Scaffolds are temporary supports that students practice using to support their learning & understanding. Scaffolds are meant to be temporary and students should internalize the strategy they have practiced to such a degree it becomes a permanent fixture of their toolkit.
Scaffolds are not just only for English Learners (ELs). They can also be a great support for all academic language learners (ALLs). In my experience, I have found that scaffolds fall into four main categories: instructional resources, language development, lesson facilitation, and classroom structures. We must keep in mind that while scaffolds are great tools to support student content learning & language development, they should not be provided all of the time.
In order for scaffolds to be effective they need to be provided "just in time" not "just in case". We have to be careful not over scaffold student learning and impeded a student's productive struggle. Students need multiple opportunities to internalize and take ownership of a strategy in order to avoid becoming a dependent learner.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2022
Categories
All
|