Scaffolding

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Scaffolding
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• The term scaffolding comes from the works of
  Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976). The metaphor
  describes the type of assistance offered by a
  teacher or peer to support learning.
• Scaffolding is an interactive method of teaching
  and learning where the teacher provides a
  temporary framework for the learner who is
  working just beyond independent capabilities
  (NTDE 1995). It can and should occur in all
  aspects of learning in order to assist students
  to achieve their potential, comprising guiding,
  modelling and cueing of students. This is
  achieved by the teacher sharing the cognitive
  workload to link the known to the unknown using
  techniques of
• Cueing and questioning
• Demonstrating and modelling
• Role and problem identification
• Planning
• Monitoring
• Evaluation

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• Language teaching in Australia has been heavily
  influence by the work of Prof. Michael Halliday
  who developed systemic functional grammar. His
  work has also been taken up and further developed
  by linguists such as Jim Martin and others.
• Functional grammar relates grammar to meaning,
  and to the contexts in which language occurs. It
  takes into account factors which relate to the
  context in which the language is being used and
  the social purpose.
• What is being talked about? FIELD
• Who are the participants and what is the
  relationship
• between them? TENOR
• What is the mode of the discourse? MODE
• What is the social purpose of the language? GENRE

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• Stage 1 Building The Field Students become
  familiar with the subject matter, or field of
  what they will write about.
• Stage 2. Modelling/Deconstruction Students
  look at other examples of the same writing
  genre. At this stage, the teacher and students
  discuss the purpose of the writing, how it is
  structured, and relevant grammatical features.
• Stage 3 Joint Construction Joint construction,
  when students, altogether as a whole class, do
  a similar piece of writing with the help of the
  teacher. The students give ideas, the teacher
  writes what they say on the board. Together
  they talk about expression, grammar,
  vocabulary and so on.
• Stage 4 Independent Construction Students
  individually do their own writing using what
  they have learnt in the previous stages.

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By using this approach, students learn to
listen, speak, read and write English, in the
context of learning about a curriculum topic.
They are also developing research skills and
learning how to structure the different genres
or types of texts, and the grammar which is
associated with them. They are also learning how
to talk about language, but in the context of
actually using it. They are also learning
subject content. See example.
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Practical ways to increase responsibility for
their learning.

• Frameworks
• Concrete examples
• Building on what students say
• Rephrasing
• Guided questioning
• Charts
• Picture cues
• Word lists
• Negotiation of texts before writing independently
• Body language and gesture
• Work from oral to written
• By using the above techniques teachers can
  structure the teaching/learning situations so
  that the students can be successful.

• For the ESL learner scaffolding is essential if
  he/she is to feel comfortable to take risks using
  English at school. Through scaffolding, the
  teacher is able to set the learner up to succeed
  in set tasks, when this happens, learning becomes
  intrinsically motivating