Week Four: Consider Strategic Scaffolding

 Week 4: Considering Strategic Scaffolding

November 10th 2023

In Chapter Four of Rigor by Design, Not Chance, Karen Hess focuses on the importance of strategic scaffolding, and how to teach these strategies for student academic growth. Scaffolding is essential for many reasons, but mainly because it supports cognitive development, practicing and learning new skills, and guides students to individualize and practice independent learning. She discusses four different structure scaffolding strategies such as: 

  1. Teacher and peer scaffolding: Teachers introduce new ideas to support student learning, such as concepts or thinking strategies, and then slowly remove them to promote student independent learning. 

  2. Content scaffolding: The teacher must introduce basic versions of content for students to use and practice, then allow students to build to more complex challenges. 

  3. Task scaffolding: Among the constant scaffolding, the teacher uses complex tasks and breaks them down into more straightforward steps for students to complete step-by-step.

  4.  Material scaffolding: The teacher provides materials to support students in uncovering patterns in texts or problem-solving tasks.


Karin Hess also discusses how to decide which scaffolding to use in different scenarios. “The choice may depend on cognitive demand, also called cognitive load, which describes the range of mental processing required to complete a given task within a given context…” (Hess 2023). From my understanding, the question to ask is how whatever scaffolding you use, will benefit the student the most. How can students show what they have learned and what support we put into place for them to use?  

Karen also states that there are three main reasons to use scaffolding during instruction. 

  1. Reason 1 to deepen content knowledge and connect to big ideas:

The belief is that students need to do more than memorize new information or routines. Believing every student is different but is capable of achieving new skills and developing new strategies. 

  1. Reason 2 to facilitate executive function and the application of skills and processes:

Students who struggle to maintain executive function and apply different skills to complex texts are the focus. Building upon their poor skills to develop and increase executive function to support their self-directed learning. Examples are given our initiation, working memory, planning, organization, and self-monitoring.

  1. Reason 3 to support language and vocabulary development:

Language and vocabulary are the ground level of all content areas. For ELA, students are taught in reinforced language to practice the language and different aspects of Content. This includes basic skills such as phonics and phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension for students to practice and learn. To meet the students where they are, and build upon these necessary skills to improve development. 

In the article titled “Vocabulary, Reading and Classroom Supports for Language,” David Dickinson displays an idea of the student's ability to read with comprehension and the use of skills that determine their vocabulary or other language abilities. “But mounting evidence suggests that by attending narrowly to ‘basic skills’ at the expense of vocabulary, later reading comprehension abilities suffer” (Dickinson et al.. 2009). Relating both resources together, they share a lot of similarities in the structure and importance of vocabulary and language. We often overlook the problems students have and do little to nothing about the meeting where they are and fixing basic phonic skills. They also discuss that vocabulary is needed to access background information, and syntax is needed for accuracy. This is why building scaffolding strategies slowly builds on these skills, and eventually, the students will become proficient in these areas.

Dickinson, D. K., Flushman, T. R., & Freiberg, J. B. (1970, January 1). Vocabulary, reading and classroom supports for language. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230242258_2 

Hess, Karin. (2023).  Rigor by Design, Not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable Instruction and Assessment. ASCD ASSN SUPERV CURR DEV, 2023.

Comments

  1. Dr. Beth Walsh-MoormanNovember 13, 2023 at 5:38 AM

    I wonder how scaffolds can help address this inequity?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lucy PattisonNovember 15, 2023 at 8:46 AM

    I agree that students' problems can often be overlooked. I wonder what scaffolding strategies can be used to help fix basic phonic skills. I am curious about how teachers can meet students where they are and teach content specific to the grade level. I would like to see if research is done about what types of scaffolding strategies are most effective for improving students' vocabulary and language skills. Overall, I am interested to learn more about the impact of scaffolding strategies on students understanding.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Megan SchanzNovember 17, 2023 at 2:12 PM

    Vocabulary is definitely an important aspect to background knowledge. The more vocabulary the student knows, the more the student can relate to the topic because they can understand what those words mean. Scaffolding certainly helps vocabulary skills develop. I wonder what scaffolds would be most effective in connecting vocabulary to background knowledge.

    ReplyDelete

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