6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students via Edutopia

6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each.

Edutopia: 6.24.2014 by Rebecca Alber

What’s the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? Saying to students, “Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday.” Yikes—no safety net, no parachute, no scaffolding—they’re just left blowing in the wind.

Let’s start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things. Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and then providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk. When scaffolding reading, for example, you might preview the text and discuss key vocabulary, or chunk the text and then read and discuss as you go. With differentiation, you might give a child an entirely different piece of text to read, or shorten the text or alter it, and/or modify the writing assignment that follows.

Simply put, scaffolding is what you do first with kids—for those students who are still struggling, you may need to differentiate by modifying an assignment and/or making accommodations (for example, by choosing more accessible text and/or assigning an alternative project).

1. SHOW AND TELL

How many of us say that we learn best by seeing something rather than hearing about it?

2. TAP INTO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Ask students to share their own experiences, hunches, and ideas about the content or concept of study and have them relate and connect it to their own lives.

3. GIVE TIME TO TALK

All learners need time to process new ideas and information. They also need time to verbally make sense of and articulate their learning with the community of learners who are engaged in the same experience and journey.

4. PRE-TEACH VOCABULARY

Sometimes referred to as front-loading vocabulary, this is a strategy that we teachers don’t use enough.

5. USE VISUAL AIDS

Graphic organizers, pictures, and charts can all serve as scaffolding tools. Graphic organizers are very specific in that they help kids visually represent their ideas, organize information, and grasp concepts such as sequencing and cause and effect.

6. PAUSE, ASK QUESTIONS, PAUSE, REVIEW

This is a wonderful way to check for understanding while students read a chunk of difficult text or learn a new concept or content.

TRYING SOMETHING NEW

With all the diverse learners in our classrooms, there is a strong need for teachers to learn and experiment with new scaffolding strategies.  READ MORE >>