10 Suggestions for Successful Scaffolding

The idea of scaffolding is simple: If a student wishes to master a learning objective or outcome (say, understand and be able to use Simple Past Tense) then the instructional facilitation should offer graduated ‘scaffolds’ so that they can reach this goal, step by step. Instead of pointing to the mountain top of the educational objective, which can seem daunting and discouraging, best to take ‘small steps.’ This is called scaffolding because a scaffold is a temporary structure that is raised as a building is constructed and then removed when it is finished. This way students have a series of linked successful experiences and then, aha! They get to the top and ‘know’ it!

Scaffolding is the heart of most every modern teaching curriculum, it doesn't matter where it is, the age of the students or what is being taught. The theory and implementation was created by J. Bruner and was inspired by the pioneering work on developmental education by Vygotsky. This Wiki give a rather thorough background on the theory and practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional_scaffolding

Here are some suggestions for implementing this process in a TESOL classroom, though it is applicable to most any other class as well:

Test and verify the importance of your objective.

Before you begin the process of scaffolding for a particular outcome or goal of learning, make sure it is relevant, important and leads to substantial useful or critical skills. Creating scaffolded learning plans that are varied, focused and interesting takes a lot of time. Some learning objectives are difficult for a young or lower level learner but easy to master for older or more experienced learners. Teaching a set of idioms to an advanced learner likely doesn’t need much scaffolding if any. Teaching the Alphabet to a pre-literate beginner does. Keep this in mind; How high is THIS mountain to MY students? Remember, more difficult a goal, the more time and more scaffolded steps required.

Know your students, their backgrounds, previous language learning as well as their cultural schemas.

This leads us to the really common and crucial axiom of ‘know your students.’

In terms of scaffolding, it is even more important that you really know them, what their skill-levels are (including vocabulary, previous grammar knowledge, speaking, reading, writing and listening ability, pronunciation issues and so on) as well as their cultural schemas. Some languages only have four tenses. If one of them is Simple Past (most all) then that will be an easy lesson scaffolding chore. However, a tense not in their native language (like Past Perfect)  will require many more steps because it isn't even in their linguistic schema! So building schema for this point will be a whole level of scaffolding unto itself! Age, experience and prior knowledge is important.

Think about the students linguistic ZPG (Zones of Proximal Development)

In many ways this is part of knowing your students, but it is a bit tricky with a culturally mixed or mixed-level class!  A student’s ZPG is what they know/somewhat know/don't know. The point of scaffolding is hitting that ‘sweet spot’ of mentoring the student about something they ‘kind of’ know’ and helping them get their hands around it and master it. A scaffolded task is a focus on one or more ZPG areas using instructor mentoring and/or cooperative learning with peers that is appropriate. For example, a student may know how to use the copula AM and ARE (‘I am Shinji. We are a class.’) but not the other TO BE forms. This is a great place to bring in a mentoring student and assign a pair task so that a student who doesn't know can get holistically led into using and acquiring and so really knowing all the TO BE forms.

Plan well- break your scaffolded objective into modules or steps that are engaging, collaborative and do-able.

Whiteboards or big sheets of paper are great for planning scaffolding steps. Think creatively and with an open mind. Start with the goal of, say, mastery of Simple Past tense. Knowing that the past tense form of the verb is only used in the statement form means that the other three forms will need more focus in some ways and will be weird for students who don't know the do/does helper verb thing. (Thanks Anglo-Saxon!) Therefore starting with statements and working on past tense is great, but the other aspects will take a bit more development in terms of use and meaning and engagement. Engaging means that they are immediately applicable and comprehensible for the students. Having students do a series of tasks that involve real past events in their lives and offering chances for them to explore many ways of presenting and sharing these will keep it fun and engaging and thus successful.

Make sure interactions are really collaborative to be effective.

The key to working with students with a focus on ZPSs is to make the right fit in terms of collaborative work, that is, pair or group work that ‘raises all boats’ and where no one slips through the learning cracks. Knowing your students, again, is the key. The shyest student could be a wiz in X but needs more oral/aural interactions in Y. Matching students with different strengths, knowledge bases and schemas is exciting to watch. The instructor needs to constantly circulate and be the ‘floating’ mentor to monitor the process and to step in and gently nudge or add information or extensions into what is happening. Sometimes students should be moved around to find the right fit! This is not an exact science, so be flexible.

Make it fun and interesting, every step!

This is the key. When a teacher says ‘oh this is so boring how will I teach them?’the whole class is DOA! Even the dullest scaffold, like memorizing past participles as a step in mastering present perfect, can be MADE interesting by making the activities different engaging and unexpected. Past participles can be ‘drilled’ by utilizing word puzzles or relay races or find-the-errors competitions. Remember, your actual scaffold-goal need not sound exciting, but reaching it needs to be!

Vary learning modalities and aspects of the outcomes so as to push skill retention

Keep in mind the concept of Multiple Intelligences and keep an eye open to your students and what their strengths and weaknesses are regarding this! Then spice things up. A reading or writing objective need not be all reading and writing. Think of kinesthetic, visual, natural, and mathematical ‘learners’ and not just the verbal/linguistic ones. Adding scaffolded sections that involve problem solving, visual-add-ons, presentations by groups, spelling bees and so on will engage the students and help them achieve mastery of each step so that even the ‘not exciting’ goal at the top the mountain is reached with engaging activities that let them use the learning styles and natural ‘intelligences’ that are comfortable while challenging some that may not be.

Help students see what the eventual goal is and why it is useful

Some meta chats are great re: scaffolding, even with low level students. When young learners are discouraged with, for example, about reading accuracy and how important it can be, show them traffic signs or misleading ads or something that relates directly to their lives where understanding the encoded messages delivered via letters is important, useful or fun! We learn and retain things when they are relevant and applicable. Keep that in mind when interest flags. Put down the whiteboard marker and step away from the objective for a bit and explain/show them WHY this goal is important. I turned a grumpy TOEFL test class around by showing my students TOEFL scores necessary to get into 10 local colleges and universities and we took a break from the dreaded BOOK and had a discussion about their academic goals. They realized they didn't have to have perfect scores, but they also GOT why a higher score gave them more choices, a great discussion that really empowered the class.

Make sure students understand assigned assessments of each stage and vary them

Don't fall into the habit of assessing every stage of advancement in a scaffolded class the same way. 6 multiple choice quizzes?! Deadly! As a rule, rubrics and modes of assessment should vary and get more profound as you get closer to what you trust will be mastery. Don't avoid project grades, group collaborative assessments and so on. Remember, simply writing or reading a grammar form correctly is not mastery if they cant hear and speak it. Fluency means integrated acquisition. Integrate those skills and use cooperative learning to do so.

Praise mastery but praise cooperation and mentoring more

Yes, students who ‘get’ each step in your module deserve a lot of specific support and praise. Much of what we do with scaffolding (and teaching in general ) is to build student confidence of course. If student believe it is HARD then it will be, if they know they CAN master it, then they can. But. It is the mentored/cooperative nature of each activity, whether it is between you and the students or, more often, between students themselves, that is the key ingredient in making scaffolding work. Praising patient, helpful and invested student-mentors is key to making this the norm in the class. Sometimes changing partners or stepping in and gently encouraging patience, focus and complete communication is important. If students see that their helping of other students is crucial, important, praiseworthy and (!) graded, then scaffolding will work.

Make sure to move it forward so that the next scaffolded goal or outcome is logical.

Once a specific topic, module or unit is successfully completed, use that completion as a springboard! Ask students questions like ‘OK class! We have finished studying X. What do you think we need to learn next? What do you think is the next thing we need to master?’ Getting students to use logic, predict and reexamine what they've just accomplished does many things. It is a good review (repetition rocks) it gets them engaged in the long-arch process of the class and it makes them stakeholders in the scaffolding process! Continuing with this is also useful. Have them look at the next chapter or grammar point or test section and discuss it in groups. What should we learn first? After that? Where will it be harder? Easier? Who knows about X? Y? Who doesn't? Not only are the students now part of the scaffolding process but it will help you learn who your ‘experts’ are and who would be appropriate to work with who. Then, when you dive into the next unit, students will be ready, and if you did it right, motivated.

They say a mountain is climbed one step at a time, do your best to make every single step rich and engaging and your scaffolded lesson plans will rock.