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a ready-to-run workshopScaffolding
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Scaffolding (Workshop)

Scaffolding is the temporary support that lets a student do now, with help, what they will soon do alone. The art is in the word temporary: supports planned to come down, not props that stay forever.

Key takeaway

Scaffolds are temporary supports planned to come down. They let students succeed at hard work now and build toward doing it alone.

Format
PLC / team meeting
Length
45 minutes
Group size
Any (works 4-40)
Who can run it
Any teacher-leader
You will need
Slides (5)Printed handoutA hard taskA timer
Aligned to
Learning Forward: Rigorous ContentInTASC 8: Instructional StrategiesVygotsky: zone of proximal development
Share / assign

Why it works

Scaffolding draws on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, the space between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with help. Well-designed supports such as sentence frames, worked examples, prompts, and chunking keep a task in that productive zone, and removing them deliberately is what builds independence.

The research: Vygotsky on the zone of proximal development; Wood, Bruner and Ross on scaffolding.

The run-of-show

Choose your slot. The agenda, timings, and length update to match.

    The core activity: plan the supports and their removal

    Teachers leave with supports for one hard task and a plan for how each one comes down.

    Plan the fade, not just the supportA scaffold with no plan to remove it is a crutch. Decide up front when and how each support comes down.

    Facilitator notes

    Do not scaffold away the learningIf the support does the hard thinking for the student, there is nothing left to learn. Support the struggle, do not remove it.

    Adapt it

    Participant handout

    One page for every teacher. Print it, or save it as a PDF.

    K12 Academics · Professional Learning

    Scaffolding: support it, then fade it

    <b>Temporary supports that keep the goal and come down on purpose:</b> frames, worked examples, chunking, prompts.

    1. The hard task:
    2. The barrier:
    3. My support:
    4. How it fades:
    5. Success without support:

    Make it stick

    Make fading the supports a habit:

    Common questions

    How is scaffolding different from just making the work easier?
    Easier work lowers the goal. Scaffolding keeps the goal and supports the student to reach it, then removes the support.
    When do I take the scaffold away?
    As soon as the student can succeed without it. A scaffold left up too long becomes a crutch.
    Doesn't scaffolding slow the class down?
    It front-loads support so more students succeed the first time, which saves re-teaching later.

    Go deeper

    Build it into a bigger day

    Workshop
    Gradual Release
    Workshop
    Modeling & Worked Examples
    Workshop
    Productive Struggle