Scaffolding In The Classroom

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).

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

Below grade level students will be given further instruction from the teacher during the activity. The teacher may remind the students to use the strategies listed on the anchor chart. The teacher may ask the student key/probing question to discover more about their thinking process and provide further instruction where it is needed. The teacher can assist student’s who are still struggling by folding their paper, placing the students focus on a particular part of the activity

I want to learn a variety of techniques and methods to scaffold my lessons. I also want to increase my knowledge about assessment practices and different ways that assessment can be done. Furthermore, I want to expose myself to different resources in order to create purposeful lesson plans. I hope to achieve this by connecting with other teachers, volunteering in different high schools with a variety of teacher, attending workshops, as well as doing my own

“In the early childhood classroom, teachers work to achieve a balance between children’s self-initiated learning and adult guidance or support” (“Unit 7 Lecture,” 2015). With that said, I feel that this can be accomplished a few different ways. First, the teacher needs to understand what a child is capable of doing. This can be done through assessments, observations, and getting to know the student. Another thing that a teacher can do is provide the student work through scaffolding (this is probably my favorite teaching method). “Scaffolding refers to a process in which teachers model or demonstrate the problem-solving process, then step back and offer support as needed” (Firestone, 2015).

In a similar study by Pentimonti and Justice (2009), preschool teachers used scaffolds as a way to gain language and literacy ideas that may be significant to children who are struggling. This method will help struggling children to be more effective. When the whole group read aloud, the teacher used high and low support scaffolds. Teachers used videotaped classroom surveillance to conduct whole group read aloud sessions in their respective classroom. Young students figure out how to discuss words, stories and characters, and answer questions about these components of the content through the joint read-aloud communication. Perusing resoundingly gives a connection through which adults and kids share a joint subject center which bears an open

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

In this theory it is believed that activities are needed in order to reinforce the information that the student has been given. This is what reinforces the learning that has taken place in the classroom. Activities make learners think and thinking motivates learning O’Neil, Fisher, & Newbold, 2009). In this lesson the material that is presented in the classroom lecture will be reinforced during the small group sessions when the learners are given activities to do in regards to the information that they have been given.

Interactions between teachers and students in regards to teacher talk is one of the most important learning tools used in the classroom. Talk moves are tools for building an environment that serves a range of productive interactional, social and intellectual learning functions in the classroom (Edwards-Groves, 2014). They are enabled and constrained by the “sayings, doings and relatings present in classrooms” and prompt responses from students (Edwards-Groves, 2014, p1). Teacher talk is a large part of how students learn, through models such as ‘Initiate, Respond, Evaluate’ (IRE). The IRE model involved the teacher asking questions and giving appropriate feedback to the student’s response to help them understand the reasons behind their response. The Scaffolding Interaction Cycle (SIC) is another important tool, which involved teachers scaffolding a students’ response to engage higher learning functions. It is important to consider Bull and Anstey’s three-style model, consisting of pedagogy of school, pedagogy of literacy lessons and pedagogy of literacy learning (Anstey and Bull, 1996). Pedagogy of school involves the teacher and the student conversing in a Q&A like manner, or a ‘guess-what’s-in-my-head’ approach taken by the teacher. The pedagogy of literacy lessons involves the students carrying out the teacher’s instructions but not making the connection to what they are learning. There is a time where these styles may be useful, but

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