Lev Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist born in 1896 who studied child development and education. He is known for his theories of social development and the Zone of Proximal Development. Vygotsky believed that social interaction and culture strongly influence cognitive development in children. He studied how language and thought develop in relation to social and cultural factors. His theory of the Zone of Proximal Development examines the difference between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance and is used to determine a student's readiness to learn new skills.

2.  November 17, 1869-November 5, 1934
 Soviet Psychologist
 Studied at the University of Moscow
 Interested in developmental
psychology, child development and education

3.  Social Development Theory
 Zone of Proximal Development
 Social Speech
 Private Speech
A lot of his work concerned inner
relationships of thought and language
development

4.  Focus on how language and culture influence
the growth of thought in children (13)
 Different learning styles due to different
cultural backgrounds would affect a school
setting and the way a student learns.

5.  The distance between the current
maximum independent performance level
of a child and the tasks the child can
perform if guided by adults.
 Used when figuring out a skill level of a
student in a classroom
 Used when helping students acquire a
new task
 Scaffolding is where the level of difficulty
is changed (Mcleod, 2010).

6.  Social speech is what we hear when people
talk around us and too us
 Private speech is speech that children say a
loud to themselves
 This later creates inner speech and mental
activity which helps in development
 Students use social speech to help convey
their emotions and needs to teachers and
peers.
 Private speech could be found when students
are reading quietly to themselves.

7.  Jack is a fourth grader who was recently
diagnosed with a learning disability in
reading.
 His special education teachers need to figure
out what level reading he is at in order to
get him to grade level.
 They use ZPD to figure out his level of
reading successfully without help.
 They will also measure his ability to read
with some guidance.

8.  They need to determine the point where
Jack can not read even with help.
 Once they figure out this information they
will then create reading tasks that he can do
within his ZPD that he can complete without
help.
 Than they will move to find tasks that will
help him create a new ZPD that he might
need help in.

10.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acITacjbg
LE&feature=youtu.be

12.  Cook, J. L., & Cook, G. (2009). Child Development.
 Mcleod, S. (2010). Zone of proximal development. Simply
Psychology, Retrieved from
http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-proximal-
Development.html
 Carlton, M., & Wilson, A. (2003). Private speech in preshool
children. Retrieved from
http://winserlab.gmu.edu/pubs/Winsleretal03.pdf
 Social development theory ( vygotsky). (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.learning-theories.com/vygotskys-social-learning-
theory.html