Scaffolding

Chapter 3 talked about a structure of scaffolding in a science lesson. There are four stages mentioned in which they are helped through the lessons.

1. Doing an experiment

2. Introducing key vocabulary

3. Teacher-guided reporting

4. Journal writing

Through these stages the ESL students are able to learn a little at a time and incorporate a little at a time so as to not overwhelm them with too much information. It seems to be very effective as the students are able to do the experiment and explore the experiment before learning all the new vocabulary. This allows them to put what happens into their own words and then apply the new vocabulary in stage 2.

Stage 3 is the teacher-guided reporting. This is especially helpful to the students because they are able to put their thoughts together but also be guided in the right direction by the teacher. The last stage is difficult because it is individual. Journal writing allows the children to write down their ideas that they went over first in a small group, then with the teacher, and now by themselves. They can sort out what happened in the experiment and also add the new vocabulary words introduced by the teacher.

This scaffolding method seems very affective in an ESL majority room and it could be helpful in a general classroom where maybe not everyone is ESL.