Chapter 4 Blog Post: Strategic Scaffolding

 Kenneth Miller

EDM 517

Dr. Walsh-Moorman

11-12-23

Blog #4

Chapter 4 of Rigor by Design, Not Chance discusses the use of scaffolding in the classroom and how this teaching method benefits students' academic development. Framing is vital in education because it helps students learn and understand new concepts. It supports and guides students as they develop their skills and knowledge. By breaking down complex tasks into smaller, more manageable steps, scaffolding allows students to build their understanding and confidence gradually. Teachers may utilize scaffolding by giving instruction that explains the topics at hand, providing feedback to learners to keep them engaged, and supplying students with hints to help them succeed. Karen Hess goes on to list three reasons why scaffolding should be used during instruction.

Reason I: To Deepen Content Knowledge and Connect to Big Ideas

As previously mentioned, the main goal of scaffolding is to help students build a foundation of knowledge to build a deeper understanding of the material. An article about the use of scaffolding in early environmental education did a great job of summing up its importance. “Scaffolding is a teaching strategy that provides support for children’s learning that is well-timed and well-matched to the situation and child, and that helps the child be more successful than they would be without support. It empowers children by providing sufficient assistance to continue their self-directed and/or cooperative learning” (Acar, Torquanti, & Zurek, 2014).

Reason II: To Facilitate Executive Function and the Application of Skills and Processes

Hess believes that children with poor executive function have difficulty comprehending advanced texts and cannot give their peers effective feedback. To help improve students executive function, Hess provides us with four steps:

Initiation: The ability to begin a task or activity and independently generate ideas, responses, or problem-solving strategies (for example, clarifying "messy" objectives).

Working memory: The capacity to hold information in mind for the purpose of sustaining engagement with a task (for example, chunking texts, sketchnoting).

Planning and organization: Managing current and future-oriented task demands (for example, collaborative inquiry planning).

Self-monitoring: The ability to monitor one's own performance and to measure it against a standard (for example, conferencing, scrum boards). (Hess, p.75, 2023). 

Reason III: To Support Language and Vocabulary Development

Building students' vocabulary and grammar skills is crucial to their academic development because it will help them comprehend reading material as it gets progressively more challenging. Teachers should narrow down their instruction target, whether prepositions or new vocabulary words, to use appropriate techniques for students to retain this information. Providing them with this foundation will help them move forward and build enough confidence to tackle more challenging academic tasks in the future.  

After covering these three steps, Hess talks about even more tips that involve visual orientation cues, thinking verbs, and giving hints on cards, just to name a few. Visual orientation cues is a technique that has been implemented in both in-person and online classes. Using a timer and pictures, instructors help students get engaged immediately by providing visual cues that let them know what materials will be needed for the class session. Next are thinking verbs, which Hess describes as “…a consistent set of visual icons used across the school represents definitions for common academic words” (Hess, p. 79, 2023). Last but not least are hint cards. Hint cards are meant to guide students in the right direction to get them out of a mental rut. We have all had moments when we confuse terms or have an answer on the tip of our tongues, and these hint cards are used to solve these problems to get students to retain the information they are receiving. In conclusion, scaffolding is an effective teaching method that gives students an appropriate amount of independence while also providing them with enough guidance to achieve academic success.


References:

Hess, K. (2023). Rigor by Design, Not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable Instruction and Assessment. ASCD

Zurek, A., Torquati, J., & Acar, I. (2014). Scaffolding as a Tool for Environmental Education in Early Childhood. International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education, 2(1), 27-57.

Comments

  1. Dr. Beth Walsh-MoormanNovember 13, 2023 at 5:50 AM

    I appreciate the deeper connection to the first reason. I think that Hess went through the reasons rather quickly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Corey BrooksNovember 17, 2023 at 11:59 AM

    Kenny,
    Great job with your post you made some great connections in your post. The way you broke everything down really helped me gain more knowledge on this chapter then I did when I first read the chapter.

    ReplyDelete

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