Hello Teachers!
I’ve a question for you. Which of these things have you ever done during a lesson?
a) I jumped into the lesson with a reading without a lead-in
b) I gave students a reading or listening that was too advanced and the students got stuck
c) I asked my students to answer discussion questions on the spot
d) I gave the instructions all at once
e) All of the above
No worries if you said YES to one or more of these situations. Why?
Because in this article I will share my insights, or the so called “takeaways”, I gained in the webinar called “Scaffolding: Building Support Strategies for Better Learning”.
And I’m here to tell you all about it!
A little bit of context: Everybody Loves Languages, a Canadian-based educational technology company, was the organizer of the event. And Ana Netto, who is one of the content editors and writers for ELL, was the facilitator of the event.
Are you ready to hear what my top 3 takeaways have been?
Let's start!
Takeaway #1: Always start with a lead-in
At the beginning of the webinar, Ana asked a very effective question, such as “What comes to mind when you hear the word scaffolding?”. Why was it effective? Because it helped us people in the audience to activate our schemata. And we heard these answers:
- Helping students thrive
- Giving a tool to reach a goal
- Enhancing students’ learning.
And not only did she ask us this question, but she also showed us a picture of a scaffolding.
And as Ana said, it doesn’t have to be just verbal. We can also give support just through images.
Takeaway #2: Build a temporary (or on the spot) scaffolding
After our lead-in, Ana showed us an analogy, emphasizing the words in bold: A temporary structure that supports the worker during construction.
- During construction = during the lesson.
- A temporary structure = once we set the students up for success, we can remove the scaffolding.
Why temporary?
Because the goal of scaffolding is to create more autonomous learning.
You should see the scaffolding as little steps that are connected with each other and that lead to success.
This can be done through task-blockers or blocking words. Basically, you pre-teach vocabulary that you think might hinder the comprehension of the reading or listening task.
But…(yes, there is a “but”) if you notice an error that you want the students to stop making, then you can create a scaffolding on the spot.
One point Ana mentioned is the role of us teacher during the scaffolding. We are assessing the students to see how much support we have to give. We are not testing them.
Takeaway #3: Ask “why are we doing this?”
After sharing the benefits of scaffolding, Ana asked us a very important reason for scaffolding. If you did DELTA, you might be familiar with these three words: raise cognitive awareness. Basically, it means “Why are we doing this activity?” or “What is the goal / purpose?”. And this is what Ana did throughout the webinar because she wanted us to reflect on what we already know about this strategy.
Final thoughts
As a teacher, “scaffolding” is something I have internalized and that I have been doing.
As Ana said in the webinar, “Don’t hover. Don’t over-teach. Be ready to let go”.
So, teachers, for your next lesson, make sure to scaffold your lesson!
🗨️ Over to you:
Have you ever heard of "scaffolding"?
How do you scaffold your lessons?
Share your thoughts in the comments!
Source of the image: https://pixabay.com/images/search/scaffold/
Source of the speech bubble: https://emojipedia.org/left-speech-bubble
Love this article! I believe it can help newer teachers to understand what scaffolding mean or even experienced teacher who aren't that sure of this type of terminology. I agree with you when saying that scaffolding is like giving small steps and in the end, students will develop a sense of achievement when helping them realise how far they reached, especially if something was a bit challenging.
Great article! Thank you, Lorenzo!