Scaffolding

What is scaffolding?

Starting with short, low-stakes exercises and building up to a lengthier more formal (research) essay or final project gives both instructor and students many important moments of revision and feedback. You can make sure your students stay on track with their work and improve along the way. For many students, especially those who are not familiar with what goes into larger academic assignments, it is very important to show the structure and process of completing larger projects. Modeling this for them helps them tackle capstone or thesis work later on.

Sequencing larger, otherwise overwhelming assignments into manageable building blocks also opens up the learning process to both instructor and student. Sharing drafts (of reading and writing) with peers and instructor, giving and responding to feedback, writing and rewriting, students see and can reflect on their own learning processes, and, ideally, learn from their own learning. This form of learning, or meta-learning, takes places when students become conscious of how they learn. Focusing on this in your teaching will give your students the tools to become better learners as they understand what works and doesn’t work for them. Simple ways to do this is to ask students to submit a short note with an assignment in which they describe how it went. It will help you respond more constructively to student work when you know they were struggling formulating their argument or synthesizing material, or when they were happy about their improvements in clarity and style.

Examples

Instead of simply saying that a formal paper is due on a certain date, break it up into steps which will allow students to link the learning of writing to the modes of inquiry and discovery in your discipline. The goal is to get students personally engaged with the kinds of questions that propel writers through the writing process, so that it becomes a powerful means of learning in the discipline.

  1. Assign Low-Stakes Writing (LSW) first to give your students the opportunity to develop their ideas and concepts prior to their first attempts at writing their essay.

    • In one LSW assignment, have students brainstorm topics. Return them with notes and suggestions.

    • In another, have students brainstorm topics and Thesis Statements drafts.Return to them with notes.

  2. Once you’ve approved paper topics and thesis statements, formally assign the paper with a typed Assignment Handout.

  3. Return the paper with revision-oriented feedback.

  4. Collect revised drafts.

There is no one way to scaffold an assignment. Rather than asking for an outline, you might consider asking for one or more of the following items:

  • A prospectus, in which the student is asked to describe the problem that will be addressed and the direction that the student intends to take.

  • An effectively designed prospectus assignment can guide students toward a problem-thesis structure and steer them away from writing which lacks focus or strong reasoning.

  • For shorter papers, students can be asked to submit two sentences: a one-sentence question that summarizes the problem the paper addresses and a one-sentence thesis statement that summarizes the writer’s argument in response to the question.

  • A 100 to 200-word abstract of their drafts can be an alternative to asking for question-plus-thesis summaries. The act of summarizing one’s own argument helps writers clarify their own thinking and often reveals organizational and conceptual problems that prompt revision.

Resources: