The Importance of Effective Scaffolding

          As an aspiring teacher, I feel that scaffolding and differentiating will be two key areas of challenge for me.  Lately, I have found myself reflecting on the myriad of ways in which I hope to scaffold effectively in my future classroom, and I'd like to share those ideas today.  I think that observation is a good place to start.  Simply having a good eye and taking the time to observe students and listen to them can aid in the identification of students needing help.  Another way to become more aware of the students' strengths and weaknesses on a day-to-day basis would be to pretest your class in a particular unit of study.  Based on the results, we might get some insight as to who will need help and in what area.  For example, if we are pretesting for a division unit, and we find that we have several students who can not subtract accurately, scaffolding for those students might be a subtraction review before going into that division unit.  Pretesting may not give us information related to the students' learning styles, but it could help us support students with specific weaknesses.  We can also read student records from previous grade levels.  These records can be referenced, and we might be able to find out what has worked in the past with the child's previous teachers.  We can read teacher comments from past report cards in the student's file.  I believe that many schools are also keeping writing portfolios for each student with their other records.  We could (and should) read those.  Another idea is to speak to a prior teacher first hand.  I think it would also be helpful to observe a child who we suspect needs additional support in a different setting (maybe a child we are having trouble connecting to or scaffolding effectively).  We could decide to observe them in their "special" classes (art, p.e., music).  We might discover that the student has a hidden talent or an interest in one of these areas that we were unaware of, and we could then incorporate this talent or interest into the future lesson plans/scaffolding to help us better connect with that student.  One final idea that I think would also be helpful would be to incorporate surveys at the beginning of the school year, possibly one that asks about strengths, weaknesses, and interests.  We could have one for the student to fill out, and one for them to take home and have their parents fill out.  I think all these ideas could help with the challenges of differentiating and scaffolding within the classroom.