Scaffolding Strategies (TNTP reimagine teaching)

Description:

A key recommendation from our research findings is to give all students greater access to grade-level assignments. While this is critical to improving academic outcomes for all students, it’s much easier said than done. Assigning rigorous content poses a significant instructional challenge for teachers who are faced with the reality of students who are behind grade level and need varying types and levels of support to be successful academically.

We observed teachers addressing this reality in many ways: reteaching content from previous grades, assigning students texts at their current reading levels, and providing worksheets with tasks broken down into discrete steps, to name a few. While these strategies did help students complete their assignments more successfully, they often focused on remedial content and did not help students meet the demands of grade-level standards. This speaks to a real and widespread need in the field of education that collectively we haven’t yet figured out: How do we support all students to be successful with the rigorous grade-appropriate content that we know is so important for their academic outcomes?

What we’re calling “scaffolding up” attempts to address that need. Instead of simplifying activities and bringing content down to what students can currently do, scaffolding up focuses on getting students to master the key practices and concepts in grade-level content, with students able to do so increasingly independently over time. We’ve combed the field for best practices and resources to support teachers in implementing scaffolding up strategies in their classrooms. As you’ll see below, this is a modest collection and the resources are specific to a content area or population of students. As the field expands its expertise in this area, we will continue to share learnings and resources.