I want to talk to you today about scaffolding as an effective instructional strategy. What is it? How do you use it? What type of students benefit from?
What is it?
According to Archer and Hughes (2011):
Explicit instruction is characterized by a series of supports or scaffolds, whereby students are guided through the learning process with clear statements about the purpose and rationale for learning the new skill, clear explanations and demonstrations of the instructional target, and supported practice with feedback until independent mastery has been achieved.
Scaffolding is the process in which a teacher uses supports to teach students new skills. A teacher does this by systematically building on students’ experiences and knowledge as they are learning new skills. Many teachers do this naturally when teaching a new task or strategy, whereas others need to purposefully incorporate scaffolding into their teaching styles.
How do you use it?
Scaffolding is especially important when teaching students new skills, or when helping students who perhaps need a little more support or time to learn at the same pace as others in a content area class (Okolo, 2016). Of course, students’ skill levels and needs vary dramatically, as does the difficulty of individual tasks or strategies. Therefore, teachers need to highly trained in scaffolding techniques and knowledgeable in the content areas that they are teaching.
There are three different scaffolding strategies to use:
- Content Scaffolding
- Task Scaffolding
- Material Scaffolding
With content scaffolding, a teacher should start with the easy content to teach the students the strategy at first. This allows the students to have a grasp of the content while they learn the strategy that is being introduced.
Using task scaffolding, a teacher lists the tasks that are involved in the strategy and then models or “thinks aloud” to demonstrate to students how to move through each step of the strategy being taught. The teacher then observes the students to ensure they understand how to use the strategy. This is a pretty straight forward scaffolding technique.
Material scaffolding uses guided examples or cue sheets to demonstrate how to proceed through each step of the task or strategy. Students would use these examples as guidance to help reduce frustration and confusion. As students demonstrate mastery of each step the guides should be removed to ensure independence with the task or strategy being taught.
What type of students benefit from it?
Scaffolding is one of the principles of effective instruction that enables teachers to accommodate individual student needs (Kame’enui, Carnine, Dixon, Simmons, & Coyne, 2002). All students are able to benefit from scaffolding techniques when they are learning a new strategy or task.
Although scaffolding can be used to optimize learning for all students, it is a very demanding form of instruction (Pressley, Hogan, Wharton-McDonald, Mistretta, & Ettenberger 1996). With that said, there are a few challenges and cautions for implementing scaffolding instruction.
- Use scaffolding when appropriate
- Be knowledgeable of the curriculum
- Practice generating possible prompts to help students
- Be positive, patient, and caring
For more examples and strategies of how to use scaffolding in your classroom, I have found several resource for your review:
Guided Instruction by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey
Instructional Scaffolding to Improve Learning
REFERENCES
Kame’enui, E. J., Carnine, D. W., Dixon, R. C., Simmons, D. C., & Coyne, M. D. (2002). Effective teaching strategies that accommodate diverse learners (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.
Okolo, Cynthia (2016). Scaffolding. https://d2l.msu.edu/d2l/le/content/312833/viewContent/3296894/View. (Found Feb. 5, 2016).
Pressley, M., Hogan, K., Wharton-McDonald, R., Mistretta, J., & Ettenberger, S. (1996). The challenges of instructional scaffolding: The challenges of instruction that supports student thinking. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 11(3), 138-146.
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