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Literacy Teaching and Learning 1998 Volume 3, Number 2, page 1
In recent years, there have been many and varied successful applications of the Vygotskian concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) to the area of literacy learning (e.g., Burkhalter, 1995; Combs, 1996; Steward, 1996). These applications, often developed as instructional pro- grams, generally demonstrate the via- bility of providing children support within their ZPD and describe various ways to increase their level of perfor- mance beyond what learners may achieve on their own or with instruction that is out of their range of capabilities. Most of the programs use the assis- tance of more capable others, likely peers or teachers, to support the learn- ing of individual children. Consistent
with Vygotsky's own emphasis, the process and the outcomes of the inter- actions between the child and the other participants in the dialogue are typically presented in a verbal form, through dif- ferent forms of discourse (e.g., Au, 1997; Brown, Ash, Rutherford, Nakagawa, Gordon, & Campione, 1993; Cazden, 1981; Moll, 1990). In the work of Vygotsky’s followers, such as Daniel Elkonin and Pyotr Galperin, it was found that for young children, the progress within their ZPD can be further enhanced when not only social interactions are present, but also special instructional techniques are utilized (Elkonin, 1963, 1969, 1974; Galperin, 1969, 1985, 1992). Going beyond the original Vygotskian theoretical insights
Abstract
Scaffolded Writing is an innovative method of supporting emergent writing based on Vygotsky’s theory of learning and development. This article discusses the theoretical notions underlying the method: the zone of proximal develop- ment, scaffolding, materialization, and private speech. A description of Scaffolded Writing is given along with classroom examples. A case study of 34 at-risk kindergarten children is reported that illustrates the effectiveness of this method in supporting children's emergent writing. Changes in the use of Scaffolded Writing by the participants of this study provide insight into the mechanisms of the transition from assisted to independent performance within the zone of proximal development.
Scaffolding Emergent Writing in the Zone
of Proximal Development
Elena Bodrova, McREL—Mid-Continent Regional Educational Lab
Deborah J. Leong, Metropolitan State College of Denver
An International Journal of Early Reading and Writing An Official Publication of the Reading Recovery Council of North America
Scaffolding Emergent Writing by incorporating the research and prac- tical applications of colleagues and stu- dents of Vygotsky can significantly expand our current understanding of the concept of the ZPD and perhaps strengthen its effect on educational practices. It is the purpose of this article to describe “Scaffolded Writing”—a Vygotskian-based technique developed to support and investigate emergent writing. Scaffolded Writing is a method inspired by the work of Elkonin and Galperin but applied to an area that nei- ther of them originally studied—self- generated messages of young writers. The Scaffolded Writing method involves the use of two techniques— materialization and private speech — that became the center of instructional interventions used by Vygotskians in Russia, but which are not equally popu- lar in Western education. The Scaffolded Writing method will be dis-
cussed both as a way to examine chil- dren’s literacy development in the ZPD and as a teaching technique that might be used in a classroom setting. Before discussing materialization, private speech, and Scaffolded Writing, we will review the relevant concepts of the zone of proximal development and scaffolding, and their application to the teaching and learning of young chil- dren.
Relevant Concepts
The Zone of Proximal
Development
The zone of proximal development is the Vygotskian concept that defines development as the space between the child’s level of independent perfor- mance and the child’s level of maximal- ly assisted performance (Bodrova & Leong, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). Abilities that are fully developed exist at the level of inde- pendent performance. Those skills that are on the edge of emergence and that can be enhanced by varying degrees of assistance are located within the ZPD (see Figure 1). As a new skill or concept is mastered, what a child can do one day only with assistance, soon becomes his or her level of independent perfor- mance (see Figure 2). For example, if today a child can write her name only when a teacher shows her how to form each letter, tomorrow the same child
may need only initial prompting to fin- ish the rest of writing by herself. At any given moment, there are tasks that lie outside of the child’s ZPD, such that no amount of assistance will facilitate learning. In the above example, writing an entire story is clearly outside this particular child’s ZPD. Although the concept of a ZPD was later broadened by contemporary Vygotskian scholars to serve as a gener- al metaphor for human development in a sociocultural context (e.g., Newman & Holzman, 1993), in this paper we will use the more narrow definition of the ZPD used by Vygotsky himself to tie together instruction and develop- ment. For Vygotsky (1934/1987), Instruction is only useful when it moves ahead of development. When it
does, it impels or wakens a whole series of functions that are in a stage of maturation lying in the zone of proximal development. This is the major role of instruction in develop- ment. … Instruction would be com- pletely unnecessary if it merely uti- lized what had already matured in the developmental process, if it were not itself a source of development. (p. 212)
Scaffolding as a Way to Facilitate
a Child’s Transition from Assisted
to Independent Performance
The term “scaffolding” was coined by Bruner (Wood, Bruner, & Ross,
- to specify the types of assistance that make it possible for learners to function at higher levels of their zones of proximal development. The term
Figure 1: Zone of Proximal Development
ZPD
Figure 2: Changes in a Child's ZPD Over Time
Level of assisted performance
Level of independent performance
ZPD 1
Level of assisted performance
Level of independent performance
ZPD 2
ZPD 3
Level of assisted performance
Level of assisted performance
Level of independent performance
Level of independent performance
Time
Scaffolding Emergent Writing ing. In terms of the zone of proximal development, such a progression might suggest that, when provided appropriate scaffolding, a child might be expected to write using more developmentally advanced forms than the same child could do when unassisted. Scaffolded assistance in the child's ZPD may also affect the quality of the child’s mes- sage, perhaps making it longer and more meaningful.
Scaffolded Writing—a
Vygotskian-Based Method to
Support Emergent Writing
In an effort to support practice with Vygotskian theory, we developed a technique called “Scaffolded Writing”
which uses a combination of material- ization and private speech to support emergent writing. In Scaffolded Writing, a highlighted line is used to materialize each unit of oral speech (Bodrova & Leong, 1995). Like the Cuisinare rod that materializes the con- cept of number, the highlighted line materializes the concept of “word.” The child creates his or her own message and then—with teacher’s help or inde- pendently—draws a highlighted line to stand for each word in the message. Private speech coincides with the draw- ing of each line so the link between the spoken word and its materialized line is made clear. The child then fills out the empty lines, placing scribbles, letter- like forms, or letters on the line to stand for the word in the message. Scaffolded Writing is intended to be a temporary tool. Just as in other types of scaffolding, the technique begins with the assistance of someone else providing sup- port, then is followed by a period when the children use the scaffolds on their own as a transition to self-assistance, and, finally, all scaffolds are eliminated as learners can per- form the task unassisted. Teacher-assisted use of Scaffolded Writing. In the beginning, the teacher provides maximum assistance for writ- ing by demonstrating the use of the highlighted lines and by modeling how to use private speech. The teacher asks the child to say aloud the message he or she wishes to write and repeats the message for the child to confirm its accuracy.
taught using Elkonin’s program learned to read faster than those who were not, and scored better on the measures of metalinguistic awareness (Bugrimenko & Zukerman, 1987; Elkonin, 1963, 1971; Karpova, 1955; Khokhlova, 1955). One adaptation of Elkonin’s technique is used in the West, primarily by Reading Recovery teachers. In this program, children push pennies into “sound boxes” or “letter boxes”, drawn by the teacher, that represent the sounds or letters as they analyze a spoken word into its component phonemes and find letters to represent them (Clay, 1993).
Development of Emergent
Writing in Kindergarten
Prior to a description of the scaf- folded writing technique that is the focus of this article, a brief review of the literature on emergent writing is in order. According to Sulzby (1996), most kindergartners primarily use draw- ing, scribbling, and non-phonetic letter strings as they write. The use of invent- ed spelling at this age is rare in general, but some children begin to mix invent- ed spellings in with their scribbles and letter strings. Only a few children can be expected to use invented and con- ventional spelling—primarily when writing isolated words. Sulzby reports that when children become very excited and motivated, they tend to revert back to more immature forms of writing, although the content and length of their stories increase. This reversion to less- advanced appearing forms was also confirmed by the research of Marie Clay (1975). In a detailed analysis of children's writing, Gentry (Gentry & Gillet, 1993) identified distinct levels of emergent writing. The progress from one level to
the next one is marked by the changes in letter formation, completeness of phonemic representation, and corre- spondence between oral and written messages. At the first level, messages are represented by scribbles, marks, and pictures. Children at this level do not produce letter-like forms. At the next level, which Gentry called “pre-com- municative”, children have some con- trol of letters, but do not use them to represent sounds. The letters or letter- like forms are written but the writing cannot be read by anyone but the writer, and cannot be reread many days later even by the writer. The next level is referred to as “semi-phonetic” where letters are used to represent the word, but the phonemic representation is not complete. For example, one to three let- ters are used to represent the entire word. At this stage, conventional direc- tionality is present. A more advanced stage is “phonetic” when children use letters to represent all of the sounds in the word including vowels. Writing at this stage contains some words that are spelled phonetically correctly. The invented spelling of the next level, which Gentry termed “transitional”, is based on children’s memory of visual patterns rather than sound patterns. Although children may use some cor- rectly spelled words while at phonetic and transitional levels, consistent use of conventional spelling does not appear until the final “conventional” level, typ- ically attained when children are much older than 5 years of age (Gentry & Gillet, 1993). A review of the literature on emer- gent writing revealed that there are no norms for expected levels, but, accord- ing to Sulzby (1992), there does exist a general, descriptive, developmental pro- gression of the characteristics of writ-
Figure 3: Amanda's Sample of Unassisted Writing
Scaffolding Emergent Writing tence all the way through to “table.” After the teacher was sure that the materialization matched the child's pri - vate speech, Ms. Martinez handed the paper with the lines to Amanda, and said, “Now that you can remember what you want to write, go ahead and write it out on the lines. Say each word as you write it on the line to yourself. If you can’t remember the word, go back to the beginning of the message and say the sentence aloud again.” Amanda wrote on the lines. After Amanda finished writing the word “sit - ting,” she couldn’t remember the next word she wanted to write. She started reading the sentence aloud from the beginning, pointing to each word as she
read. Rereading the first words in the message prompted the word “at.” With each new word, she would whisper the sentence from the beginning. See Figure 5 for the completed message. After writing “words” on all of the lines, Amanda was asked to read her message back. She pointed to each word as she read exactly what was written on the lines. Independent use of Scaffolded Writing. During this stage, the children use Scaffolded Writing independently, with no help from the teacher. They may still consult the alphabet chart, other children, and the classroom dic- tionary for sounding out words, but the message planning, creation of the lines, and writing are completed without any assistance. Children continue to use the strategies they have learned at the teacher- assisted stage. If their message consists of more than one sentence, they plan one sentence at a time, and add other ideas later. They also continue using private speech, both while planning their mes- sage and later, when they cannot remember a certain word. As they reread their sentences, they make occasional self-corrections when they notice a mis- match between the number of words in their oral lan- guage and the number of lines on the paper. In this case, they continue trying to read the sentence to reconstruct their ideas and to remember the missing words. When they reread the entire
Then the teacher and the child repeat the message together as the teacher draws a line to stand for each word in the message. At this point, the teacher returns the piece of paper with only the lines drawn on it back to the child. The child then recreates the message by writing the “word” on each of the lines using any symbol within his or her developmental level (e.g., scribble, let- ter-like form, letter, or letter combina- tion). While the child is writing, the teacher may help the child with “sound- ing out” the words or encourage the child to use an alphabet chart. The teacher-child interactions are relatively brief and can be carried out not only in one-on-one settings, but also when the
teacher works with a group of 4-6 stu- dents. The following classroom vignette illustrates the process. Amanda, the lit- tle girl featured in this vignette, attend- ed a kindergarten classroom and typi- cally produced several writing samples a week during journal writing or other literacy activities. Amanda’s example of writing before she began to use Scaffolded Writing is shown in Figure
- This serves as a baseline with which to compare her writing using Scaffolded Writing. Ms. Martinez asked Amanda to draw a picture and think of a story to go along with the picture. When the picture was finished Ms. Martinez said, “We are going to draw lines with the highlighter to help you remember what you want to write. We will plan your story one sentence at a time. Tell me what you want to write.” Amanda said, “The cats are sitting at the table.” Ms. Martinez said, “You want to write, “The cats are sitting at the table?” Amanda said, “Yes.” Ms. Martinez repeated the sentence slowly making a line with a highlighter pen for each word in the message (See Figure 4). The lines were made to fit the size of the word—the line for “the” was smaller than the line for “table.” Then Ms. Martinez said, “Let’s go back over our plan (pointing to the lines). You said you wanted to write, “‘The cats … ’” With teacher prompts, Amanda pointed to each highlighted line and continued the sen -
Figure 4: Teacher's Materialization of Amanda's Self-Generated Message
Figure 5. Amanda's Sample of Scaffolded Writing (Teacher-Assisted Stage)
Scaffolding Emergent Writing Many of these children wrote messages that were not related to the picture. Some of the messages contained lists of unrelated words while other messages contained sentences. Only two children generated long and involved oral stories that they attempted to record. There were no attempts to use invented spelling. Letters used in the written messages did not correspond to the phonemes present in the oral stories. Children were unable to reread their messages consistently and were more likely to make up a completely new story rather than remember what they intended to write. Figure 7 shows typi- cal examples of children’s writing in September. By November, when the second sample was collected, the children had been using Scaffolded Writing for a month with the teacher representing
each word of the message with a high- lighted line. At this time, all of the chil- dren except one were writing at a level higher than their initial level as shown in Table 1. As measured by Gentry’s Scale, of the children who in September were at the level of scribbles, all but one were now at the pre-communicative level and nine were now writing at semi-phonetic level. The child who did not show any progress continued to use scribbles mixed with random letters. The November sample showed that all of the children initially at the pre- communicative level, moved to the semi-phonetic level. Most of the chil- dren had begun to represent some sounds with letters. All of the children wrote beginning sounds consistently. Some also included ending consonants and medial vowel sounds in some of their words. All of the messages were now read immedi- ately after the writ- ing with the chil- dren pointing at the lines as they read. All the messages were meaningful. There were no lists of unrelated words and all of the mes- sages were directly related to the pic- tures. Figure 8 shows examples of teacher-assisted use of Scaffolded Writing. In May, after using Scaffolded Writing for eight months, children began to draw high- lighted lines when planning their own
were using Scaffolded Writing on their own. Gentry's Scale of Writing (Gentry & Gillet, 1993) was used to demon- strate the children’s progress in forming letters, representing sounds, and mov- ing toward conventional spelling. Gentry’s scale was chosen because it had the clearest and the most detailed definitions of the characteristics of each level. Children were rated to be at a specific level if 75% or more of their
writing was consistent with the level described. Writing samples were ana- lyzed by three independent raters. In addition, the writing samples were analyzed for the meaningful quali- ty of the message, that is, the extent to which the message made sense (Sulzby, 1992). These characteristics were rated independently on a yes or no basis. Information from the children's reread- ings was collected using teachers' anec- dotal records.
Results
See Table 1 for a summary of the results. In September, before teachers started to use Scaffolded Writing, 20 out of the 34 children were at the level where they used scribbles and pictures to represent their stories. Some of them would not attempt to write on their own at all, prefer- ring to dictate their stories to the teacher. Fourteen of the chil- dren began at the pre- communicative level.
Table 1 Summary of the Results of the Case Study Children's Writing With and Without Scaffolding from September through May Level Scribbles, Date Marks, Pre- Semi- Phonetic/ of the Sample or Pictures Only Communicative Phonetic Transitional September (^20 14 0 ) (Unassisted) November (Teacher-Assisted 1 10 23 0 Scaffolded Writing) May (Independent (^0 9 17 ) use of Scaffolded Writing)
Figure 7: Typical Examples of Kindergarten Children's Unassisted Writing
Figure 8: Examples of Children's Use of Scaffolded Writing--Teacher-Assisted Stage
Scaffolding Emergent Writing form of Scaffolded Writing did produce more advanced writing compared to the level of writing the children produced when unassisted. The progress was demonstrated in the use of more advanced appearing forms of writing, increased use of invented spelling, and increased length and quality of the mes- sages. The difference between unassist- ed writing and Scaffolded Writing var- ied between individual children indicat- ing the differences in their zones of proximal development. Scaffolded Writing followed the predicted path of all scaffolding — it began with assistance by another per- son, was eventually appropriated or used by the children with little outside support, and later became unnecessary as internalization occurred. After the scaffolds were removed, the perfor- mance remained at a high level—there was little regression to earlier less- advanced appearing forms. The fact that children did not decrease their level of writing after the teachers’assistance was no longer present, suggests that materialization and private speech became the children’s own “tools”. It is difficult to ascertain from the literature typical levels and rates of development for the average kinder- garten child. However, in comparing these data to the levels of writing iden- tified by Sulzby (1996), these children seem to be performing at higher levels than expected—particularly for an at- risk population. Nevertheless, the cur- rent study is a preliminary one, and the degree to which Scaffolded Writing assists children more than other meth- ods of writing instruction needs to be investigated empirically with controlled studies. In conclusion, we suggest that Scaffolded Writing provides educators
with both a novel research tool to examine children’s learning of literacy skills and an effective way to support early writing. As a research tool, Scaffolded Writing makes it possible to establish the higher level of a child's ZPD when the lower level is deter- mined by the child’s unassisted writing. It also provides a different context to study the relationship between different strands in the development of emergent writing. For example, in our study, it was observed that an increase in mes- sage length was not necessarily accom- panied by a decrease in the develop- mental form of writing. The Scaffolded Writing method also holds promise as a new instruction- al technique that may be used by class- room teachers. It allows teachers to provide appropriate individual support while at the same time to work with a small group of children. Scaffolded Writing facilitates the transition to inde- pendent writing. It supports the child's message production, thus preserving the critical link between meaning and writ- ing. It helps the child to distinguish the “word” within the flow of that message and stabilizes the link between mean- ing, oral speech, and the written word. It adds to our repertoire of appropriate types of support in the area of emergent literacy—expanding the tactics to include materialization and private speech. In this way, we fulfill Vygotsky’s ideal that, “The teacher must orient his work not on yesterday’s development in the child but on tomor- row’s. Only then will he be able to use instruction to bring out those processes of development that lie in the zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 211).
messages. By this time, the children were able to materialize the message on their own and use private speech with- out the teacher's help. The teacher no longer helped the children extensively with their writing, offering only occa- sional assistance with the sounding out of certain words. Judging by the May samples, chil- dren had made even greater progress in the use of phonetic representation of words and invented spelling. None of the children used scribbling or random letters to represent words. All represen- tations were phonetic in some way. Some children wrote several sentences that formed a story. All of the children could read back their story and would point to each line while reading the intended word, whether it was fully or only partially represented by letters. Simple sight words were conventionally spelled and all other words were written
in invented spelling. The invented spelling of some children reflected their reliance on the sounds of the word (e.g., “uv” for “of” or “ol” for “all”) as well as reliance on visual memory (e.g., “two” for “to”). These children’s writ- ing combined the characteristics of pho- netic and transitional levels. None of the children reached the level of con- ventional spelling. By May, all of the children continued to write meaningful messages and the number of messages that contained more than one sentence increased. Teachers reported that the rereadings had become more accurate. Figure 9 illustrates typical examples of writing when children were using Scaffolded Writing independently. Teachers reported they had not before had at-risk children in their classrooms who wrote so much and who were so advanced in phonemic representation. They reported that by May, they did not have to direct any writing— that children wrote during journal time, often electing to stay to write rather than moving on to other activities. There was tremendous interest in reading their messages to others as well as reading messages writ- ten by others. Many children demonstrated a stronger interest in reading than the teach- ers had expected.
Discussion
As we can see from the data, the use of materialization and private speech in the
Figure 9: Examples of Children's Independent Use of Scaffolded Writing
Literacy Teaching and Learning 1998 Volume 3, Number 2, page 18
Venger, L. A. (Ed.). (1986). Razvitije pozna - vatel’nych sposobnostey v protsesse doshkol’nogo vospitanija [Development of cognitive abilities through preschool education]. Moscow: Pedagogika. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work pub- lished in 1930, 1933, 1935). Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky. (R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton, Trans.). New York: Plenum Press. (Original works published in 1934, 1960). Wood, D., Bruner, J. C., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry , 17 , 89-100.
Biographies Elena Bodrova received her degrees from Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. She worked in the Institute of Preschool Education and later in the Center for Educational Innovations in Moscow, Russia. After coming to the United States, Dr. Bodrova was a visiting professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver and is currently working for the Mid- Continent Regional Education Laboratory (McREL). Deborah Leong received a B.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University and an M.Ed. from Harvard University. She teaches at Metropolitan State College and is a co-author of a college textbook on assessment in early childhood edu- cation titled Assessing and Guiding Young Children’s Development and Learning.
Drs. Bodrova and Leong have pub- lished extensively in the field of early child- hood education. Some of their most recent
collaborative efforts include: Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education (1996) published by Merrill/Prentice Hall; “Scaffolding the Writing Process: The Vygotskian Approach” in The Colorado Reading Council Journal (1995); “Adult Influences on Play: Vygotskian Approach” an article in the edit- ed book titled Play and its Role in Development , published by Garland Press; three videos by Davidson Film — Vygotsky’s Developmental Theory: An Introduction; Play: The Vygotskian Approach; and Scaffolding Self-Regulated Learning in the Primary Grades.
