It means temporary assistance or “extra attention” to students who can’t do their tasks by themselves. With scaffolding through time, students will be able to do their own work. Teaching has verbal scaffolding and procedural scaffolding. verbal scaffolding: refers to verbal assistance or support of the teacher such as speaking slowly and clearly, repeating key terms over and over, simplifying academic texts, and etc. procedural scaffolding: refers to any visual representation of the content such as pictures, videos, graphs, models, games, and etc. It also covers one-on-one teaching and tutoring of the ELL students, along with students group activities.
Scaffolding for this student would include activities to develop the technical vocabulary necessary to understand the reading materials, or having the teacher provide reading materials appropriate to the child’s reading level. Additional instruction may be needed in reading skills, to support the student in a reading activity. The zone of proximal development explains the need for student and task to match, making the task of learning attainable (p87). Teaching to one zone of proximal development is likely to leave some students frustrated and confused, while others can coast through the lesson (p88). It is not so important for the teacher to know exactly what the student’s status is, rather to be aware when the students are becoming frustrated, and are in need of more practice, or when the task is just right for the individual (p89).
One Misconception regarding ELL students is that immersion into an English-speaking classroom is enough for students to learn English.
Scaffolding is “support that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal that would be beyond his or her unassisted efforts” (2014). Parents, caregivers, and other adults scaffold how to play with a toy, how to get dressed, how to hold a spoon, use a cup, etc. Scaffolding is being done every day unintentionally by anyone who comes in contact with a child. In the Voyager room we see the teacher scaffolding one of the girls when the teacher tells the student to group her animals by size. This was a great way for the student to work on her greatest to least identification skills. Another way a teacher was able to scaffold in the classroom was mediating a fight. A little boy and girl began to fight and so the teacher was able to show them the proper way to talk out a disagreement by walking them through the steps of turn taking when
In pursuing my ELL endorsement, I found it to be very beneficial to interview current ELL teachers. They shared their insight and expertise in this field. I interviewed the middle school ELL teacher at my school, an upper-elementary ELL teacher and early-elementary teacher in my district. I asked twelve questions that pertained to their experience teaching ELL. These responses are valuable to future ELL teachers and general education teachers who teach ELL in their classrooms.
English learners are currently the fastest developing student population in schools today. This makes it extremely important to provide these students with the programs and services they deserve. Providing a strong education for ELL students is what I personally believe to be an asset in America’s future. Today there are many challenges I believe teachers and students face when it comes to instruction and assessments.
There are many different strategies that an instructor can use in ELL classrooms or in classrooms in which ELL students have been mainstreamed. As always, instructors are called upon to constantly modify their curriculum and instruction in order to meet the needs of each individual learner. This is made more possible if the instructor has more knowledge of different teaching methods and strategies. There are many possible research sources that offer ideas, methods and strategies for everyday use in an ELL classroom. Several of the more common or functional strategies will be discussed here.
Hypotheses: Explicit scaffolding, specifically encouragement and praise increases simple helping in younger infants early in the second year.
I also noticed that I tend to scaffold the learning of children without even realizing it. According to the textbook, scaffolding is when an adult, “adjusts the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child’s current level of performance. As competence increases, the adult gradually and sensitively withdraws support, turning responsibility over to the child” (Pg. 331, Ch. 9- Cognitive Development in Early Childhood). For example, when I asked Zane to write his name on the bottom of the picture that he drew, at first he was very hesitant because he did not know how to draw a “z.” When I drew dotted lines in the shape of a “z” and asked him if he would be willing to trace the letter. Very willingly he did so, and within one minute he had not only traced the letter “z,” but had also written the other letters of his name. Another example of when I was scaffolding learning was when one of the younger children in the Mom2Mom group was trying to build a tower like the rest of the children, but he could not get the tower to be more than three blocks high before it would knock over. Seeing that he was becoming frustrated, I offered to show him how to make a tall tower, by having him help me place the blocks on top of each other. After doing this two times, I withdrew my help and watched him successfully build a tower with eight
Interacting with peers is a successful way of developing skills, either with adult guidance or more advanced kids help the less-advanced. However, Vygotsky never used the term "scaffolding;" instead he phrased it as "Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)." ZPD is The difference between what the student can do with or without someone’s help but cannot yet do it independently.
Teachers take on the role of learner as well as instructor and are there to guide the discussion towards learning objectives without just forcing their point of view on students. Another very important part from Vygotsky’s work is the concept of a student’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). Vygotsky (as cited by Eggen & Kauchak, 2011) described it as “the distance between the actual development level…and the level of potential development…under adult guidance…or more capable peers” Once a student is within their ZPD, they can vastly benefit from ‘scaffolding’, this is assistance from either the teacher or from peers in a collaborative group to achieve a level that they would be unable to do independently (Eggen & Kauchak, 2011). This scaffolding can take many forms, using prompts and cues, asking pertinent questions, the most important point is not to do the work for the student but to guide in the right direction.
“Scaffolding refers to a teaching style that matches the amount of assistance to the learners needs” (184). This is when the teacher at first provides a lot of instruction to the child and then as the child starts to understand then the teacher backs off and gives less instruction. This helps the child become independent and they can do tasks on their own instead of being guided. “Private speech, comments not directed to the others but intended to help children regulate their own behavior” (185). First speech is guided and regulated by the people around the child and is directed towards him, as the child grows up they tend to start using inner speech, instead of speaking out loud. Parents can also help the child with their speech by saying certain words to help the child say them
Vygotsky’s concepts of zone of proximal development and the more knowledgeable other person has led to the idea of scaffolding. Scaffolding, which encompasses both ZPD and MKO, is seen in almost all classrooms in today’s society. Scaffolding is a temporary support mechanism that aids students when they need it and then relinquishes control when the assistance is no longer needed. According to Lipscomb, Swanson and West (2004), scaffolding is used in classrooms by the “development of instructional plans to lead the students from what they already know to a deep understanding of new material,” and “execution of the plans, wherein the instructor provides support to the students at every step of the learning process.” Scaffolding encompasses the role of the teacher. The teacher acts as the most knowledgeable other to the student and then assesses the current knowledge of the students. The teacher decides which knowledge level the students should be performing at, and that gap between current knowledge and abilities and their potential is the zone of proximal development. In order for
Understanding cognition and how we learn is essential in the developmental stages of children. Not all students learn in the same way, understanding the cognitive process will assist in the development of the students. By modifying my approach when giving instructions I have noticed growth in current students that I am working with. Using concrete materials and giving the opportunity for students to be involved in hands-on activities on a daily basis, is essential in making new material meaningful to learners.. The knowledge gained from this topic has increased my understanding and is benefiting the children I am currently
In order for the ZPD to be such a success, it must contain two features. The first is called subjectivity. This term describes the process of two individuals begin a task with different understanding and eventually arrive at a shared understanding. The second feature is scaffolding, which refers to a change in the social support over the course of a teaching session. If scaffolding is successful, a child's mastery level of performance can change, which means that it can increase a child's performance on a particular task.
In this stage some activities that teachers implement are group work activities where student can interact with one another including the teacher in developing a written text using formal academic literature from being shown before when modeling the genre. Also known as macro scaffolding when the teacher plans out goals for the classroom based on the students’ prior knowledge and newfound information (Hammond & Gibbons 2005, pg 12). This stage is an important stage as students are working together and developing their knowledge together. This is also known as ZOP (zone of proximal development). According to Vygotsky’s theory citied in Salmon (2008 pg 457) it is the student levels level of understanding and where their potential of understanding can be through times of social interaction and the task being set. So in context of joint construction stage when students work together and with the teacher scaffolding their writing they are building upon their own knowledge and knowledge they have learnt from the field to contribute to the topic (Kozulin 2003). This is also influenced in the other stages of the learning cycle. Another strategy in scaffolding is interactional scaffolding where the teacher can prompt students to think, which then leads to them working together in building the field and contributing effectively during joint construction. For e.g. if the task set was writing a report the teacher can