Are you looking for ways to help your students retain information and gain a deeper understanding of the content? The scaffolding teaching technique is a great place to start! Imagine walking into a middle school science class, being given a 10-page article, being made to answer a detailed question, and given a grade! How overwhelming! When you know nothing about a topic, just being dumped a bunch of information is NO way to learn it. In fact, the more overwhelmed you are, the more likely you are to not learn anything. That is why the scaffolding teaching approach is actually very crucial.
What is Scaffolding When Teaching?
So, what is the actual scaffolding teaching definition? Jerome Bruner was the first person to use the term ‘scaffolding’ to develop the scaffolding teaching theory but stems from Vygotsky’s theory dealing with the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD is the area and ability of students to do things by themselves with the help of others when needed.
Scaffolding is this help that allows students to learn to do things on their own with instructional support.
As a teacher, you can use the scaffolding teaching strategy to guide your students through science content to help them to better understand and commit the material to long-term memory.
Scaffolding Techniques for Teachers
Scaffolding is not just one thing that you do while you are teaching a lesson that will help your students gain an understanding of the content, but it is more of a process. It is little things that you do that guides your students to an understanding inside of their ZPD. That’s the key though, it has to be inside of their ZPD or the content can be so overwhelming. You have to get on their level and help them to rise.
When using scaffolding in the classroom, you need to break down the content into more understandable pieces for your students and make sure they understand the content before moving on.
What Are Some Examples of Scaffolding in Education?
So, now that you know what scaffolding is and how to use it in your classroom, here are some scaffolding teaching examples that will help you help your students!
Using Prior Knowledge
One of the best ways for students to gain an understanding of content is to build upon what they already know. As a teacher, you need to understand where they are so you know where to meet them. As a student, it’s important to bring out those things that are tucked away in the brain that you thought you forgot but realize that you still know!
KWL and Anticipation Guides are great pre-assessments that can be used as tools to figure out what your students already understand and to help “set the stage”.
Segmenting
When going through your lesson, it’s important to show new information in segments and to reveal new information gradually, not all at once.
This is especially important when working out multi-step problems. Only show one step or segment at a time to reduce cognitive load.
Making sure that students understand a segment before moving to the next is a plus! You can use formative assessment before moving on.
Modeling
I remember that one of the things that my College Algebra teacher did was to sit at the overhead projector (yes those things) and just model different math problems over and over for like an hour while we took notes and did some guided problems with her. Was this the best teaching style? In my opinion, there could have been more, but guess what. I LEARNED SO MUCH.
She was actually one of my favorite teachers in college because she modeled how to solve these problems and also guided us through some more afterward.
She used scaffolding in her teaching, and for me, this worked wonders and she met me right in my ZPD.
This can be used in any subject. You can model how to use a microscope. You can model how to write a science report. You can model a great science fair project You can model how to solve a Punnett Square. You can model how to graph the layers of the atmosphere. You can model anything!
There can be a bit of inquiry in your teaching, but you know your students. If students have no clue how to do something, they need to learn how.
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers are a way to organize information that can help students to categorize things which makes them easier to understand and remember. They are a great tool for scaffolding whether you allow students to organize the information on their own or guide them through it.
Graphic organizers are a great way to review crucial vocabulary!
Some examples of graphic organizers include:
- Circle Map
- Venn Diagram
- Sequence Charts
- Frayer Model
- Cause and Effect
- Comparison Matrices
- Tree Charts
- Categorize Your Own
- Timeline
- T-Charts
Discussions
Discussions can be so powerful for students. Did you know that teachers are not the only ones that can contribute to the lesson? In fact, it’s important to get lesson input from all students in the classroom.
Discussions allow for students to think out loud and also collaborate with other students to get to an end goal whether that be to answer a question or to solve a problem.
You can ask your students as a whole to help you solve a problem to find the velocity of an object. As a class, your students can work together, out loud to solve a problem.
You can also have a class discussion or even a debate! There are so many good debates in science!
Provide Visuals
Showing visuals in your lesson, on the walls, and anywhere in your teaching can be so important when scaffolding. One thing to be sure of is to make sure that when providing visuals for your students, that it’s related to the lesson and not decorative. You want to highlight the important information for your students to understand when using visuals.
It’s also important to keep related pictures and text together if they make sense together and complement each other.
The text and the visual should not be separated, but clearly together.
Even More Information on Scaffolding Teaching and Learning
Related Articles:
6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students
One Easy and Brilliant Way to Reduce Cognitive Load in the Classroom
[…] Another way to make sure students commit information to their long-term memory is by showing new information gradually. This is a form of scaffolding. […]