Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer: 

Analyze the following classroom narrative between a teacher and a 5-year-old girl in a kindergarten class in inner-city Chicago. Look for: 

A. evidence that either denies or confirms Piagetian stages and their age ranges. A. Pay particular attention to evidence of meta-cognition. 

B. Evidence of scaffolding. 

The excerpt is from a conversation between an adult and a 5-year-old girl. The conversation illustrates how an adult reader can ask questions and encourage response and understanding. At the same time, the adult is clearly doing a great deal of the cognitive work in this interaction. The child was asked the question, "What was the most important thing that happened in this story," in regard to the book, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge (Fox, 1988): 

Adult - What's the most important thing that happens in this story? 
Child - I don't know. 
Adult - Oh think! ?.. What was the most important thing? 
Child - My brain doesn't have it. 
Adult - Your brain has it. It's in there. 
Child - No, it doesn't. He told me. 
Adult - Yeah, it will tell you. Try and think. 
Child - It's looking for it. 
Adult - Okay. 
Child - It has hands and he's looking in the drawer. 
Adult - It's looking in the drawer? Okay. 
Child - He didn't find it. 
Adult - Didn't find it? Tell him to look again. Tell him ??. 
Child - Look again brain. 
Adult - Remember the story ??. 
Child - I know. 
Adult - Okay 
Child - He found it. 
Adult - Oh good! What was the most important thing that happened in the story? 
Child - His parents were talking about her. 
Adult - And what ?..? 
Child - She lost her memory. 
Adult - Ahh ? and then what? 
Child - Then she got her memory back. 
Adult - Ah, okay.