The Zone of Proximal Development…

…the what and the how.

Hello all. Welcome to the 145th edition of TEPS Weekly!

Ms. Shubhangi is a Grade 5 English teacher in a government school in Pune. The topic for the day is active and passive voice.

Ms. Shubhangi writes two sentences on the board:

The boy kicked the ball.

The ball was kicked by the boy.

She underlines ‘kicked’, circles ‘boy’ and ‘ball’, and starts explaining what changes. She says unfamiliar words as she teaches: subject, object, verb, past participle. She adds ‘is/am/are/was/were’ and tells students this is how we “change the voice”.

The 5 “toppers” of the class (✓ in the image above) are able to follow along easily – in fact, they already know how to change active voice to passive voice, because their parents know English and encourage them to speak in English at home.

However, the rest of the class (! in the image above) is trying to keep up in a different way. They are writing quickly because they don’t want to miss what is on the board. They are also trying to remember the new terms. By the time they locate the subject and object in one sentence, the next example is already up.

And scattered around the class, a smaller group (╳ in the image above) is stuck at the very first step. They are not confident about what a verb is. They don’t always know which word shows the action. For them, the rule about “object becoming subject” doesn’t help, because those words are not clear yet.

The teacher notices the toppers are getting it. So, she moves faster.

During independent practice, she walks around the classroom. This is when she notices that apart from the toppers, none of the students have written the passive voice sentences correctly. She asks one of the struggling students to point to the verb in his sentence, but he isn’t able to. Frustrated, she heads back to the board and begins revising ‘nouns’ and ‘verbs’. Now, the situation in the classroom flips. The struggling students (x) are able to follow along, but the larger group (!) and the toppers (✓) are stuck revising the basics that they already know well.

This is a common scenario in many schools across the country, and this gap happens because the teaching is not matching how students’ minds actually learn.

What is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)?

ZPD is often misunderstood by educators as simply "helping students" or "differentiation." However, ZPD is a practical, cognitive-science-based framework for daily planning and classroom instruction. When you plan keeping ZPD in mind, you can ensure that the task is matched to information already present in a student’s long-term memory and what their working memory can handle, so it is challenging but still learnable.

To brush up on cognitive science terms and concepts, take up the online, self-paced TEPS Course How the Mind Learns.

Zone of Frustration

This is when the task is too hard right now, even with support, because it demands more than the student’s working memory can handle. There are too many new terms, steps or ideas, and there isn’t enough in long-term memory to anchor them.

The student’s working memory gets overloaded, so they stop processing properly. You may see giving up, silence, misbehaviour or copying an answer without understanding.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

This is what a student cannot do independently yet, but can do when teaching reduces the working memory load to a manageable level. The task connects to what is already in long-term memory, while still adding one new step or idea.

Here, a teacher, peer or resource provides prompts, models, worked examples or step-by-step guidance so the student can build a new schema in long-term memory. This is where real learning happens.

Zone of Actual Development (ZAD)

This is what a student can do easily, because the needed schema is already stored in long-term memory. The task runs with very little demand on working memory.

This zone builds speed and fluency, but it does not create new learning. In many Indian classrooms, “revision” can stay here for too long because quick correct answers look like progress.

How can we use ZPD as a planning framework?

How can ZPD help us plan for 40+ children of mixed levels using one blackboard? For this, it is important for us to stop thinking of a lesson plan as just a page to be filled up and start thinking of it as a structure to plan so students can hold the steps in working memory, while we help them build new connections in long-term memory. Here is a course which can offer you a refresher on the different memory registers.

Before the lesson, quickly note:

• Anchor (long-term memory): What do students already know that today’s idea can attach to?

• New learning (ZPD): What is the one new step / rule / idea students should leave with today?

• Support (working memory): What will reduce working-memory load while they learn it? For example: model + steps on board / sentence frame / worked example / pair talk.

• Likely stuck point: Where will most students get stuck, and what 60-second fix will you use? For example: one extra example / quick recap of a prerequisite / mini checklist on the board

Then, plan every concept in three stages: I Do → We Do → You Do. This is one of the scaffolding strategies that can be used – others are Concrete to Abstract, Metacognitive Talk, and so on.

I Do: Reduce working memory load at the start

In the first stage, students are not yet doing the task. They are watching you model the task, while their working memory is freed up to track the steps and the “why”.

For Ms. Shubhangi’s active–passive voice lesson, this means: divide the board into sections and keep the key concept visible, keep the “rule” visible, and model the thinking aloud, not just the final answer. If the new English terms themselves are consuming working memory, use students’ home language for some time to reduce that load and gradually switch over to English.

We Do: Share working memory load, step by step

Now you move into guided practice, where students do the thinking with you – but you are still carrying part of the working memory load. You use well-planned prompts such as questions and sentence starters, so students don’t have to hold the whole procedure in their working memory.

For the active-passive voice lesson, this means: give a prompt for each step of the conversion (What is the action word? Who is doing the action? Who/What is the receiver of the action? Start the passive sentence with the thing that received the action…), provide sentence frames for the passive voice sentence, use error-fixing prompts when students are stuck (Show me the action word first. If you can’t find ‘who did it’, don’t convert yet—circle the doer first.)

In a large class, you must have routines that keep everyone engaged, not just the toppers – like choral responses for key steps, notebooks so every student attempts each step, and pair talk so students verbalise the steps and not just copy them.

You Do: Practise, monitor, adjust the zone

In the third stage, students practise more independently while you move around and catch errors early. Here is where a ZPD lens becomes very practical: you don’t treat the class as one level, but work with groups that need different levels of support:

• a small group that needs re-teaching

• a main group that can do standard practice

• a small group that needs a harder task

When students are lost, we often restart the lesson from the beginning. When students are quick, we often move too fast. A ZPD approach does something else – it changes the support, not the goal.

ZPD is the learning zone where the task is just beyond what students can do alone, but still manageable because your support reduces working memory load and connects to what they already have in long-term memory. Plan for it daily by pitching work between “too easy” (ZAD) and “too hard” (frustration), and by using modelling and step-by-step prompts so most students can actually build new understanding.

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Edition: 4.52