Scaffolding To Help Students Learn. will

Many of us are dealing with students who are well behind due to lockdowns, quarantines, and COVID cases. The group of students I have now, have not had math in over a year so I'm working on incorporating a lot of  scaffolding to fill in gaps in their foundational knowledge without having to begin at the beginning.  

Scaffolding is a way of providing support to help students bridge gaps and learn better.  In a sense, it is filling in the areas where students are weak so they are better able to do mathematics.  Scaffolding is not just for students who are behind, it is for all students who have any gaps in their knowledge.

There are two types of scaffolding one may use:  hard or soft.  Hard scaffolding refers to using techniques and activities that directly impact student learning and require advanced planning such as games, or the way a lesson is taught.  For instance, I am getting ready to have students review adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators.  For my students to do this, I have to teach them about prime factorization and least common denominator.  To take it further, I'm reviewing what a prime number is, how prime factorization works and at least two ways to find the least common denominator including one using their multiplication tables. The other type of scaffolding is the soft scaffolding which is a more indirect method which might use targeted questions.

As far as questioning goes, remember Bloom's Taxonomy when you create questions.  Questions are either remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, or creating.  When you ask a question, the way it is asked will be determined by your end goal which is to help students develop a deeper understanding of the topic.  Furthermore, the use of questioning as a scaffolding tool can actually help students learn faster, not slower as you might think.

Another way to scaffold is to provide two or three simpler problems before assigning the more complex problem of the same type.  For example, if the complex problem asks students to go from one number to another in a specific number of steps by multiplying by one number or subtracting another number,  students might struggle. However, if you have students do two easier versions such as going from the starting number in the complex problem to the next counting number in a smaller number of steps either multiplying or subtracting by the same numbers in the original problem. Then provide another simpler problem starting at the same number but has a larger jump with a couple more steps before assigning the original complex problem. 

So Friday, I'll look at a variety of scaffolding techniques we can easily use in the classroom so students gain in understanding and ability.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a good day.