What is scaffolded support?
Scoffolded support is the gradual release of responsibility from teachers to students. As far as reading comprehension is concerned, teachers need to give students as many strategies as time allows, model those strategies, have the students practice those strategies with their peers, and finally by themselves. Strategies include thinking aloud, demonstrating, and creating meaning. The gradual release of responsibility, or scoffolded support, coexists beautifully with Vygotskt’s model of Zone of Proximal Development, an idea I have blogged quite a bit about recently. Students take on more and more responsibility to comprehend difficult texts without the teacher’s help. By doing so, they become more knowledgeable, confidant, and capable to understand difficult texts when they leave high school and progress into adulthood—where teachers won’t be there to support their reading.
Good. It is such a simple concept, but relatively unknown in high school, compared to elementary and junior high classrooms. For some reason, by the time you get to high school you are supposed to be able to figure things out. Yet, of the three types of knowledge, conditional or generative knowledge that indicates that a student can transfer what they have learned from one task to another is often missing in instruction.
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