Visual scaffolding - helping our students climb to the top

It's difficult to climb without something to hold on to. When students are trying to increase their level of English by producing new language they need something too. This is why Jerome Bruner decided to call his teaching theory 'Scaffolding'.

Scaffolding is a word Bruner used to describe all the assistance teachers give to students in order to help them reach their goal. If you have ever tried to cook a curry with lots of ingredients, you will know that constant reference to the recipe is required. Simply reading once and trying to remember everything isn't enough. This is the same for students trying to put together large chunks of language.

Visual scaffolding

We can help students by providing visual aids to remind them of structures and words as a reference whilst trying to produce longer utterances. Clear, organised whiteboard work can help us do this. Boardwork should be planned carefully to produce a frame the students can use whilst trying to produce the target language.

My terrible doctor's handwriting aside ("like a spider wrote it" was one of my teacher'S comments), here is an example of scaffolding from a recent lesson on family vocabulary and 'have got'. In the production stage of the lesson the students have to ask each other  questions about their families using 'have got'. All the language the students need is there for them to put together and refer to when forming it for the first time.

Learning to fly

After giving the students plenty of time to practice with 'Scaffolding' a nice technique is to remove it once the students feel more comfortable and let them repeat the activity. This time using only memory and experience. Being able to do this will give the students a real sense of achievement.

Focus on Scaffolding

"Focus" has taken the idea of Scaffolding a step further by adding the 'Word store'.  The word store is a booklet attatched at the back (one page for each unit) with exercises for students to complete and store the relevent vocabulary for that unit. The Word Store can be opened at the same time as the lesson page to create a three page spread. So for every lesson in that unit, the Word Store will be right there providing the perfect scaffolding to help students recycle that all-important vocabulary.

No more excuses for forgetting words or not using them!

Providing students with Scaffolding increases confidence and therefore motivation. Let's help our learners climb as high as they possibly can!

Tom