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- Challenge
- Initial Thoughts
- Perspectives & Resources
- Wrap Up
- Assessment
If you were Ms. Price, what could you do to help your students when they struggle with a task?
Providing support, or scaffolding, is a critical component in teaching new tasks with multiple steps. Likewise, scaffolding is a critical element in the teaching of instructional strategies (see the IRIS Module SRSD: Using Learning Strategies to Enhance Student Learning). Many teachers do this naturally when teaching a new task or strategy, whereas others need to purposefully incorporate scaffolding into their teaching styles. It is important to remember, however, that even when students have learned the purpose of a strategy and have memorized its steps, they may still not be ready to use the strategy independently.
Students with learning disabilities are often not actively engaged in the learning process when being taught a new skill. Instead, they are only going through the motions of the task. This is so because students with learning disabilities often don’t understand the underlying concepts to which they should be attending during each step. For this reason, teachers should observe their students closely to ensure that they understand the information being demonstrated. Having students demonstrate the task independently will help teachers to determine whether the students are learning.
Keep in Mind
Teachers should remember several important facts about instructional scaffolding:
- Scaffolding is most useful for teaching new tasks or strategies with multiple steps.
- Any student at any grade level, including high school, can benefit from instructional scaffolding.
- Scaffolding can be applied to any academic task.
Definition of scaffold
1a : a temporary or movable platform for workers (such as bricklayers, painters, or miners) to stand or sit on when working at a height above the floor or ground
b : a platform on which a criminal is executed (as by hanging or beheading)
c : a platform at a height above ground or floor level
2 : a supporting framework
Examples of scaffold in a Sentence
The condemned man was led to the scaffold.
Recent Examples on the Web Previous iterations of her site-specific scaffold installations have been monochromatic. — Briana Miller | For The Oregonian/oregonlive, oregonlive, 2 Sep. 2022 Suspended on a metal scaffold, the artwork looks like something that was misplaced by an archaeological museum. — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 16 Sep. 2022 Reva Medical will use the new funding for general corporate purposes, including moving forward with a clinical trial program for its MOTIV-brand bio-resorbable scaffold. — Mike Freeman, San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Aug. 2022 With the exception of bacterial and archaeal cells, all cells contain a scaffold-like structure —known as the cytoskeleton— made up of interlinking protein filaments. — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 2 Aug. 2022 As a sure sign of how the preservation spirit is taking hold in the neighborhood, a construction crew has built a scaffold around the tower of what was Booker T. Washington School, a junior high school at McCulloh Street and West Lafayette Avenue. — Jacques Kelly, Baltimore Sun, 2 July 2022 At Homme Plissé Issey Miyake, dancers from Chaillot Théâtre National de la Danse clambered down a scaffold to fly or race about a sunlit interior. — New York Times, 29 June 2022 But as the ancient sages once mused, ars longa, vita brevis (life is short, art is long), and in 1968, Grimes came to an unfortunate end, falling to his death from a scaffold outside the plant. — Thomas Curwen, Los Angeles Times, 11 June 2022 After assembling the scaffold, Stebbing had gotten to work, donning ear protectors and firing up his chain saw. — Washington Post, 18 Apr. 2022 See More
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'scaffold.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
History and Etymology for scaffold
Middle English, from Anglo-French scaffald, alteration of Old French eschaafauz, escafaut, alteration of chaafaut, from Vulgar Latin *catafalicum — more at catafalque