Scaffolding on the CSET

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Excerpt from the CSET study guide

How teachers interact with students as they complete a task is important to the students’ ability to perform the activity. Scaffolding is an instructional technique whereby the teacher models the desired learning strategy or task, then gradually shifts responsibility to the students.

Clay and Cazden (1992) point out two scaffolding strategies in teaching reading: working with new knowledge and accepting partially correct responses. In the first strategy, when a teacher suspects the child does not have the ideas or words needed for a particular text, he/she may explain some part of the story or contrast a feature presented with something he/she knows the child understands from another reading. In the second strategy, the teacher uses what is correct in the student’s response but probes or cues the student, so as to suggest good possibilities for active consideration.

Another scaffolding strategy is for the teacher to model the appropriate thinking or working skills in the classroom. Such modeling helps children learn to operate in the school culture. Harmin (1994) notes the applicability of Rosenshine’s Guided Practice technique for developing student understanding and provides an actual example in language arts instruction in the classroom.

Rosenshine’s Guided Practice Technique

Another scaffolding strategy is for the teacher to model the appropriate thinking or working skills in the classroom. Such modeling helps children learn to operate in the school culture. Harmin (1994) notes the applicability of Rosenshine’s Guided Practice technique for developing student understanding and provides an actual example in language arts instruction in the classroom.

Posing questions that gradually lead students from easy or familiar examples to new understandings is a teaching strategy known as Guided Practice (Rosenshine, 1979, 1983). The strategy is effective for teaching thinking skills as well as content. Consider a language arts example (this can also be adapted to Physical Education):
“Using the [so-called] Question, All Write strategy, the teacher asks all students to write the plural of “fox,” a plural they already know. As soon as students begin writing, the teacher writes “foxes” on the board, so students can see the correct answer soon after they finish writing. Students correct their own work and, if necessary, make changes so their work is correct. The teacher avoids discussion at this point.The teacher then calls out the next word, another easy word or perhaps one that may be less familiar or that may lead to a

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