Educational Scaffolding

I was first introduced to the term scaffolding in my education classes in college.  It has shaped the way that I teach.

What is scaffolding? 
A physical scaffold is a series of platforms that you must build one layer at a time.  
An educational scaffold is a method of introducing topics so that they build on each other.  

Students learn best when they add to what they already know.  Andrew Pudewa, the founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), calls this concept “Easy + 1,” in which students do what is easy, then just add one new thing to their papers until that new thing is mastered.

Scaffolding is a wonderful tool that works across the subject areas, works with nearly any kind of teaching method, be it classical, traditional, Charlotte Mason, or even “unschooling,” and encourages growth and knowledge in students with learning delays, gifted students, and every student in between.  Not only that, scaffolding is a natural progression of learning; it is quite easy for trained teachers and  homeschooling parents to implement.

What does scaffolding look like in the classroom? 

I already shared how IEW uses scaffolding (they call it "Easy +1") to gradually increase the dress ups in their papers. In the first paper, a student may need to add an adverb that end in -ly.  When that becomes easy, the student will add the adverb and add a who or which clause.  This goes on until each new dress up, sentence opener, and decoration is added with ease.  You can read more about IEW here.

In math, my daughter learned the multiplication and division facts by practicing what she knew (the ones facts and the twos facts, and just adding two new facts (3x3 and  3x4) on the timed test. When she mastered that timed test, the next timed test tested her on the 1s, 2s, 3x3, 3x4, and now 3x5 and 3x6.  You can read more about the program Kicking It Math here.  (I am not affiliated at all with Kelly Malloy, but I want to be her BFF!)

We do the same for Science, History, Literature, and more.  What do we know? How can we add to that? We know flowers have petals.  What is the purpose of a petal?  We know the story of the Lion and the Mouse.  How is it similar to Androcles and the Lion?

Scaffolding is not rocket science.  It is common sense, but it is one of the most effective teaching techniques I use. Scaffolding helps build synapses in the brain, something that struggling learners desperately need.

Scaffolding does more than just introduce a little information at a time; it forces students to review what they have already learned.  You can’t climb a scaffold without starting at the bottom and ascending one level at a time.  Brain research has shown that review is vital for long term memory storage.

 Some students just can’t make connections between two things without a little nudge.  For those students, parents and teachers can be the nudgers.  Many gifted students enjoy the challenge of finding connections by themselves. Scaffolding works for everyone!

Automatic Spelling uses scaffolding in many ways. To see how my spelling program uses scaffolding, click this link.

You can purchase Automatic Spelling here.