Scaffolding means providing temporary support for an inexperienced learner in order to help them to complete a task or acquire a skill, and then gradually withdrawing that support.

The concept was introduced b y Jerome Bruner in the 1970s. It's directly related to the ZPD notion set by Vygotsky decades before.

Scaffolding in the classroom consists of helpful interactions between the teacher (or more experienced peers) and the student that enable the student to do something beyond what he could do independently.

In our case, we might need to use this technique for both language and content transfer.

In this short video you can have an idea of how Scaffolding works when teaching new language: 

As we can see, Scaffolding is how pedagogues name what mothers and other adults naturally and intuitively do to teach anything to little children. But, once again, this can be done in a sophisticated way.

From the Natural Approach and according to N.Chomsky, a second language is acquired (not learned) the some way as the mother tongue: mainly through a constant exposition to the language. 

This is the assumption on which bilingual education is based. But, of course, the exposition to the language needs to meet certain standards to achieve the desired result:

  • It must provide appropriate quality inputs.
  • It must be continuous and consistent.
  • Scaffolding must be provided.
  • The learner must be driven by an authentic intrinsic motivation, as is the case of  babies acquiring their mother tongue.

Otherwise, the acquisition will take too long and the L2 will possibly remain stuck at a very basic and functional level, but will never reach a high standard, which in academic contexts would mean a failure on the part of teachers.

Examples of verbal Scaffolds:
  • Model the “think-a-loud”.
  • Slow your speech.
  • Reinforce contextual definitions: provide frameworks to use new vocabulary to help with both meaning and use.
  • Simplify questions.
  • Engage in read-alouds in which you model correct pronunciations and prosody.
  • Start sentences for students to finish them.
  • Repeat and extend answers.

Other skills can be transferred the same way. Many talk about the "I do- We do-You do" steps, which somehow all teachers use daily. Here are some examples of how to foster confidence in our students while modeling what we want them to achieve:

Examples of procedure scaffolds:
  • Provide explicit modeling through visuals, gestures, and realia.
  • Allow for visual tools (organizers) as students manipulate information.
  • Use wait-time when asking questions to give all students an opportunity to respond.
  • Provide discussion prompts (sentence frames) to support discussions.
  • Allow students to collaborate with other students often as they discuss the learning.

Let's have a look at the CLIL lesson we watched before. It's a fantastic example of a CLIL lesson in many ways. 

What Scaffolding strategies does the teacher use to guide his students towards the final outcome?
Are they an effective way to have them moving forward?

    

  

(Observation of a maths' CLIL lesson, part2)

Let's get practical!

1. We are going to teach each other to say/ do something simple in our own language: Ask the time.

  • How would you prompt your students to use this functional language?
  • What scaffolds would you use?

2. How would you teach your students to understand/ use the notion "I don't know"?

3. A step further: We want our students to be able to compare animals in L2.

  • Which language content would you present and how would you get your students to understand and use them without using their L1?
  • Which subject content would you present and which visuals, realia or organisers would you offer them?

4. Get in the student's shoes:

Lesson's framework:

  • Students 7-8 years old.
  • Arts-Language lesson.
  • "Playing our grandparents' games".
    • Language outcome: (Spanish): Instrucciones: Abre, cierra, dobla, gira y dibuja.
    • Content outcome: Making paper handicrafts.