Scaffolding and differentiation techniques to implement in the classroom

Scaffolding

Scaffolding refers to a process in which teachers model or demonstrate how to solve a problem, and then step back, offering support as needed..Scaffolding enlists the instructor as an “activator” whose role is to facilitate the student’s incremental mastery of a concept.

Scaffolding technique:

A good scaffolding technique when talking about reading is to preteach key and unknown vocabulary before reading a text. The teacher should review with the students the words most likely to give students trouble. If you don't do it pupils will probably lose interests or fall asleep while reading the text because the will find many vocabulary that the do not understand. Apart from that, as a consequence of not understanding the text they can also get frustrated or bored.

You can introduce the new words by using photos or in context with the things you know students are interested in. This would be a more dynamic way of teaching vocabulary and a perfect tool to avoid boredom.

When the students then read the text, they will have greated confidence in their reading ability, they will also be more interested in the content and more likely to comprehen and remember what they have just read.

Differentiation

Differentiating instruction may mean teaching the same material to all students using a variety of instructional strategies, or it may require the teacher to deliver lessons at varying levels of difficulty based on the ability of each student. Formative assessment is an essential ingredient of this method.

Teachers who practice differentiation in the classroom may:

Design lessons based on students’ learning styles.

Group students by shared interest, topic or ability for assignments.

Assess students’ learning using formative assessment.

Manage the classroom to create a safe and supportive environment.

Continually assess and adjust lesson content to meet students’ needs.

Differentiation technique:

When practising reading comprehension, give different pieces of texts to read to the students. Each student will be given a different type of text according to their interests and their level of English. What teachers can do in order to modify those texts is to shorten the text or adapt the vocabulary according to the level of the student. Regarding interests, if you are going to bring a reading about sports (for example) bring different readings which talk about different sports and give those readings to the students taking into account their interests.