to accomplish own their own and with peer support. The skill of classical theatre was within their zone given their pervious skills developed in acting but needed to be bridged.

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Let’s say you have a class of juniors and seniors in a high school theatre class. The assignment is to create scenes from a Shakespearean play. There is a group of 4 juniors who have never done Shakespeare, but have been in theatre long enough to be competent in all other aspects of acting. By placing them with 3 seniors who have acting the in last falls production of Macbeth we are closing the gap between what the juniors might be able to accomplish own their own and with peer support. The skill of classical theatre was within their zone given their pervious skills developed in acting but needed to be bridged.

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I believe I witnessed an example of Bruner’s Theory last week in my Summer Bridge Class at Higgins Community Academy. Ms. Henderson is ultimately teaching her (hopefully rising) 4th Graders multiplication. One of the first steps in doing this is having them grasp the concept of FACTORS. At first, utilizing whole to part instruction, she put some simple multiplication equations on the board for the students to solve as context, which involved factors of two and three (2X12, 3X8, 4X6, 3X10) which they solved using a pre-existing skill of skip counting. Then she asked them if they noticed any patterns and introduced the concept of “number families” – 2,3,4,6 and 8 all belonged in the “24” family. Without further discussion, she launched into a discovery learning exercise, handing each child 24 blocks and asking them to play with the blocks to see how many different kinds of equal groups they could create. Then she led them through an inductive analysis of this experience so they could generalize it to the factor concept.

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I believe I witnessed an example of Bruner’s Theory last week in my Summer Bridge Class at Higgins Community Academy. Ms. Henderson is ultimately teaching her (hopefully rising) 4th Graders multiplication. One of the first steps in doing this is having them grasp the concept of FACTORS. At first, utilizing whole to part instruction, she put some simple multiplication equations on the board for the students to solve as context, which involved factors of two and three (2X12, 3X8, 4X6, 3X10) which they solved using a pre-existing skill of skip counting. Then she asked them if they noticed any patterns and introduced the concept of “number families” – 2,3,4,6 and 8 all belonged in the “24” family. Without further discussion, she launched into a discovery learning exercise, handing each child 24 blocks and asking them to play with the blocks to see how many different kinds of equal groups they could create. Then she led them through an inductive analysis of this experience so they could generalize it to the factor concept.

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Concrete operational & Formal operational

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Concrete operational & Formal operational

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Concrete Operational: I believe my daughter is at this stage she is 10 an will be 11 in a couple of months. Now that i have background knowledge in what this stage is i am able to identify these traits in my daughter. For example she has become more organized in the way she keeps her and things. As i observe her everyday i notice that she is becoming more and more aware about her body as well as how she expresses her thoughts and feelings with detail. We also have conversations in which she asks questions concerning why others behave and think the way that they do. I believe she is coming into a deeper understanding of her own unique personality and that everyone is different. I also see her thinking critically processing information before it comes out of her mouth.

Formal Operational: When it comes to formal operational i still think of my daughter because she is right there on the verge of becoming a teenager and she already talks about it. She is very mature for her age and she is full of so much love and wants to help everyone. She is starting to form a deeper understanding of her own identity and morality. When she has different interactions with peers at school and just in general she puts her heart out there and when the same love isn't reciprocated it hurts her feelings, so she is coming more into that understanding about abstract concepts such as success, and failure, love and hate.  I also remember when i did my first play in 5th grade called To kill A Mockingbird. I played Tom Robinson and African American man accused of raping and beating a white women. I remember being in mid-scene when Tom Robinson was on stand being questioned i looked out into the audience and i seen this women crying hysterically and in that moment i understood why she crying like that. There i was only a 5th grader but my mind made since of the injustice that was being portrayed.

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Sensori-motor: When I worked at a daycare/preschool I worked with a wide range of children from ages six weeks to five years. In the infant, toddler, and two’s classrooms teachers spend a lot of time reminding students of how to safely and appropriately explore their environment. Students in these classrooms often grab each other without permission, bite each other, and put toys in their mouths. Some teachers get frustrated with these behaviors, but they are developmentally appropriate. From ages 0 to 2 years, children are exploring and understanding their body’s relationship to their environment, so when these children touched things or put things in their mouths they were attempting to make sense of the world.

Concrete operational: One example of this that came to my mind was the concept that all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. I think I learned this in fourth or fifth grade. This concept illustrates a key part of a child’s development in the concrete operational stage. When a child reaches the concrete operational stage, they begin to understand reversibility.

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"Scaffolding and the zone of proximal development are important concepts for success in any sort of teaching, whether it is in music, athletics, drama. . .or any other curriculum area. Here a teacher would first find the students' independent level and then get a little above with enough supports or scaffolding to enable them to succeed" (Johnson, 2019. p. 64).
As dance teachers, we use this theory all the time. You don't just walk into a class and ask a beginner student to replicate a complex pas. In my community of dance teachers we call our practice "break downs and build ups."
For young movers, skipping can be a complex challenge. I begin by establishing the weight shift and balance necessary to move from two feet to one foot with the flamingo game (think freeze dance, but the balance is on one foot.) A student might need to do their flamingo balance near the barre for support when first beginning. Then we might practice marching across the floor. Then we could make a pattern: "March, 2,3,4; Flamingo 2,3,4." Once students are confident and comfortable with standing on one leg, we'd introduce a hop. Then I'd ask, "What happens if we put a hop after every march? Like this: March-hop, March-hop, March-hop. . ." Low and behold--the children are SKIPPING. (Up next, chassé temps levé!)

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In theater classes we often learn with a mentor or as Vygotsky put it a “more knowledgeable other.” Using the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development we model to students ways to accomplish tasks. For example, teaching students how to build a set, we show them how to use tools and how to read a ground plan. Theater is very hands on and is learned mostly by doing as opposed to being taught in a regular classroom setting. By modeling to students how things are done, they are able to learn and retain information that they wouldn’t have been able to grasp by themselves, which grows their Zone of Proximal Development.

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My toddler is currently exiting the sensori-motor stage and entering the Pre-operational stage of development. It was absolutely wild seeing all of the developmental growth that he did in such a short period of time. This stage is the shortest stage of Piaget's, but is the building blocks of all development.

Sensorimotor example: One of the coolest developmental parts of this stage has been seeing my toddler understand and grasp object permanence and intentionality. He used to be put in his crib and he would just cry out into the room because he wanted me to come back. Now he is really intentional about crying towards the door, and reaching in the direction he knows we will come from.

Pre-operational example: Until recently, my child was not playing pretend like he should have been. We were really concerned that he might have a developmental delay, and we were right. He is receiving a lot of therapies a week, and we are starting to see him use his imagination. Since starting imaginative play, his vocabulary has grown, and he is learning and playing in new ways. Seeing him make us "food" has given him new scenarios to play out with us, and has expanded his working knowledge of the world.

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When revisiting Bruner's three steps of learning, I first thought about exploring states of matter in a second-grade classroom by first observing and discussing different states of matter. Then, getting hands-on experience of watching objects change from one matter to another, watching icecream melt, making slime, doing a baking soda and vinegar experiments etc., and then finally, exploring what the molecular structures might look like shifting back and forth in these shapes of matter through interpretive movement. While some of these activities may appear silly and less academic, this sense of play will allow students to explore these topics more deeply, and this knowledge will stick with them well beyond this lesson.
Understanding these concepts will continue to impact their learning because everything is made up of matter, and understanding the basics will enable them to dive deeper into their scientific explorations.

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Theatre is already a highly discovery based learning experience. I think that his 3 steps can be particularly applied to an 8th grade theatre history class. For instance, when discussing Ancient Greek theatre, we can first have the students perform a scene from a play (age appropriate of course) or maybe create masks for said play/scene. Next, we can look at images from theatre's around the Chicago area that have done these works. For instance, Court Theatre did Oedipus Rex in 2019. We can compare their images to the text. Lastly, I would have my students then write their own monologue for a character in the play. Using what they learned, they should be able to write a piece for someone who either doesn't speak a lot or to give summary of what that character went through.

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Pre-operational: When I was nannying in 2020, I had do virtual kindergarten with one of the children. She had to play a virtual math game that monitored her progress, and got harder as she improved. (Side note: I know that this isn’t Piaget’s theory, but that game's function seems like its targeting the Zone of Proximal development). It would give her a problem like 4+6=? And she would count on her fingers until she got to 10. The next question would be directly related, 6+4=?. Although she had just solved 4+6=10, she counted on her fingers again to solve 6+4=10, without seeing the connection. To me this indicates irreversible thinking (only thinking in one direction).

Concrete operational example: When I was 8 I took swimming lessons. We were taught how to swim across the pool while floating on our backs by making our bodies into the shape of “monkey, airplane, submarine”. It took me a while, but when I finally managed to do it all in one fluid motion I realized how easy it was to do and further realized that if I did the motions in backwards order, my body moved in another direction in the pool (reversible thinking).

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A teacher uses Vygotsky's sociocultural theory to support 4th grade students in learning how to infer the meaning of academic vocabulary from context. First, the teacher reads a passage out loud fluently. He restates the basic idea of the passage to the students. Next, he reads from the beginning until reaching an unfamiliar word. He models searching for context clues by asking aloud, "What in this passage could help me guess the meaning?" and identifying a few ideas. For guided/scaffolded practice, students follow this procedure on their own for a series of paragraphs, with three guiding questions for each:
What is the meaning of the paragraph as a whole?
Which word is new or unusual?
Which other words help us know what the word means?
What do you think a definition might be?

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I think discovery based learning would be great in an elementary level science class. For instance, following the three steps of learning: we could start by planting mustard seeds. Students would then document each stage of growth, seeing it with their own eyes as it germinates, sprouts, grows, etc. Then we could look at images of different growth stages of plants, and they would be able to identify it back to what they witnessed with their own growth experiment. Finally, we could discuss what is happening in each stage, giving language and understanding to the knowledge they already acquired through their own discoveries.

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My first example is from my HS US History/Government/Sociology instructor. Most of his instruction was expository and lecture based. He included advance organizers in the form of outlines which he had on an overhead projector. We would furiously copy down the outline while he talked. He was quite engaging and well spoken so I did not find his classes boring. When I went back to study for his tests, just reading through the outlined sparked my memory of what he discussed in class. My other example is from a theatre history professor in college. Similarly much of his course was lecture based and he worked off of a powerpoint. I found his course to be very boring. One challenge was I don't know if he could fully express his expertise in English in an engaging manner. He was very smart, spoke several languages, was a native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and did a lot with Francophone theatre. While he was fluent in English, I had trouble retaining the information that his lectures covered.

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Working at a summer music theatre camp, my colleague and I designed the two weeks to be fun but potentially disastrous. The first week we just played games with the 9-12 year olds. We did singing games, dancing games, improvs, dress up, painting, building, and a little of everything involved in putting together a show -- four hours a day, five days in the week. On friday afternoon, we had auditions for a short musical we'd written just for them. The next week, we started rehearsing. The change from play to rehearsal went smoothly because all the games lead the students to understand and trust, we would not let them fail. In fact, failures in all cases were worked into the final performance. Their trust was complete, so they did anything we asked, willingly and with all their might. It was amazing. Most of them had not performed at all, though some had been in choir or scenes at school, so none of them had any preconceived idea of how things needed to be. They jumped in and got better without even knowing it was happening.

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Give two examples of expository teaching.  What advantages and/or disadvantages do you see with these strategies?

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Give two examples of expository teaching.  What advantages and/or disadvantages do you see with these strategies?

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Give a hypothetical example from your grade level/content area of a key concept of Bruner.

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Give a hypothetical example from your grade level/content area of a key concept of Bruner.

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Give a hypothetical example from your grade level/content area of a key concept of Vygotksy.

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Give a hypothetical example from your grade level/content area of a key concept of Vygotksy.

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Choose 2 stages from Piaget's stages of development (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational) and give an example from real life for each of them. Your example can be something from your childhood or a child/student you know. 

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Choose 2 stages from Piaget's stages of development (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational) and give an example from real life for each of them. Your example can be something from your childhood or a child/student you know. 