Scaffolding: Giving a Helping Hand to our Students
Scaffolding: Giving a Helping Hand to our Students
Donna Lee Fields, Ph.D.
You're climbing a precipice - the facade of a cliff.
Everything has been fine up until now. You've climbed rock faces with very
similar terrain. Suddenly you reach a deep and wide gap in the surface. You
realise this is much more difficult than you have ever experienced before. Your
breathing gets a little shallower, your mind freezes just a little bit, your
senses go a little wild and you're not sure what to do. All the confidence that
usually pushes you along without thinking is now gone. You don't know how to
cross the gap. You crunch down and sink a little bit into yourself...Then you
hear a sound from above. You look up and see a hand reaching down. You hear a
voice saying 'Take my hand. I'll help you across. I'll show you what to do.'
Relief floods across your body. You straighten up. You take the hand reached
out to you. And with that little bit of help, you make it over the gap, and
continue your climb.
...That's scaffolding.
Scaffolding is a powerful tool for learning. Closely aligned to the concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), scaffolding is a key element in learning through languages. It helps students to reach beyond where they could go on their own. The helping hand of scaffolding can be offered to students by teachers, by other more experienced students, or through learning materials. The helping hand is offered in cases where students are unlikely to complete the task without this extra aid. When the goal is for students to build competences, not just undertake specific tasks, scaffolding is offered quickly as required and withdrawn slowly when no longer needed.
As teachers, our
goal is to find a way to give our students a level of comfort in their
learning. We need to look for methods that make learning light and pleasant as
well as educational. Such activities could be, for instance, students
deciphering part of a transcript in coded messages before watching a video, using
mnemonic strategies before beginning a science experiment, recognition of
patterns before beginning a mathematics lesson, translating critical passages
from a book into symbols and asking students to convert them back into prose.
All these and more are scaffolding techniques that help students to lower their anxiety level and be more open and engaged
in learning so that they can continue moving forward.
Donna Lee Fields, Ph.D.
101 Scaffolding Techniques for Language and Learning (amazon.es/amazon.com)
Echando una mano: 101 técnicas de andamiaje
para el profesorado de lenguas (amazon.es/amazon.com)
Short webinars: CLIL Helping Hand Webinars Shorts
(1-40) (youtube.com)
TESOL Review of 101
Scaffolding Techniques: https://www.facebook.com/GivingaHelpingHandBook/posts/1539988729349284
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