Structuring thought through talkMind control how often have you controlled thought

through questioning?

Wertsch (1991) The father asks where she last saw the toy: the child says I can’t remember’. He asks did you

have it in your room? Outside? Nextdoor?

To each question, the child answers ‘no’. When he says ‘in the car?’, she says, ‘I think so’ and goes to retrieve the toy.

Wertsch (1991)

In Voices of the Mind, James Wertsch outlines an approach to mental functioning that stresses its inherent cultural, historical, and institutional

context. A critical aspect of this approach is the cultural tools or "mediational means" that shape both social and individual processes. In

considering how these mediational means--in particular, language--emerge in social history and the role they play in organizing the settings

in which human beings are socialized

Would Ludwig and Lev have been friends

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

(Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951)Ludwigs father was an industrial tycoon, and by the late 1880s was one of the richest men in Europe, with an effective monopoly on Austria's steel cartel.

Wittgenstein and Hitler were born just six days apart, they ended up two grades apart at the Realschule a small state school with 300 pupils.

In January 1917, he was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian front, where he won several more medals for bravery including the Silver Medal for Valour, First Class

He gave away his entire inheritance. He left academia several times teaching in schools in remote Austrian villages, where he encountered controversy for hitting children when they made mistakes in mathematics.

“Thought undergoes many changes as it turns into speech, it does not merely find expression; it finds reality and form”

(Lev Vygotsky 1896 – 1934)

Lev Vygotsky was born in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus) into a non-religious middle class Jewish family. His father was a banker.

He was raised in the city of Gomel, where he obtained both public and private education. In 1913 Vygotsky was admitted to the Moscow State University where he graduated with a degree in law in 1917.

Upon graduation Vygotsky returned to Gomel, There is virtually no information about his life during the years of the German occupation He studied a range of topics white attending university, including sociology, linguistics, psychology and philosophy.

• Discus which your favorite strategy would be and explain why.

• Choose the one activity you would want to keep if you had to throw all others away.

As a group…

Why did Ferris take a day off school?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA