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Building Up to Big Assignments and Complex Tasks

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Do some topics or skills seem too large to approach in your course? Are your students struggling with time management? Do you want to provide students with thorough, meaningful feedback but find it difficult to keep up with all the grading? Do you want your students to learn more effectively? Assignment scaffolding could be the answer.

What is assignment scaffolding and why is it important?

Simply put, assignment scaffolding helps break down large ideas or tasks into smaller steps that build on each other. Consider the analogy at the root of the term. Scaffolding, like the multi-level, metal structure above, is a temporary support that helps construct a building. At the end of the project, the scaffolding is removed and the building stands on its own.

Imagine trying to create that building without the help of scaffolding. How would workers move between levels of the building? How would it be built beyond a story or two? To zoom out even further, how do workers know what the building looks like? Where are they getting materials from?

Now imagine asking students to complete a 20-page paper that is due the last day of class. You never discuss their thesis with them, read a draft, or review their resources in advance. How will they organize their work? How will they push their critical thinking skills to the next level? Furthermore, how will they decide what to write about? What research will support their argument?

In these cases, showing up empty-handed–to a vacant lot, to a blank page–doesn’t often lead to brilliant work. Both the building and the research paper should be carefully planned, with input provided throughout the process. Otherwise, the building may look nothing like what the architect envisioned or the paper may look nothing like what you intended in the prompt.

Process scaffolding and critical thinking scaffolding

Ryerson University’s Best Practices in Instructional Scaffolding explains Lev Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” as the place where what you do know intersects with what you don’t know yet. A scaffolding structure is designed to make the most of this theory, making sure there is room for development after each effort. This document goes on to differentiate between process scaffolding and critical thinking scaffolding .

Process scaffolding separates an assignment into components that build on each other. It asks the question, “How do I break down this large task into smaller, more manageable tasks?” Critical thinking scaffolding develops lower-order critical thinking skills before requiring higher-order critical thinking skills. It asks, “What skills do I need to master before the next part of the task can be completed?” A well-scaffolded course does both, as you’ll see in the examples below.

Scaffolding in a graduate public policy course

One example of scaffolding is from MPPA 409: Effective Writing & Communication, taught by Professor Meghann Pytka. Pytka is a big advocate for the use of scaffolding as a way of ensuring that students put the research writing process under the microscope.

She found that many students reached the capstone course with an inadequate understanding of some of the more nuanced aspects of academic research and writing, so she developed a course that is a deep dive into academic writing. Each week builds toward the creation of a final research paper, moving through:

  • Brainstorming a topic
  • Topic Selection
  • Refining the Topic
  • Annotated Bibliography
  • Literature Review
  • Substantive Outline
  • Background Section
  • Analysis and Policy Implementation Section
  • Introduction/Conclusion/Abstract/Title
  • Final version

The course is structured so that each week has a mini-assignment that builds toward the whole. In this way, students question their assumptions about the entire process of“writing a public policy research paper. Mirroring Professor Pytka’s approach, Columbia College provides a handy guide to Scaffolding Research Assignments that breaks the writing process up into six stages: selecting a topic, finding background information (“presearch”), research, source evaluation, drafting, and final drafting.

The course also uses peer review as a way to gain new perspectives on one’s work. This mirrors the best practice of having colleagues give you feedback while writing.  Each person has a peer buddy who gives them feedback on three of the mini-assignments.The feedback is highly structured–a peer fills out a worksheet and everyone works from agreed upon ground rules. These peer review assignments are low stakes, but they can provide invaluable help and the experience can build a sense of community in a course.

Scaffolding in an undergraduate organizational behavior course

This example is much smaller in scope, but just as effective. In ORG BEH 311: Conflict Resolution, Professor Patty McNally planned an assignment to help students analyze the concepts of negotiation and mediation. Students were asked to find videos that were examples of either good or bad negotiation or mediation. Students then watched each other’s video choices and answered a set of questions about them. They were asked to draw upon the readings and media within the course.

The next week, students looked over comments left on their own video selection as well as the whole experience of watching and commenting on their peers’ selections and used all of this as fodder for a reflection paper about how the experience 1) deepened their understanding of the concepts and 2) what they learned about “best practices” for negotiation and mediation.  

This assignment encourages natural interaction about content that they’ve chosen to add to the course, and we think students feel more of a sense of ownership in this assignment. It also adds variety to the course and makes the class engagement stretch beyond the normal discussion board post. Students have to show that they’ve mastered the content, but a great deal of choice is baked into the assignment. The reflection piece allows students to make their own connections between the readings and the experience of choosing, watching and commenting on the content.

Now that you know a little about the theory of assignment scaffolding and have examined a few case studies, it’s time to think about implementing scaffolding into your course. For example, you might be thinking, “How can I explain scaffolding to my students so that they don’t think of it as busywork?” or “How can I articulate the value of peer review?” The University of Toronto provides a useful Troubleshooting section (page 4) that can help develop a scaffolding strategy that makes the best use of your time–and students’–and the University of Colorado Denver provides an excellent chart that maps active verbs in Bloom’s Taxonomy to a critical thinking scaffolding (page 4).

You might also consider reviewing resources specific to your context. For example, are you asking students to complete a multimodal assignment such as a video recording? Scaffolding a video project may look very different from a research paper; you might have a script instead of a draft, or need to learn technology skills during the research phase. Check out the University of Michigan’s guide to Sequencing and Scaffolding Assignments (see Strategy 3: Sequencing and Scaffolding Multimodal Composition Assignments ).

If you’re interested in learning more about assignment scaffolding, ask your Learning Designer for more information or e-mail [email protected] .

The post Building Up to Big Assignments and Complex Tasks: Making the Case for Assignment Scaffolding appeared first on SPS | Distance Learning .

Jeanne Kerl Learning Designer – SPS | Distance Learning More posts by Jeanne

Kristina Wilson Senior Learning Designer, Assessment – SPS | Distance Learning More posts by Kristina

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6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each.

Illustration of people building a giant book

What’s the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? Saying to students, “Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday.” Yikes! No safety net, no parachute—they’re just left to their own devices.

Let’s start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things. Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk. When scaffolding reading, for example, you might preview the text and discuss key vocabulary, or chunk the text and then read and discuss as you go. With differentiation, you might give a child an entirely different piece of text to read, or shorten the text or alter it, or modify the writing assignment that follows.

Simply put, scaffolding is what you do first with kids. For those students who are still struggling, you may need to differentiate by modifying an assignment or making accommodations like choosing a more accessible text or assigning an alternative project.

Scaffolding and differentiation do have something in common, though. In order to meet students where they are and appropriately scaffold a lesson or differentiate instruction, you have to know the individual and collective zone of proximal development (ZPD) of your learners. Education researcher Eileen Raymond says, “The ZPD is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance.”

So let’s get to some scaffolding strategies you may or may not have tried yet. Or perhaps you’ve not used them in some time and need a gentle reminder on how awesome and helpful they can be when it comes to student learning.

1. Show and Tell

How many of us say that we learn best by seeing something rather than hearing about it? Modeling for students is a cornerstone of scaffolding, in my experience. Have you ever interrupted someone with “Just show me!” while they were in the middle of explaining how to do something? Every chance you have, show or demonstrate to students exactly what they are expected to do.

  • Try a fishbowl activity , where a small group in the center is circled by the rest of the class; the group in the middle, or fishbowl, engages in an activity, modeling how it’s done for the larger group.
  • Always show students the outcome or product before they do it. If a teacher assigns a persuasive essay or inquiry-based science project, a model should be presented side-by-side with a criteria chart or rubric. You can guide students through each step of the process with the model of the finished product in hand.
  • Use think alouds , which will allow you to model your thought process as you read a text, solve a problem, or design a project. Remember that children’s cognitive abilities are still in development, so opportunities for them to see developed, critical thinking are essential.

2. Tap Into Prior Knowledge

Ask students to share their own experiences, hunches, and ideas about the content or concept of study and have them relate and connect it to their own lives. Sometimes you may have to offer hints and suggestions, leading them to the connections a bit, but once they get there, they will grasp the content as their own.

Launching the learning in your classroom from the prior knowledge of your students and using this as a framework for future lessons is not only a scaffolding technique—many would agree it’s just plain good teaching.

3. Give Time to Talk

All learners need time to process new ideas and information. They also need time to verbally make sense of and articulate their learning with the community of learners who are engaged in the same experience and journey. As we all know, structured discussions really work best with children regardless of their level of maturation.

If you aren’t weaving in think-pair-share, turn-and-talk, triad teams, or some other structured talking time throughout the lesson, you should begin including this crucial strategy on a regular basis.

4. Pre-Teach Vocabulary

Sometimes referred to as front-loading vocabulary, this is a strategy that we teachers don’t use enough. Many of us, myself included, are guilty of sending students all alone down the bumpy, muddy path known as Challenging Text—a road booby-trapped with difficult vocabulary. We send them ill-prepared and then are often shocked when they lose interest, create a ruckus, or fall asleep.

Pre-teaching vocabulary doesn’t mean pulling a dozen words from the chapter and having kids look up definitions and write them out—we all know how that will go. Instead, introduce the words to kids in photos or in context with things they know and are interested in. Use analogies and metaphors, and invite students to create a symbol or drawing for each word. Give time for small-group and whole-class discussion of the words. Not until they’ve done all this should the dictionaries come out. And the dictionaries will be used only to compare with those definitions they’ve already discovered on their own.

With the dozen or so words front-loaded, students are ready, with you as their guide, to tackle that challenging text.

5. Use Visual Aids

Graphic organizers, pictures, and charts can all serve as scaffolding tools. Graphic organizers are very specific in that they help kids visually represent their ideas, organize information, and grasp concepts such as sequencing and cause and effect.

A graphic organizer shouldn’t be The Product but rather a scaffolding tool that helps guide and shape students’ thinking. Some students can dive right into discussing, or writing an essay, or synthesizing several different hypotheses, without using a graphic organizer of some sort, but many of our students benefit from using one with a difficult reading or challenging new information. Think of graphic organizers as training wheels—they’re temporary and meant to be removed.

6. Pause, Ask Questions, Pause, Review

This is a wonderful way to check for understanding while students read a chunk of difficult text or learn a new concept or content. Here’s how this strategy works: Share a new idea from discussion or the reading, then pause (providing think time), and then ask a strategic question, pausing again.

You need to design the questions ahead of time, making sure they’re specific, guiding, and open-ended. (Even great questions fail if we don’t give think time for responses, so hold out during that Uncomfortable Silence.) Keep kids engaged as active listeners by calling on someone to give the gist of what was just discussed, discovered, or questioned. If the class seems stuck on the questions, provide an opportunity for students to discuss in pairs.

With all the diverse learners in our classrooms, there is a strong need for teachers to learn and experiment with new scaffolding strategies. I often say to teachers I support that they have to slow down in order to go quickly. Scaffolding a lesson may, in fact, mean that it takes longer to teach, but the end product is of far greater quality and the experience much more rewarding for all involved.

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6 Ways You Should Be Scaffolding Student Writing

6 Ways You Should Be Scaffolding Student Writing

You’ve probably heard a million times that you should be using differentiated instruction in your classroom. If you’re in a stricter building, it may even be required that you document your differentiation strategies. But how, exactly, are we supposed to differentiate writing instruction for our advanced, gifted, special education, trauma-sensitive, and ELL learners in a single class period!? It seems impossible! At least it does until you consider scaffolding writing instruction. 

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Why Use A Scaffolding Technique in Teaching Writing?

I’ve written about scaffolding in the creative writing classroom specifically before. That post is great for an introduction to the idea of scaffolding if that’s a new term for you. But scaffolding is great for all writing instruction–not just creative writing. 

Scaffolding refers to the tools we give students to help them take baby steps towards conquering a bigger task. Before they write that ten-page paper, they’re going to have to know how to write an introduction. 

How can we set our students up for writing success? In this post, I hope to share some tricks and techniques that have helped students in my own classroom. 

Scaffolding Writing for Struggling Students

Scaffolding, which basically involves breaking down large tasks into smaller steps, is helpful for all learners. Yes, even your gifted students will benefit from the same scaffolding techniques that your ELLs are leaning on.

While your struggling learners may be seemingly incapable of tackling that big essay without some scaffolding support, forcing your advanced students to try various scaffolds can help them too. 

When they’re made to slow down and really examine every step, advanced students will be unable to rush through assignments and turn in work that meets the requirements but is below the student’s full ability.

Scaffolding Writing Assignments

Pretty much any writing assignment can be scaffolded for students. Creating scaffolding just means that you’re breaking down a task into smaller components or steps. Scaffolding can be anything that helps the students conceptualize what their final product should look like, put their ideas together, or even help them reflect on their work. 

When I first started teaching, I looked at the curriculum and thought, “We just don’t have time for all of that!” I know better now.

Scaffolding in your writing instruction is necessary. Sometimes in life, we have to slow down, so we can speed up later. Writing instruction is no different.

When we take it slow in the beginning, we’re setting ourselves (and our students) up for faster, better work in the future!

Slow down to speed up. Scaffold for more structural integrity in writing. 

Ok, sounds well and good, right? But how exactly do we do that without sacrificing our entire curriculum? How do we scaffold without spoon-feeding our students the answers?

Scaffolding Strategies with Writing Scaffolds Examples

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Scaffolding Tip #1: Tap into Prior Knowledge

One way to make struggling students feel more comfortable doing the work is to show them how much they already know. 

You’re probably already familiar with the variety of ways we teachers help students activate their prior knowledge: K-W-L charts, brainstorming, concept maps, etc. When students can see all that they already know, venturing into new territory seems less scary.

An Example of Activating Prior Knowledge

scaffolding assignments

One of my favorite ways to activate prior knowledge is through anticipation guides. In my free Internment Anticipation Guide , students read through various statements deciding whether they agree or disagree with each.

Then, they discuss these statements with partners and groups, attempting to persuade others to see their side. 

By the time we discuss each statement as a whole class, students are passionately debating. They’re not worrying about what they don’t know–they’re ready to dive deeper into the topics.

Scaffolding Tip #2: Give Students a Framework

Frameworks help all kinds of writers with all kinds of writing. Whether you’re writing a formal essay, a blog post, or even an Instagram post, if you’re doing it successfully, there’s probably a method to how you structure the content. 

If even confident writers use frameworks, then our struggling students definitely need one!

The typical five-paragraph essay is a great example of a writing framework. In general, all five-paragraph essays follow the same framework: one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. 

There’s even a framework for each of those paragraphs. If we zoom in on the introduction paragraph, for example, we’ll see that it typically starts with a hook, leads with background information, and ends with a thesis. 

Once students understand the framework and how it all works together, all they have to worry about is the content and their writing craft. The overwhelm is gone. The task no longer seems daunting or impossible. 

An Example of a Scaffolding Framework

In my school, we use a C-E-R framework for all of our school’s academic writing–from English to gym class. 

I break down the C-E-R framework in detail in this post , but basically all of our academic writing starts with a claim, which is supported by evidence, which in turn is explained through the students’ reasoning.

Cover for Teachers Pay Teachers product: C-E-R Writing Resources Bundle

Once students learn the framework in freshman year, they understand the expectations. Throughout their four years, they’ll apply that framework to writing for all content areas, for writing of different length requirements, and to writing for different audiences. 

Students no longer have to wonder about the expectations or how to get started. Instead, they can spend those four years working on skills: improving their transitions, citing evidence correctly, correcting their punctuation, etc. 

Teaching a framework is a great example of slowing down to speed up. In freshman year, teachers hammer claim, evidence, and reasoning into the curriculum. That leaves students ready to tackle bigger, more complex writing in years to come. 

It doesn’t have to be a four-year process, though. I review C-E-R over the course of a couple of weeks in my senior class. For students new to our school, it’s the first time they are exposed to it, but with the help of their peers they catch on quickly.

Scaffolding Technique #3: Teaching the Writing Process

This one is probably the best-known version of scaffolding for any English teacher. The writing process is basically a framework for how to write . It consists of six steps: brainstorming, outlining, creating a rough draft, evaluating that work, then sculpting a final draft, before the optional step of publishing. 

You’ve probably implemented the writing process before in regards to an essay, but the writing process is just that–a process. It can be applied to pretty much any writing task. 

Except, I hear you say, we don’t really have time to apply the writing process to every single thing we do in class. 

And we don’t! I wouldn’t have students complete the whole writing process for informal assignments or journal writing, for example. 

An Example of Scaffolding the Writing Process

But we also don’t have to save it just for essay writing. In fact, exposing students to a variety of writing tasks and showing them that this process WORKS for any kind of writing is probably a better use of everyone’s time than hammering away at another five-paragraph essay.

scaffolding assignments

For example, in my Social Justice Mini-Research Project , students create a pamphlet around a social justice issue of their choosing. This assignment is shorter and more creative than a traditional essay. Plus, it involves choice (point for differentiation!) which I always like to include where I can.

In this resource , I’ve broken down the writing process for the teacher and the student.

Students look at work from the historical activist group The White Rose for inspiration, before brainstorming and doing some research around their own social justice cause. 

Then, they use the included graphic organizers (scaffolding in and of itself) to outline the pamphlet they create. 

From there, students can create, edit, and publish in whatever ways work best for the student, class, or teacher (I do include some publishing suggestions in the teacher’s guide). 

The resource breaks down the writing process–choosing a topic, doing research, analyzing a mentor text, outlining, etc.–to help students. Walking students through this process–and teaching the process–is a scaffolding technique that benefits any writing instruction.

Scaffolding Technique #4: Show Examples

Another common scaffolding strategy is to show examples. This sounds overly simple, but students just cannot see enough examples. 

And they shouldn’t just see good examples! Showing students examples of bad or mediocre writing can be just as powerful–so long as you discuss why the examples are subpar.

Perhaps my favorite use of examples is through mentor texts. Mentor texts are expert examples of the type of writing you’d like to teach.

An Example of Using Mentor Texts to Scaffold

Cover for Teachers Pay Teachers Product: Creative Writing Author Study Project

My Author Study Project is a deep-dive into this concept. 

Students select an author to study. Then, over the duration of the project, students read and take notes on their chosen author’s style. They analyze the subject matter, the tone, and the imagery style of their mentor author. 

Once they’ve reached an understanding of the author’s style, they try to mimic that style in their own original work!

Of course, using examples doesn’t have to turn into a full-blown author study or project. 

Showing students examples of “ok” essays versus excellent essays can really encourage them to put forth the extra effort. Showing students several examples of how to apply a skill (say, citing evidence) can also be beneficial. 

Using examples throughout your class is not only a great scaffolding technique but a great differentiation one as well. Showing an exemplar paper will encourage struggling students to get help, clarification, or use extra resources. Meanwhile, striving students will be pushed even further. 

When do you show examples?

You should show examples as often as you can. When you assign the assignment, it’s good to have a few examples of what the final product should look like. 

Then, as students have begun to grapple with the writing, it’s nice to have a few examples of techniques. Or even examples of how past students have managed the same struggles. 

Then, at the end of the assignment, right before it’s due, it’s great to bust out some of those stellar examples again. (This might also be a good time to show some examples that did not make the cut.)

Scaffolding Technique #5: Graphic Organizers 

I love me a good graphic organizer! I use them all the time for creative writing projects, but they can be created, used, and applied to pretty much any topic or project.

A graphic organizer is pretty much just what it sounds like: a way to organize ideas and thoughts visually. 

scaffolding assignments

When my students will be working on a writing assignment, I like to create graphic organizers that break down the writing into step-by-step processes . If possible, I’ll include tips or prompting questions on the worksheet as well.

If you’re using any kind of framework, I highly recommend turning it into a graphic organizer for students. Even if it’s just a checklist that students can use to make sure they’re covering the requirements. 

I don’t know why, but even a few empty boxes seem much more accessible to struggling students than a blank notebook page. 

An Example of Using Graphic Organizers Prior to Writing

With my Figurative Language Photo Writing Activity , students practice using figurative language techniques to describe various landscapes.

The resource includes graphic organizers for students to use to brainstorm sensory figurative language that they will be able to use in their final description. 

Scaffolding Technique #6: Encourage Peer Discussion and Feedback

One more scaffolding strategy is maybe one of the most important: encourage students to discuss ideas. 

We can teach our hearts out; we can teach until we have used every level of Bloom’s taxonomy twice. It won’t matter. Students will always learn best from their peers.

Kids learn from kids. Maybe it’s because their peers “speak their language”. Maybe it’s because their peers are less intimidating than educators? But when I’m stuck explaining a concept, having another student show or explain it can often do the trick.

During work time, I love hearing students help one another. While some other teachers would intervene to make sure students learn correctly, I love hearing student explanations of ideas.

This goes, of course, for open, opinion-based discussions as well. I love hearing students’ takes on literature that we read. Often, they’ll question or bounce ideas off of one another, and I even end up learning from them!

An Example of Incorporating Class Discussions

Teachers Pay Teachers Product Cover: The Hate U Give Discussion Assignment

One of my favorite activities of the year is my The Hate U Give Discussion Activity . During the round table discussion, students talk to one another about some really BIG life questions. They are required to use examples and quotes from the book to back up their thoughts, but students really shine during this activity.

Expecting students to show their perspective and respectfully challenge others’ is one of the greatest life lessons you could possibly teach. Students open up each other’s eyes more so than I will ever be able to do.

Slowly Remove Scaffolding

Scaffolding is a great tool for writing, but ultimately it is just that: a tool.

As students begin to master certain skills, it’s ok to take scaffolding away. In fact, you should to build student independence. 

As a freshman, students might need a very structured framework for a five-paragraph essay. They’ll need to almost be told what to include in each and every sentence.

But by senior year, students should be able to choose different outline styles. They might be able to choose how they approach the writing process or structure the final draft. Capable students could even be given the choice about whether or not an essay is the best way for them to show what they know!

Like real-life scaffolding, it should be temporary . A building should not rely on its scaffolding to stand up forever–neither should students.

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I hope that you’ve found these scaffolding techniques helpful. Scaffolding is an important tool for differentiation and is a must in any writing curriculum.

There are so many ways to help students craft their writing: showing them a framework or writing process, giving them graphic organizers, or even just showing some great examples.

You can also help their confidence by activating prior knowledge and encourage them to help one another.

Once you start thinking about incorporating different scaffolding techniques into writing instruction, it gets easier. You’ll see opportunities everywhere to help your students craft their next masterpiece!

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  • Scaffolding: Using Frequency and Sequencing Intentionally

With your capstone assignment in place, you’ll be able to build "backwards" through the term, ensuring that each one of the preceding assignments gives students the right opportunities to acquire and/or practice the skills and competencies they will need in order to tackle the course's grand finale. To be sure,  this kind of scaffolding give students the intellectual skills they need to take on the highly synthetic, creative tasks associated with capstone assignments. More than just that, though, it also allows them to develop these skills step-by-step and gives them time to reflect on their development—which in turn gives them more awareness of, and confidence in, applying these skills to "bigger" challenges.  

Scaffolding is important for both "traditional" and "creative" assignments. In the case of traditional assignments (like academic papers), students benefit primarily from the sequential accumulation of analytical skills. In an Expos course, for instance, a Unit 1 assignment often asks students to make an analytical argument about a single source, a request which might not be 100% clear to students when they first encounter the prompt. Over the following few weeks, though, students will move from learning strategies for active reading to ways to develop analytical questions about a source to how analytical questions are answered by a thesis to how a thesis is an arguable claim supported by evidence to how a thesis supported by evidence and analysis is an analytical argument. In that way, each skill learned in the unit requires the previously learned skills and paves the way for the next, higher-order skill that will culminate in the essay assignment students were introduced from the start.

In the case of creative projects, it may be necessary to provide scaffolding not only in analytical skills, but also in the basic tools and genre conventions of the medium within which they are working. Just as students often complete lower-stakes writing assignments in advance of an essay or research paper, students who have been assigned a creative project need to practice working with multimedia—not just on the production side, but in terms of making arguments, citing sources, and developing a voice, well before they attempt a final project. Small-scale multimedia work can, for example, be evaluated on a complete/incomplete basis, since it's meant to serve as practice. Then, when it comes time to attempt the end-of-semester video, or website launch, or virtual exhibit, you'll find that the overall level of student work is high enough that you'll be able to grade this non-traditional work using many, if not most, of the very same criteria you'd use to evaluate traditional papers.

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Partnering Formal and Informal Writing: Scaffolding Daily Assignments to Support Student Writers

  • Andrew Horne

Scaffolding instruction and UDL

Guiding principles for daily writing, linking daily writing and formal papers: my process, examples of daily writing prompts, lessons learned, recap and takeaways for instructors, resources for scaffolding writing assignments, references & resources, introduction.

“How do you feel about writing?”

I typically pose this question on the first day of the semester in a “vote with your feet” exercise. We line up across the room: at one end are those who enjoy writing and feel confident in their abilities and at the other end are those who dislike writing altogether. Students find a place along the spectrum and share their reasoning out loud. Many students cluster near the middle, where a plethora of fears and anxieties spills forth:

“I never know how to get started.”

“I can never make it long enough.”

“It’s ok if I’m writing about something I know.”

“I’m never really sure what the teacher wants, or if its good enough.”

I usually place myself somewhere near the center. “I’ve been told I’m a good writer, but I have such a hard time getting started. I never know what to say, or I say too much.” Many students will nod in sympathy. A show of hands reveals that many of us often feel overwhelmed when starting a writing project.

As an instructor in a Writing Intensive course, I teach both writing skills and disciplinary content. As I design my courses each semester, I aim to weave these together in ways that are mutually supportive and that address students’ concerns. Throughout the course, I want to foster writing as an ongoing habit and give students multiple opportunities to engage with writing. One powerful strategy for doing this is through Daily Writing assignments.

In this module, I will share my experience using frequent, short writing assignments to prepare students to be successful in a longer, formal assignment. This module focuses on the design of the jazz dance unit within my History of Dance I course, a Writing-Intensive designated course at ECU. The process of considering the content and writing skills for a particular assignment and then designing shorter assignments to lead up to it can be used by instructors in a variety of disciplines.

The teaching process described in this module uses frequent, low-stakes informal writing prompts that are deliberately designed to scaffold the writing process, leading students to develop the content knowledge and writing skills needed for a specific formal writing project while at the same time generating, in manageable chunks, material that can potentially be incorporated into that project.

The term “instructional scaffolding” is used by Applebee and Langer (1983) to describe a process that “allows the novice to carry out new tasks while learning strategies and patterns that will eventually make it possible to carry out similar tasks without external support” (p. 169). In the case of a college writing project such as the one described in this module, the complex writing is a new task, and support is provided to learn the strategies and patterns for accessing content knowledge and deploying it with discipline-specific writing skills.

The process of scaffolding instruction through informal writing assignments is one way to implement UDL Principle 2: “Provide multiple means of action and expression,” specifically Checkpoints 5.3 “Build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance” and 6.2 “Support planning and strategy development” (CAST 2012). An instructor, working backwards from the goal of the finished paper, considers the constituent knowledge and skills and designs shorter writing assignments that provide support in the form of focused questions, templates, or prompts for brainstorming. Collectively, these assignments can guide students through the planning process of a major writing project, preventing total procrastination and encouraging students to develop a process-oriented approach to writing that may transfer to future projects.

Applebee and Langer (1983) explain the steps that teachers, as designers of instruction, take to create the scaffolding that will allow their students develop as writers:

Teachers approaching instruction from this perspective must a) determine the difficulties that a new task is likely to pose for particular students, b) select strategies that can be used to overcome the specific difficulties anticipated, and c) structure the activity as a whole to make those strategies explicit (through questioning and modelling) at appropriate places in the task sequence. (p. 169)

This module describes how these three steps were adapted to create scaffolded instruction in a writing-intensive course. Just as a scaffolding is used to facilitate the construction of a building and then removed when it is no longer needed, scaffolded instruction helps students to work through the steps to a process that they may not be ready to take on independently. Key to this process in a writing-intensive course is the use of frequent, low-stakes assignments that function as the braces, brackets, and platforms students use as they construct a formal writing project.

Instructional Practice

In this module, I share a process for brainstorming and planning instruction around informal writing assignments that will lead to a formal paper, as well as the specific Daily Writing prompts I used in my course. By the time we got to these specific assignments, Daily Writing was already an established part of my course, and students were used to having a short assignment due regularly.

Here are the guiding principles that I use when creating Daily Writing assignments and embedding them in my courses.

1. Make writing a habit.

In my classes, students complete a Daily Writing assignment for each class meeting. Daily Writing assignments are intended to be short—I expect 1-2 pages double-spaced, or an equivalent amount if handwritten. (Because they are intended to be informal, I do allow students to hand-write these assignments if they prefer.) They also should be relatively easy to complete. I tell my students to spend no more than an hour on any one Daily Writing assignment (once they have completed any reading or video viewing leading up to it).

For those who express concern that they can’t finish in an hour, I advise them to put in a solid hour and then draw a line and state, “time’s up!” if they haven’t finished. Many students report they can complete these assignments in thirty minutes.

2. Keep the stakes low, but hold writers accountable.

In my classes, Daily Writing is graded on a credit/no credit basis. If the work is completed and meets the minimum expectation, it receives full credit.

In order to minimize students’ tendency to procrastinate, it is important to do something with the Daily Writing in the next class. Often we review it at the start of class or share excerpts with peers. Sometimes, I request to collect their Daily Writing so I can review it and get a sense of where the class is. On a separate Participation Self-Assessment, one of the criteria is coming to class prepared with the Daily Writing each day. Collectively, these strategies send the message that doing the assignments is important to success in the class.

3. Give specific guidance with room for individuality.

This particular principle comes from my own personal experience as a student. I took many arts classes that included a “reflective journal” assignment. These assignments functioned in many ways that are similar to the Daily Writing I now assign as a faculty member: short, informal opportunities to reflect on ideas learned in class. However, they were often assigned at the beginning of the semester with vague instructions to have an entry for each class period. Little guidance was given, and I often felt overwhelmed by not knowing what to write. Given a specific prompt I would have had no difficulty, but the entirely open-ended nature simply led me to procrastinate and stay up backdating made-up entries the night before the deadline. I vowed as a twenty-year-old that if I ever became a professor, I would never assign completely open-ended journals.

Therefore, each Daily Writing in my class is a specific assignment with clear guidelines. Even when asking students to reflect on a performance, reading, or other experience, I provide some guiding questions to promote brainstorming. However, each also includes some degree of choice for the student, so that there is no single correct response.

4. Use a variety of formats and structures.

For some assignments, I create a list of questions and suggest that students simply go down the list, answering each one with a few sentences. Others invite students to find a quote from a reading assignment and respond to it, while others might ask for a longer personal narrative. Because our discipline, dance, is based in the body, I often encourage sensory awareness and movement description in the prompts.

Daily Writing is also not limited to writing in a traditional sense. In one assignment, I encouraged students to work collaboratively to represent what they learned from a reading in a mind map. In another assignment, students worked in pairs to discuss their responses to a live performance, then posted a video of their discussion.

For many students, especially those for whom writing doesn’t feel like a familiar or enjoyable process, a formal, graded paper assignment looms large. In my Dance History class, I found that many students struggled with one of the paper assignments. Although I had connected the Daily Writing thematically to the content we were reading and discussing in class, it was still disconnected from the skills and preparatory steps that they needed to be successful. For their last paper in the course, I decided to design more purposeful Daily Writing assignments that would connect with the paper prompt. Through these assignments, students would become familiar with both the content and the writing processes they are being asked to use for the paper assignment. In some cases, they might even generate material that they could use in the paper directly. While the example is specific to the content in my course, the process may be useful to instructors in a range of areas.

I worked through four main questions as I designed the assignments and classroom activities that would lead up to this Paper assignment.

1. What is the prompt asking students to do?

For this paper assignment, I had an admittedly vague prompt, one that could easily lead students to a very basic, yes or no response to a question.

Is NY Export Opus Jazz , jazz?

In this paper, students examine the 2010 film version of choreographer Jerome Robbins’s 1958 work   NY Export: Opus Jazz   (Jost & Lipes, 2010). There is vigorous debate among dance scholars as to what defines jazz dance, and this work, subtitled “a ballet in sneakers” provides a fertile ground for examining this argument.

While usually, I would find it necessary to revise the prompt into a more complex question that would invite elaboration, for this assignment, I chose to keep the prompt vague but do some work in class to help the students see it as a jumping-off point for their own questions.

2. What are the pieces that students need in order to be successful?

In other words, clarify, as Applebee and Langer (1983) describe it, the “difficulties that a new task is likely to pose for particular students.” 

When I looked at my prompt and my rubric, as well as my own assumptions and aspirations for this assignment, I started to consider what a student would need to know and be able to do to be successful with this paper. I considered both the content—the dance-specific information—as well as the writing skills needed. Knowing that I have a diverse range of learners in my class, I considered that it was possible that any component of the task, or combination of components together, might pose a difficulty for some and be quite easy for others.

My list included:

  • Create an arguable thesis
  • Describe the movement in the dance and select details to use in their writing
  • Research basic background information on the dance and film
  • Create a structure that would convey the information clearly in support of the thesis
  • Understand arguments made by dance scholars about the nature of jazz dance
  • Quote from those arguments to support their own discussion
  • Examine their own subjectivity as a jazz dancer and viewer to understand how their point of view influences the way they see the dance
  • Create an engaging “hook” to capture the reader’s attention

3. How can I scaffold these steps through class activities and Daily Writing?

In answering this question, I was addressing Applebee and Langer’s (1983) second step in instructional scaffolding, “select strategies that can be used to overcome the specific difficulties anticipated” (p.169). After looking at my list, I determined that several of these ideas could be addressed through a Daily Writing assignment. My own experience of the writing process is somewhat non-linear, and one of the challenges I have as a teacher is in sequencing writing assignments for students because I know that the process could unfold successfully in many different ways. However, I know it is important to provide a clear structure for students to work within and a timeline to keep us all on track during a very busy semester.

I considered the reading assignments we would be doing as well, many of which came from the first four chapters of the book   Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches   (Guarino and Oliver, 2014) where scholars argue about the definition of jazz dance. One of the supports provided to students in this assignment is that it can be completed with minimal out-of-class research; while students are welcome to research additional viewpoints to bring in, the readings assigned in class provide an excellent framework for engaging with the ideas. Students can then focus their attention on developing strategies for responding to those ideas and crafting their own arguments. Because the students would need to read these chapters and have time to unpack them in class, I determined that the associated Daily Writing should come in later. I also took into consideration the timeline of the semester and the other activities we would be doing, including allowing time for students to watch the film.

I reordered my list and made notes about how the various components could be addressed through Daily Writing and/or in-class and other homework activities.

1. Examine their own subjectivity as a jazz dancer and viewer to understand how their point of view influences the way they see the dance

Write Daily Writing based on prompt

Share and discuss in class

2. Understand arguments made by dance scholars about the nature of jazz dance

Read chapters from Jazz Dance book

Discuss points of view of each author in groups

Read “Part I: They Say” in   They Say, I Say

Write Daily Writing to capture understanding of each author’s argument

3. Quote from those arguments to support their own discussion

Discuss each author’s argument in more detail

Watch clips of different examples of jazz dance and consider how each author might respond

Describe their own response to the author’s argument

Read “Part II: They Say” in   They Say, I Say

Write Daily Writing to practice framing a response to each author

4. Describe the movement in the dance and select details to use in their writing

Watch the film   NY Export: Opus Jazz   and make notes about movement they see

Write Daily Writing to practice creating a detailed movement description

Exchange Daily Writing to give feedback

5. Research basic background information on the dance and film

Read biographical information on Jerome Robbins and do reading quiz

Work independently to watch documentary and research

Optional: Attend tutoring session on library databases

6. Create an engaging “hook” to capture the reader’s attention

Read examples of hooks used by other authors in   Jazz Dance   book

Describe strategies those authors used

Write Daily Writing to practice creating a hook and setting up for a thesis statement

Exchange Daily Writing and give feedback

7. Create an arguable thesis

Read and evaluate several possible thesis statements

Discuss features of a strong thesis statement

Draft a working thesis that conveys their developing ideas

8. Create a structure that would convey the information clearly in support of the thesis

Use information and ideas developed in above assignments

Draft the paper as a longer Daily Writing assignment

Exchange and review papers with a peer or tutor, paying attention to the development of the argument

4. How do I prompt the Daily Writing assignments?

To complete the design of instructional scaffolding, Applebee and Langer (1983) explain that teachers must “structure the activity as a whole to make those strategies explicit (through questioning and modelling) at appropriate places in the task sequence” (p. 169). The design of the informal writing assignments, then, functions to make explicit to students, through both the prompt and their own experience of engaging with it, the knowledge, skills, and processes that are essential for the formal writing project.

When I was creating the prompts for my Daily Writing assignments, I took into consideration the amount of time I would be spending in class on the assignment before students worked independently. For most of the prompts shared here, I determined that I might not have significant time in class to set the students up for the assignment, so I wanted my prompts to be something that was relatively self-explanatory. If I had more time to set each one up in class, I might have given shorter written prompts.

I decided to start with the assignment that I felt would be easiest for most of the students, one where they were asked to reflect on their own history and experiences relative to jazz dance. In my approach to guiding students to view and respond to dance, I encourage writing in the first person. I want students to understand how their lived experiences as dancers give them unique insights into what they are viewing and shape their receptivity to other ideas. Since many students have developed, though not formally articulated, their own ideas and personal definitions of jazz dance, I felt it was important to ask them to unpack these first before moving onto the scholarly debates.

Daily Writing: Subjectivity, or, My Life in Jazz Dance

“Subjectivity” refers to your sense of self in relation to the world you live in.

In some academic disciplines, students are taught to ignore or downplay their own lived experiences and cultural identities for fear that these will weaken their writing by showing bias. In other academic traditions, we understand that all knowledge is created by human beings who have subjectivities; by examining our own subjectivity we can better understand how we make meaning of phenomena in the world and better develop and support our scholarly ideas by drawing on lived experiences to inform our analysis. Rather than trying to ignore or mask our influences—which many scholars say is impossible—we examine them and write about those that are relevant. We make our backgrounds known to our readers, leaving them to discern if we have adequately developed and supported our argument.

With that in mind–and knowing that you will be writing a paper about jazz dance—write about your life in jazz dance.

Some ideas to get you started: What does the term “jazz dance” mean to you, and what experiences have you had that shaped that definition?

What cultural groups related to the history of jazz dance are you a part of (and perhaps, what cultural groups are you not a part of)?

What is your experience with music, improvisation, and dance in social settings?

What are your preferences as a mover? As an audience member? How do these shape your relationship with jazz dance?

Are there aspects of jazz dance that are not part of your lived experiences? What are these, and how do you feel about these unfamiliar aspects?

To provide a framework for responding to the authors they were reading, I decided to have students use the book  They Say, I Say  (Graff and Birkenstein, 2009) to support their understanding of how to engage in writing as a conversation. The templates in  They Say, I Say   provide an easy entry point for responding to any author, particularly those who express a strong viewpoint about an idea the writer wants to engage with. I found that they also work well for practicing writing, because one can jump right in with a template and begin to craft a clear statement that links one’s ideas with something another author has stated.

Daily Writing: “They Say”

“Whenever you enter into a conversation with others in your writing, then, it is extremely important that you go back to what those others have said, that you study it very closely, and that you not confuse it with something you already believe.” (Graff and Berkenstein, 2009, p. 33)

Using techniques for summarizing and introducing quotations ( They Say, I Say   chapters 2 and 3), set up a conversation by introducing key ideas from the author (Cohen, Boross, Siegenfeld, or Wray) you focused on in class.

Choose the key ideas based on how you might use this author’s work in a later paper—or as Graff and Berkenstein (2009) advise, “summarize authors in light of your own arguments” (p. 35). Make use of the templates and advice in   They Say, I Say .

Be sure that you include appropriate citations for the author(s) you reference.

Daily Writing: “I Say”

After reading the chapters 1-4 in   Jazz Dance , consider:

What provokes you?

What ideas do you want to respond to?

Choose an idea from each of the three authors you didn’t focus on in the last DW,   and practice writing a brief response (“I Say”) using each of the template types (Yes/ No/ OK But). While you will need to give a brief “They Say” to situate your response,   focus on the “I Say” portion   and practice using the techniques/templates in your book.

(Hint: If you can’t find something that you actually agree/disagree with, take the position that you do to get practice using the templates.)

Previously in class we have done activities to support movement description where we view a clip of a dance together and work through various strategies for describing movement. Therefore, I wanted students to work more independently on this task. I created a very basic prompt to give students reminders and invited them to focus on describing those aspects of the work that would be the most interesting relative to their focus for the paper.

Daily Writing: Movement Descriptions of   Opus Jazz

Watch the entire DVD of Jerome Robbins’s   NY Export: Opus Jazz   including the special features.

Choose one or more sections that particularly interests you relative to Paper 3. You might choose to focus on a section that, in your view, clearly demonstrates features of jazz dance, or a section that includes movement vocabulary that you feel is not accurately described as jazz dance.

Use this Daily Writing to write a detailed, evocative, rich description of the movement you see.

In looking closely at the movement and generating your descriptions, consider the following categories of dance elements:

Movement Qualities

Relationships

Focus your writing on those ideas that seem most pertinent to you and give your reader a clear and engaging picture of what you see.

Finally, I created the Daily Writing prompt for the “hook.” The actual writing students were asked to create was very short, but required focus and creativity. Despite my suggestions that students begin drafting their formal paper early on, I knew that most had not yet done so. I also know that for many writers—myself included—even when we know we  can  start anywhere in the paper, we feel we need to start at the beginning in order to get the “push” to launch our essays. Therefore, I decided to assign a prompt for creating a hook in the hopes that students might create vivid openings to their papers that would not only engage their readers from the beginning, but would also grab the writer’s attention and provide some initial motivation to keep going with the paper.

Daily Writing: Hook for Paper 3

Use this Daily Writing as a chance to focus specifically on your “hook” for Paper 3. How might you grab your reader’s attention and lead into your more formal introduction and thesis? Perhaps a detailed movement description, personal anecdote, choice quote or epigraph, or problem/dilemma can serve as an engaging entry point for your paper.

For some examples of effective hooks, see Chapter 22: “The Transmission of African-American Concert Dance and American Jazz Dance” (Miller) and Chapter 32: “Performing Energy” (Sigenfeld) in your   Jazz Dance   textbook.

This DW should be shorter than usual, only 1 or possibly 2 paragraphs. However, if you have more of your paper drafted, bring that as well to class so that you can consider how your hook grabs readers’ interest and sets up for the ideas to come.

What did I learn?

Purposefully scaffolding the Daily Writing prompts to lead into the formal Paper assignment was a useful strategy for strengthening the instruction in my course. I developed strategies that connected both the content we were reading and viewing in class and the writing skills I wanted students to develop, all in assignments that helped students to begin drafting material that they could potentially use in the paper. As an instructor, I felt more focused in my use of class time during this unit, because I could easily respond to students when they asked “Can we talk about the next paper that’s coming up?” and I could show them the purpose and relevance of the assignments I was asking them to do for each class session.

While I did not do formal research on the assessment process for this Paper, I did informally note that the papers as a whole had clearer thesis statements, were more cohesive in connecting ideas from multiple sources with the author’s own ideas and movement descriptions, and were more sophisticated in their use of quotations. Compared to the last course in which I gave this assignment (where I used some, but not all, of these Daily Writing prompts) I saw more variation across papers in the kinds of arguments being made and the level of nuance brought to the thesis statements.

In the future, I will work on developing similar sets of preparatory assignments for each formal paper throughout the course. In the History II course, I plan to pilot a process for students to sketch out the preparatory assignments themselves to guide them through working more independently on the writing process.

1. Examine your prompt and rubric.

What is the assignment asking students to do? Is the prompt specific enough to communicate your goals, but broad enough to allow for student choice? Will you give additional discussion and verbal instruction in class to support the written prompt, or do the assignment guidelines need to convey everything the student should know about your expectations?

2. Make a list of all the things students will need in order to be successful.

Include both content knowledge and writing skills. Consider how you can sequence this knowledge and skills in your instruction. For instance, there many be content knowledge that is new to students that will require significant attention in the instruction, but you may also have on your list items that students are already familiar with where a quick review or independent assignment may be adequate.

3. What activities will support students in developing and/or refining the knowledge and skills that they need?

Decide which items from your list might be supported through an informal writing prompt. Re-order your list, considering the timing relative to your class meetings and other activities in your course, such as assigned readings, as well as the priority you place on each idea. Consider giving one informal writing assignment due at each class meeting for a face-to-face class for peer sharing.

4. Develop informal writing prompts connected to the formal assignment.

Remember, these are informal writing assignments, so your prompts might not need to be detailed and specific, especially if you will use class time to give further explanation or have students start their writing. As low-stakes assignments, the prompts should encourage students to experiment with ideas or processes without pressure to have a polished product.

5. Remind students of the connections.

When you give the informal writing assignment in class, help students understand how it is connected to the formal assignment they will do later on.

When students begin working on the formal assignment, encourage them to draw from material created in their informal assignments. If the exact text does not apply to their paper, help them understand how the process they used to create their informal assignments can be transferred to meet the goals of their formal paper.

The process of scaffolding writing instruction is one that is highly applicable to the college classroom, both in discipline-specific contexts as well as general composition courses.

Massengill (2011) describes a discipline-specific approach to instructional scaffolding in a sociology seminar course. She expects students to build both content knowledge and writing skills as they prepare to write an essay applying theoretical concepts from assigned readings to create an analysis of consumption as seen in contemporary media. She notes that when given the assignment, “Students inevitably read this assignment and protest that they do not know how to do it” (p. 374). She then explains:

I work to model in class the kind of intellectual work that students will need to do in the paper. Most importantly, I lead students through an exercise designed to make clear to them how they can use these texts – not just cite them or summarize them – to construct a theoretical framework. In effect, we practice higher-level thinking skills in class, modeling the process that students will need to use, individually, to write their essays. (pp. 376-377)

Massengill’s article is particularly useful for instructors because she offers detailed descriptions of the teaching activities she deploys, including informal writing activities, such as pre-draft assignments, in-class freewriting, and drafts for peer review, as well as seminar activities where she works with students to break down the idea of scholarly writing as entering a conversation with other authors. Massengill also shares inspiring excerpts from her students’ essays and their reflections on the writing process and encourages educators to adopt these kinds of activities for helping students to integrate thinking and writing in a college classroom.

McNaught and Benson (2015) describe efforts to revise a first-year writing course where preparatory assignments were structured with timely feedback in a scaffolded assessment process. In describing the benefits of this process, they note how breaking a large project into smaller tasks provides support to the learner and decreases the likelihood of students procrastinating. In their instructional design, students complete an outline of an essay and submit it for feedback prior to commencing with their writing. They note that this approach “helps students to choose the most effective and efficient path in the beginning rather than losing time, particularly with a research cycle phase of writing and planning” (p. 77). In their study, they note an increase in the percentage of students successfully meeting the benchmark criteria in this course when the scaffolded assessment was introduced. Because the assignments used in their instructional scaffolding were assessed, with instructors spending substantial amount of time giving students feedback, their article is particularly useful for readers who want to make the scaffolded assignments part of the grading criteria in their course.

McNaught and Benson (2015) do raise an important point about instructional scaffolding, however. Just as scaffolding on a building is intended to be removed, instructional scaffolding is intended to help students work through academic processes they may not yet be able to complete successfully and then removed as the students internalize their learning and apply it to future projects. As the authors note, “[i]f the use of scaffolded assessments results in students being dependent on the approach, rather than being up-skilled by its use, then it potentially has a negative long-term impact, albeit a very positive short-term impact” (p. 84). They describe the importance for instructors to make students aware of the use of the scaffolded assessments in class and build their understanding that, as they progress to more challenging courses, such supports will not be provided.

In this module, instructional scaffolding was presented largely through the use of Daily Writing, informal, low-stakes writing assignments that targeted specific content or skills and helped students generate material that may be used in some form in a later assignment. The importance of this kind of writing is echoed by Bean (2011), who concludes that “my single most valuable teaching strategy for promoting critical thinking is to require regular exploratory writing in response to disciplinary problems that I provide” (p. 121). In   Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom , he offers a wealth of examples and strategies for incorporating informal, exploratory writing into courses. Among these are “Invention Tasks for Formal Assignments” (pp. 138-142), which include:

Tasks for Scaffolding a Major Assignment (p. 139)

Rapid First Drafts (p. 139)

Practice Essay Exams (p. 140)

Thesis Statement Writing (p. 141)

Paragraph Templates (pp. 141-142)

Readers may find Bean’s work particularly valuable because he oscillates between general strategies applicable across disciplines and specific, topic-focused examples that illustrate potential applications of his teaching ideas. For those still not convinced of the utility or practicality of these approaches, Bean offers his responses to common objections along with helpful tips for assessing exploratory writing and managing the instructor’s workload.

Applebee, A. N., & Langer, J. A. (1983). Instructional scaffolding: Reading and writing as natural language activities.   Language Arts ,   60 (2), 168–175.

Bean, J. C. (2011).   Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom   (2nd ed). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

CAST. (2014). UDL Guidelines: Theory & Practice Version | National Center On Universal Design for Learning. Retrieved December 28, 2016, from http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines_theorypractice

Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2009).   They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing   (2 edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Guarino, L., & Oliver, W. (Eds.). (2014).   Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches . University Press of Florida.

Jost, H., & Lipes, J. L. (2010).   NY Export: Opus Jazz . Factory 25.

Massengill, R. P. (2011). Sociological writing as higher-level thinking: Assignments that cultivate the sociological imagination.   Teaching Sociology ,   39 (4), 371–381.

McNaught, K., & Benson, S. (2015). Increasing student performance by changing the assessment practices within an academic writing unit in an enabling program.   The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education ,   6 (1), n/a. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.jproxy.lib.ecu.edu/10.5204/intjfyhe.v6i1.249

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Black History Month for Kids: Google Slides, Resources, and More!

18 Effective Ways To Scaffold Learning in the Classroom

Tips and ideas for teachers and school leaders.

Examples of ways to scaffold learning, including giving talk time and using think-alouds to model.

Looking for a scaffolded instructional approach for students with unique learning needs? Find out why one teacher says Unique Learning System supports positive student outcomes while saving her time .

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Providing students with better instructional scaffolding is often a schoolwide objective, but how can school leaders and teachers put this big idea into practice? Imagine someone plopping a giant box of odds and ends in front of you and telling you to figure out what to do with them with no further instructions. Without being told the purpose of the activity, specific expectations, or background information, it would be overwhelming and discouraging to say the least. Almost all students, particularly those with unique learning needs, have felt exactly this way in the classroom at one time or another. Luckily there are many strategies educators can use to help students, and among the most important is scaffolding.

Below you’ll learn more about scaffolding in education, including 18 effective ways to scaffold learning. If you’re a teacher, integrate these as best practices, and observe their impact. If you’re an administrator, share these practices with your teachers, and look for them during classroom walk-throughs.

What is scaffolding in education?

Scaffolding is a way to provide support for students by breaking down learning into manageable chunks as they progress toward stronger understanding and ultimately greater independence. In other words, it’s a way for teachers to provide support while students master new concepts and skills.

The strategy is based on the work of Russian psychologist Len Vygotsky , whose theories stress the fundamental role of social interaction in cognitive development. He theorized that children learn best when they interact with other people, particularly more knowledgeable people, who provide guidance and encouragement to master new skills.

Using the much-lauded concept the Zone of Proximal Development , teachers can guide, support, and encourage students as they help them develop problem-solving strategies that can be generalized to other situations.

Scaffolding Strategies

1. teach mini-lessons.

Break down new concepts into bite-sized pieces that build on one another. Teaching a series of mini-lessons provides students with a safety net that moves them progressively toward deeper understanding.

Learn more: Essentials of a Mini-Lesson

2. Use explicit instruction

One of the best practices in supporting learners is the use of systematic, explicit instruction. That is, instruction that includes clear modeling, think-alouds, and multiple examples, which are described in greater detail below. In addition, immediate corrective feedback is critical. Catching students’ errors while they’re still practicing will prevent them from learning the skill incorrectly and then continuing to practice it incorrectly for homework and on other assignments.

Learn more: Explicit Instruction: Best Practices for Teaching Math to Unique Learners

3. Use think-alouds to model or demonstrate

One of the best ways to scaffold learning is to show your students an example of what they will be learning. For example, demonstrate a science experiment so they can see how it’s done before they do it themselves. Or gather them on the rug and let them watch you solve a math problem in a new way. Verbalize your thought process as you demonstrate. Use a think-aloud strategy to give your students a model for an inner dialogue they can copy.

Learn more: Improve Reading Comprehension With Think-Alouds

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4. Describe concepts in multiple ways

Support different learning styles by approaching new concepts from multiple angles. Show them, tell them, and let them try it for themselves. The more ways you approach learning, the more sense it will make for students.

Learn more: Different Learning Styles: What Teachers Need To Know

5. Break large tasks into smaller steps

Sometimes it’s hard for students to remember all the steps they have to follow for an assignment. Scaffold learning by breaking down directions into chunks that students can complete one step at a time. Give them a checklist that they can follow. By breaking it down, you’re providing scaffolds that students need.

Learn more: Chunking Information for Instructional Design

6. Slow down

Here is some great advice from elementary teacher Tammy DeShaw. “We move so fast as teachers because we fear that we won’t get through it all,” she says. “But when we slow down and give students more time to process, we are really helping students. It is an effective scaffolding strategy when we pause at various points of instruction and break it up. Think about it. If something is above your head, it’s immediately overwhelming. But if you break it into manageable chunks and take your time through it, you’re able to process it much better!”

Learn more: Scaffolding Strategies

7. Incorporate visual aids

Show a video, pass out colorful images, or provide a concrete object to start off a new lesson. For example, if you’re teaching a lesson on polyhedrons, place models of different types on tables for students to see and touch.

Learn more: Making the Most of Visual Aids

8. Front-load concept-specific vocabulary

Arm students with specific academic language they will need to understand ahead of time so that vocabulary doesn’t become a stumbling block to higher-level learning.

Learn more: Pre-Teach Vocabulary

9. Activate prior knowledge

Show students the big picture. Make connections to concepts and skills students have already learned. Connect to experiences they have had, such as field trips or other projects.

Learn more: Teaching Reading Strategies: Activate Prior Knowledge

10. Give students talk time

Be sure to give kids plenty of time to process new information by partnering them up or breaking them into small groups. Have them articulate concepts in their own words to one another. Come back together as a whole group and share any insights that might be helpful to everyone.

Learn more: Cooperative Learning Structures: Fun Alternatives to Think-Pair-Share

11. Give students time to practice

After you model learning for your students, take some time to practice with them. Have a few students come up to the board and try a math problem. Or write a paragraph together on chart paper. Think of this guided practice as a series of rehearsals before the final performance.

Learn more: The I Do, WE Do, YOU Do Model Explained

12. During lessons, check for understanding

Check in often to make sure students are with you. A simple thumbs-up, a sticky note check-in, or a desktop flip chart are a few of the ways you can check for understanding. See who’s good to go, who’s almost there, and who needs some one-on-one.

Learn more: Creative Ways To Check for Understanding

13. Use graphic organizers

A graphic organizer is a powerful visual learning tool that teachers can use to help students organize their thinking before, during, or after a lesson. They are a great way for students to classify and communicate their ideas more effectively. A simple Google search will connect you to all kinds of printable graphic organizers that you can customize to the material you are teaching.

Learn more: Graphic Organizers 101

14. Try sentence starters

Sometimes a head start helps students gather their thoughts. Provide students with the first part of a statement and ask them to fill in the blanks. Sentence starters can be an especially great support for English-language learners.

Learn more: Using Sentence Stems in the Classroom

15. Coach students to help each other

When learning a new concept or reading a difficult passage together, call on a strong student to answer a question. Then, call on another student to repeat, in his or her own words, what was just said. By listening and repeating, you reinforce your students’ understanding.

Learn more: Fun Ways To Help Your Students Collaborate in the Classroom

16. Set clear expectations

Students (like most of us) perform better when they fully understand what is expected of them. Describe the purpose of the assignment, and give them concrete examples of the learning goals they are expected to achieve. Give them clear directions and show them exemplars of high-quality work. Finally, provide them with a rubric so they know exactly what to do to successfully master the concept.

Learn more: Developing Clear Expectations for Learning

17. Ask open-ended questions

Another important tool we have is questioning. Asking questions allows students to organize their thoughts and elaborate on their processes. The key is making sure you ask meaningful questions. Make sure they can’t be answered with a simple yes or no. In addition, the questions you ask should require reflection. And finally, questions should direct students to important, pivotal aspects of the task they are working on.

Learn more: Instructional Scaffolding Strategies

18. Use technology

Technology can help simplify the scaffolding process. Make playlists of lecture videos for students to watch before the lesson. This will allow them to preview the material and be ready to engage with the content in class. Another tip is to provide links to websites that have different ways to engage with the content, such as videos, games, articles, or demonstrations.

Many online curriculum programs are adaptive, meaning they can assess what a student knows and what information they need next. This allows students to follow a personalized learning path toward meeting learning objectives.

Learn more: Using Technology to Scaffold Student Learning

Does scaffolding learning really work?

Overall, scaffolding is an extremely effective instructional strategy when both administrators and teachers embrace and implement it consistently. But like any teaching strategy, scaffolding has its benefits and challenges.

Benefits of scaffolding:

  • Promotes a positive learning environment because students feel supported and are able to ask questions, encourage their classmates, and offer their opinions.
  • Builds students’ confidence as they progress to more difficult tasks.
  • Leads to higher engagement, which motivates students to learn more on their own.
  • Improves comprehension and problem-solving.
  • Allows teachers to move to a facilitator role, guiding students to take ownership of their own learning.

Challenges of scaffolding:

  • Takes more planning and is more time-consuming as teachers need to evaluate lessons and figure out where scaffolding is needed.
  • Finding appropriate scaffolds that match the diverse learning and communication styles of students.
  • Correctly identifying students’ zone of proximal development.
  • Knowing when to taper off and allow students to work independently.
  • Releasing more responsibility to students.

How do you scaffold learning for your students? Come share in our WeAreTeacher Helpline group on Facebook .

Plus, check out these creative ways to check for understanding..

Breaking learning into manageable chunks, modeling, and guided practice are some of the ways to scaffold learning for your students.

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  • Learning Environments

Scaffolding assignments - how and why?

Assignment scaffolding is the process of breaking tasks down into smaller steps. It may also involve creating more detailed assessment instructions or rubrics, or splitting a large assignment or exam into smaller assessments.

Why is scaffolding assignments an important part of student learning?

  • It helps students master the intended learning outcomes of the assessment by breaking up the cognitive tasks so that they are smaller and more manageable.
  • It recognises learning as a process where one skill or achievement is mastered before the next.
  • It provides students with greater feedback and intervention opportunities when needed.
  • Students can access more frequent feedback as they develop their assessment.
  • It may help foster higher levels of critical thinking as students are guided through a series of tasks, starting with more simple tasks that lead to more complex tasks. Without guiding students through these steps, students may not engage with an activity at an anticipated level.

Example scenario: using scaffolding in assignments

Let’s say Tom delivers a subject that asks students to write a 4,000 word final report worth 70% of the final grade. Although students are engaged throughout the subject and appear to understand the content, they seem to struggle when they get to their final report.

What can Tom do?

Tom could scaffold this assignment in several ways.

1. Provide formative activities that further support student learning

Although summative assessments (assessment- of -learning) measure how much students have learned, formative assessments (assessment- for -learning) go beyond this to allow students to learn during the assessment.

Tom’s 4,000 word report could include a number of components. For example, an executive summary, literature review, a critical analysis, a list of references and so on. Formative activities could help students develop the right skills needed for each of these components. Here are a few examples of formative activities that Tom could employ:

Formative activities

  • A mind-mapping activity that has students work in pairs during a collaborative session to map out the structure of an argument or report,
  • A break-out room activity that has students complete challenges in teams that involve the application of critical thinking skills, such as developing a hypothesis, or critically analysing a position,
  • An asynchronous discussion that takes place in an LMS discussion, where students are given a simpler challenge that requires posting and replying to their peers.

2. Break 'high-stakes' summative assessments into several 'low-stakes' assessments

Alternatively, Tom could break his larger assignment into smaller assessments and deliver these across the semester. For example, a 70% report could become a 40% task. This would mean Tom then needs to lower his word count, but this would then be incorporated into the other assessment tasks. The remaining 30% could then be assessed through an alternative assessment that has the dual function of assessing how much students have learnt (e.g. via other formative activities), and prepare them or for the larger assessment.

Let’s take as an example an assignment that asks students to choose their own topic. The first assignment could include a topic selection and justification activity, where the students introduce their chosen topic to their peers, justify it as a suitable topic, and discuss how they will tackle it. To enhance feedback opportunities even further, Tom could include a peer-feedback step, where students read, watch or listen to the submissions made by their peers, and provide feedback as their own submissions are reviewed by their peers.

By replacing a fraction of a high-stakes assessment with a lower-stake assessment, or better yet, several lower-stake assessments, one opens to the door to greater feedback opportunities. This feedback allows students to identify knowledge gaps or skills shortages, as well as promoting meta-cognitive and life-long learning where students can further reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and act upon these for further improvement. Sure, you can achieve this through formative non-graded assessments as well, but by including low-stakes graded assessments in the mix, students may be even more motivated to complete the tasks and reflect upon and renew their approaches as a result of that feedback.

3. Scaffold the task through the instructions

Although a great deal of scaffolding can take place in formative and low-stakes summative assessments, scaffolding can also take place in an assessment brief.  Here, clear and sufficiently detailed instruction should be presented, along with details about how the assessment will be graded, typically by way of a marking rubric. All ambiguity should be cleared, and steps should be logically sequenced and signposted.

Steps to consider when designing an assignment brief:

  • Always have the end product in mind and be upfront about what this is so students don’t need to read exhaustive amounts to understand what they need to do.
  • Break up the steps using bullet points and sub-headings
  • Make sure the title is descriptive and that it matches what you have in your subject handbook
  • Be clear about the length required, eg: Word limits, etc.
  • Make sure to include a description for every task that is clear and concise regarding what the students have to do
  • Ensure the marking rubric is clear about how each task will be assessed, and that this can be easily read alongside the assessment instructions
  • Provide a place where students can ask further questions about the assignment. (But remember, if students are needing to ask a lot of questions about what they have to do, then perhaps it is time to revisit the assessment description, and to improve any part of it based on the above.)

4. Provide supporting materials

If it is clear through the assessment brief what the students need to do, but students face other kinds of difficulties, such as applying research skills, or structuring their thoughts and writing their ideas or other similar academic skills, you may need to provide more supporting materials. You can lead students to these resources by adding further links on an LMS assessment page, or have a series of pages and links in a subject information or orientation module.

To see examples of how you can share supporting materials to your students through a well-designed LMS subject, you may like to further explore  LMS subject design which includes examples of how best to structure your LMS assignments, and provides an example of a student support module.

Have you considered using Cadmus?

There are several tools available in the LMS to help you design scaffolded assignments, including Cadmus . Cadmus is an assessment tool that is integrated with the LMS and allows you to use templates to deliver learning-centred assessment instructions that can be sequenced and chunked in a student-friendly way.

For further information on scaffolding assignments, please contact Learning Environments and chat to one of our learning designers.

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Scaffolding Assignments

Scaffolding your larger, complex writing assignments allows students to break down the writing process and develop their work in smaller manageable pieces. Between the time that an assignment is announced and the time the final product is due, you can guide students through a series of activities and smaller assignments that prepare them to complete the larger, more complex assignment successfully. At the least, having multiple assignment steps keeps students from completing all of the work the night before the due date; at best, these scaffolds encourage meaningful engagement with each writing task and allow students to reflect about their learning and processes. Scaffolding also provides a chance for you and/or student peers to review the work-in-progress and provide feedback when adjustments are easier to make.

Initial Questions

Ask yourself these initial questions before designing your scaffolded assignments:

  • What overall course learning outcomes does this assignment meet?
  • What criteria will you use to evaluate the end product?
  • What skills would students need to develop to meet those criteria?
  • What steps might experts follow in completing this writing task?

Ideas for Scaffolding Assignments

In-class activities*

  • Brainstorming for topic generation
  • Freewriting about possible topic
  • Review of resources available
  • Reading a journal article together
  • Creation of project timeline
  • Practice of skills needed in assignment
  • Integrating sources workshop
  • Thesis statement workshop
  • Rubric discussion or generation
  • Review/analysis of example assignments
  • Peer review of outlines
  • Oral draft to share in small groups
  • Peer review of written draft

Short Assignments

  • Audience/stakeholder analysis
  • Research Question or Thesis
  • Annotated Bibliography
  • ¾ Drafts

Instructor Personal Interaction

  • Assignment “check ins” with questions for instructor
  • Review proposals
  • Provide feedback on drafts or any scaffolded assignment

*Many of these activities can also be done outside class as homework or through Canvas discussion boards and then briefly followed up on in class.

Example Scaffolded Assignments

Website Article Assignment Prompt :  For this assignment, you will be writing for the website of the community farmer’s market in Oxford, OH. Your task is to synthesize current research on the benefits of a varied diet for the website visitors. By synthesizing, you are expected to integrate multiple sources (at least four) into conversation with one another. In other words, you should not summarize each source paragraph-by-paragraph.

Website Article Scaffolding:  Based upon a class that has two meetings a week (ex: Tuesday and Thursday)

Class Meeting 1:  Assignment introduction; students introduced to necessary resources; in class, the students do a group rhetorical analysis of the existing website, including identifying the audiences of the website (and their expectations) and familiarizing themselves with the current writing style of the site.

Class Meeting 2:   Due:  Annotated bibliography of five sources

Class Meeting 3:  Instructor feedback given on annotated bibliographies 

Class Meeting 4:   Due:  ¾ rough draft of website article; peer review

Class Meeting 5:  Final draft due

Class Meeting 6:  Instructor feedback on final drafts given by end of week

Class Meeting 7:  Due: Optional revisions; Instructor submits top three student articles to website for the editors to pick what is published

Policy Analysis and Recommendation Assignment Prompt :  For this major assignment, you will research one problem facing non-western societies that we discussed in class. You will learn more about this problem through library research, finding peer-reviewed academic articles and sources that pass the CRAAP test (at least four). Your paper will have three sections. First, you will analyze the problem using the five perspectives learned in class, using specific cited examples from your sources. Next, you will identify and explain several policy options, and finally recommend a final policy to address the problem.

Policy Analysis and Recommendation Scaffolding:  Based upon a class that has two meetings a week (ex: Tuesday and Thursday)

Class Meeting 1:  Introduction to assignment; review of library resources and CRAAP test; students given fifteen minutes to brainstorm what problems they are interested in and do initial searches for sources

Class Meeting 2:  Project proposal assigned, which requires explaining which problem they will be analyzing and providing summaries of one academic and one popular or technical source (which passes the CRAAP test); In-class, the instructor guides students through practicing analysis using the five perspectives

Class Meeting 3:   Due:  Project proposal; review of example policy analysis papers to understand organization, language used, tone, depth of analysis required, citations, etc.

Class Meeting 4:  Instructor feedback given on proposals; thirty minutes of in-class workshop time to find sources, instructor checks in with each student

Class Meeting 5:   Due:  Outline of final paper; students submit their questions to instructor; students meet in groups to share their outline ideas and provide suggestions

Class Meeting 6:   Due:  Full draft for peer review; instructor checks for draft completeness and quality of peer feedback (substantive, follows set criteria)

Class Meeting 7:   Due : Final drafts

Class Meeting 8:  Nothing due

Class Meeting 9:  Students receive final draft feedback from instructor

Class Meeting 10 or 11:   Due : Revisions

Be strategic

Carefully consider when, how, and why you apply scaffolding activities and assignments, and weigh theCarefully consider when, how, and why you apply scaffolding activities and assignments, and weigh the grading/stakes appropriately. Refer to the following table as a guide. grading/stakes appropriately. Refer to the table below as a guide.

And remember...even low-stakes assignments need detailed instructions, explicit rationale, and credit/incentive for completion. If you don’t tell students why they’re being asked to do something, (especially low-stakes activities and assignments), they may see it as busy work. Help students see how the assignment/activity builds toward the larger goal and/or helps their learning in some way. This also helps with transfer.      

Types of writing assignments that can be assigned at various points in the learning process.

Resources for Additional Scaffolding Ideas

  • This  page of assignments  from previous HCWE guest speaker Shelley Rodrigo, University of Arizona (links to presentation, scroll to page 8) 
  • John Bean’s  Engaging Ideas , especially Chapters 7 & 8 (links to online book in Miami's library)

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Designing Research Assignments

  • Scaffolding
  • Rethinking Requirements
  • The BEAM Method
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Assuming Students are Good at Research

Students are very good at finding things online. They are less adept at evaluating the resources they locate and utilizing them to support or refute a point they are making or engaging in the academic conversation on a given topic.

Instead of assuming students are good at research, consider designing research assignments as though students know little to nothing about the academic research process and scaffold assignments as much as possible. This allows students to build a foundation for their future work. Throughout the assignment, incorporate elements of threshold concepts in information literacy alongside those from your discipline. 

Scaffolding Examples

One effective method of scaffolding is to take a complex assignment and break it into smaller components. Providing formative feedback on the earlier assignments will help students master each step in the process before proceeding further. This type of scaffolding helps students get started on complex assignments early and ensures that they are on track throughout.

Examples of how to scaffold complex assignments

Troubleshoot Scaffolding

Adapted from Skene, Allyson and Sarah Fedko. " Assignment Scaffolding ." Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Toronto Scarborough,   https://ctl.utsc.utoronto.ca/technology/sites/default/files/scaffolding.pdf. 

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Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC BY-NC 4.0 Licenses .

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Chunking, Scaffolding, Pacing

Chunking  course materials means breaking down the presentation and pacing of your curriculum in a way that reduces the cognitive load on your students. Breaking your course materials into units, using formatting tools to make long documents more accessible, and using presentation techniques to convey importance are all a part of chunking your course materials. 

Scaffolding  is a similar concept addressing the pedagogy of your assignments and assessments: breaking them into smaller, cooperative pieces that provide opportunities for formative assessment and facilitate students achieving the learning goals you intend.

Both of these are naturally significant contributors to the pacing of your course.

Chunking content is important in any learning environment.  It allows students to engage with information in smaller, meaningful sections.  We don’t want to cognitively overwhelm or overload students.  

As you design your course, carefully consider the best way to chunk the material.  Many instructors breakdown course content into weekly modules.  That is what we have done in the UW Tacoma Online Template . If you have a course textbook, these modules may align with chapters or units from the book. A module can also be created to reflect weekly activities, topics, or major projects or course resources. 

Often, modules will be further broken down into several pages and, possibly, external links, files, and so on.  Each page will contain specific content related to one topic addressed in the learning module.  Again, the purpose of chunking is to create manageable pieces of content. 

For example:

An example of a Canvas module that has been "chunked"

Chunking Content on Individual Pages

As you develop pages, it is important to chunk information.  This can be accomplished through the use of:

  • Subheadings
  • Short paragraphs

As you look at the images below, which is easier to read and comprehend?  The image on the left is just one long paragraph of text, while the image on the right shows text that is chunked into segments with more spacing:

Scaffolding

What is scaffolding.

Scaffolding is a strategy used in education to help students reach their learning goals.  Through peer collaboration and instructor support, students move from their current skillset to building an understanding of course content.  Ideally, engagement with peers and the instructor helps the student develop skills he/she would not be able to acquire on their own.  You should be intentional as you design your course with scaffolding strategies in mind.  Here are a few suggestions:

Discussion Forums

  • When using discussions, provide specific rules for interaction. Students should be required to read and respond to each other.  After an initial post, set a minimum number of required responses to peers.  Discussions allow students to share knowledge and build additional insight.     
  • Provide students with examples of excellent discussion postings. Also, consider modeling appropriate interactions.  Students will observe how you interact and learn from it.

Projects/Research Papers

  • Sometimes, students complete activities and you realize it wasn’t at all what you expected.  This can happen in any course.  To avoid these issues, large projects or papers should be broken into smaller pieces with due dates throughout the semester.  This allows students to receive feedback and make adjustments as needed.  It also encourages proper pacing of projects.  Remember, exemplar work samples also scaffold learning. 

Supplemental Resources

  • Background knowledge varies from student to student.  Some have taken related courses and gained valuable experience and knowledge.  Others, especially in introductory level courses, may lack prior knowledge.  As you design your course, keep in mind that all learners may benefit from a separate listing of supplemental resources.  These resources provide additional insight for novice learners and enhance the learning experience for advanced learners.     

Additional Resources

  • Scaffolding Online Student Success
  • Scaffolding Learner Autonomy in Online University Courses

The pace of your course is an important aspect in promoting student success.  It should not feel too slow for students, resulting in boredom and decreased motivation.  Likewise, it should not be too fast, leaving students feeling anxious and overwhelmed.  In a traditional course, you read the expressions on students’ faces to determine when you need to speed up or slow down.  You do not have that advantage in an online course.

Content, activities, and assessments will comprise your learning modules.  Set a realistic goal for how much work can be completed in a week.  Remember you are an expert in this area, your students are still developing their skills and may take longer than expected to complete activities.  Also, remember additional time is needed to read responses and use technology tools. 

Consider using a visual tool, such as a calendar, to help pace the course.  Enter in due dates for activities and assessments.  If there is too much overlap or too heavy of a workload, students will not be able to devote adequate time to each assignment.  In addition, think about your role as the instructor.  Will you be able to provide timely and specific feedback for all work?  

Best practice in online course delivery is to have the entire class completed at the beginning of the quarter. This way students can see a big picture view of what they will be learning and can better plan for heavy weeks during the quarter. It allows for better time management and planning. 

If you're not able to have the course 100% completed, you'll need to determine when modules will open for students to view.  Keep this day consistent throughout the quarter and don't keep it a secret, Tell students when you will release content.   If each new module opens on a Monday, with assignments due on Sunday, make sure you are available on the weekends to answer questions.  If that schedule presents problems, consider opening new modules each Wednesday and having assignments due the following Tuesday.  Students count on being able to work at a steady pace and depend on your consistency and availability.     

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7 Scaffolding Learning Strategies for the Classroom

scaffolding assignments

What is Scaffolding in Education?

Scaffolding vs. differentiation, benefits of scaffolding in education, 4 strategies for scaffolding in the classroom, 3 scaffolding learning activities, faqs about scaffolding in education, helpful resource links.

Scaffolding is a classroom teaching technique in which instructors deliver lessons in distinct segments, providing less and less support as students master new concepts or material. Much like scaffolding on a building, this technique is meant to provide students with a framework for learning as they build and strengthen their understanding. When students reach the intended level of comprehension or mastery, the teacher can step back and gradually remove their support. 

For example, a middle school biology teacher may show students a video on mitosis, then have them take a short, open-book quiz aided by a glossary. After a classwide discussion on the topic, during which the teacher shows examples of mitosis and answers students’ questions, students may retake the quiz without textbooks to measure their comprehension. 

The scaffolding approach differs from traditional “independent learning” model, in which a teacher asks students to read an article as homework, write a five-page essay and hand it in by the end of the week without providing any additional structured support. (Students are typically able to ask questions, but many are hesitant.) In this scenario, students would be responsible for navigating their own way through new course content, which would likely prove challenging for students who do not learn well via independent study. 

The term “scaffolding” was first used in an educational context in the mid-1970s, coined by American psychologist Jerome Bruner. In The Child’s Conception of Language (ed. A. Sinclair, et al, 1978) Bruner describes scaffolding as: 

“…the steps taken to reduce the degrees of freedom in carrying out some task so that the child can concentrate on the difficult skill she is in the process of acquiring.” 

Scaffolding can also be explained by the phrase “I do, we do, you do,” wherein the teacher demonstrates, guides, then hands the reins to the students.  

Unlike scaffolding, which involves all students following discrete steps to master a concept, differentiation presents students with different types of lessons based on their abilities and preferences. 

For example, a teacher may assign most of the class to read a chapter of a book, then write a short paragraph discussing the chapter. However, there may be one or more students in the class for whom this type of assignment poses a challenge. For these students, the teacher may ask them to read a shortened or altered version of the text, then show they understand by answering some multiple choice questions about the text. The teacher is differentiating the type of assessments these students need in order to  be successful.    

Scaffolding and differentiation are used to achieve similar goals, in that they provide a way for educators to help students succeed while still being challenged and building upon existing knowledge. Both approaches may also be combined in a single lesson. Teachers may identify students who need differentiated lessons by first scaffolding their lessons, then determining whether students need alternative assignments to keep pace with their peers.

It may take some time for teachers to identify which students respond best to scaffolding or differentiation, if they don’t receive insight from students’ previous teachers and guidance counselors. However, knowing how to effectively engage all of their students can be extremely beneficial for overall classroom management .   The concepts of scaffolding and the “zone of proximal development” are sometimes used interchangeably, as both were developed around the same time. Psychologist Lev Vygotsy explained his zone of proximal development , or ZPD, as the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can achieve with guidance from a teacher. Therefore, the ZPD refers to the skills a learner is on the cusp of mastering, while scaffolding provides the support needed for the student to reach successive points of comprehension.

Even before it was given a name, the concept of scaffolding has proven itself an essential approach to education. Teachers find that scaffolding: 

  • Improves the likelihood that students will retain new information
  • Helps connect foundational knowledge to new concepts 
  • Engages students with their learning and tracking their own progress
  • Gives students more autonomy and independence in the classroom
  • Bridges student learning gaps in traditionally difficult course content
  • Reduces students’ feelings of frustration, confusion and negative self-perceptions in the classroom
  • Improves communication between students and teachers 
  • Allows students to “fail productively” and encourages asking for help
  • Keeps classes organized and on schedule

When both teachers and students can follow an instructional roadmap and actively participate in the transfer of knowledge, fewer students are likely to become lost and give up on difficult concepts. If a teacher chooses to scaffold differentiated lessons for certain students, overall student performance is likely to soar. 

If teachers are new to scaffolding, implementing the strategy into practice can be challenging or time consuming. However, the benefits of improved learning retention and better overall performance far outweigh the effort expended. Soon, scaffolding will become a natural part of the lesson planning process. 

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scaffolding assignments

No matter the instructional approach, teachers should always introduce new concepts to students in a way that meets their current level of comprehension. A tenth-grade geometry teacher wouldn’t begin a unit on the Pythagorean theorem without first ensuring that students knew what a hypotenuse was. 

Once teachers establish their students’ starting point, they can scaffold new course content by following this process: 

  • Break the new lesson into discrete units
  • Create assignments for each unit
  • Talk students through each assignment before they begin work
  • Explain the purpose of the lesson or assignment — answer the age-old question, “Why do we need to know this?”
  • Divide students into groups to discuss the assignment, plan their approach and support each other
  • Provide students with tips or examples of the completed assignment so they can compare their progress
  • Have students present their work for feedback and/or take an assessment to gauge understanding   

Examples of some of these steps can be illustrated with specific scaffolding strategies, including:

Show and tell: The teacher models a process or final product so students can see what they are meant to be creating. Show and tell can be used to demonstrate algebra equations, scientific models, artistic techniques and much more. Teachers can even extend show and tell to doing the first assignment along with the students following their initial demonstration. 

Making real-life connections: Sometimes, it can be challenging for students to understand why they need to know something or how it connects to the world outside of school. As the teacher, share an example of how an academic concept applies to your own life, then ask students if they have any similar examples. 

Start with vocabulary: If a student encounters a word they don’t recognize in a text about a new concept, they may start to feel out of their depth, and their engagement may falter. Before embarking on a new lesson or assigning independent reading, make sure students understand key vocabulary words so they don’t become lost. Again, connect new words to concepts students are already familiar with, and have students create their own vocabulary flash cards or “cheat sheets” (with examples) to refer back to. 

Use visual aids: There are countless studies demonstrating the increase in retention of visual over auditory information ( like this one from the University of Tennessee). Specifically, it’s been found that seeing images or visual demonstrations helps students understand and remember key concepts better than simply listening to the teacher explain them. Charts, models, slideshows, videos and other visual tools can all support student learning. 

Not every student will feel they need the same amount of scaffolding as others; some students may be able to demonstrate certain algebraic equations after one lesson, while others may need a week’s worth of teacher demonstrations and in-class exercises before they grasp the concept. It’s best to structure lessons to serve the greatest number of learners possible at once, and build in a chance to address both high achievers and those who need extra support. 

As they scaffold a lesson on new material, teachers must first confirm that students have adequate context. This can even be basic, foundational information — for example, as a teacher embarks on a lesson about the Boston Tea Party, they need to confirm that their students know where Boston is, what taxes are, why tea was so important at the time and why Britain might care if a shipload of it ended up in Boston Harbor. “No taxation without representation!” means nothing if students don’t understand what each of those words means.  

Once the teacher establishes a baseline for student understanding, whether through an in-class discussion or short exploratory quiz, they can identify the goals of the lesson and begin to create a lesson plan.

Here are some activities students can follow as they begin to explore new concepts: 

Give students a topic to discuss, perhaps guided by a set of questions. Select about one quarter of the class to sit in a circle or group in the middle of the classroom. Have all other students sit around the edges of the central group and listen while this group discusses the topic. Observers are not allowed to speak while the smaller group is talking amongst themselves. 

After about 15–20 minutes of discussion, divide the smaller group up among the rest of the class and divide into new groups of equal size. The observers can now discuss what they heard with members of the smaller group, offer different perspectives, ask questions and come to new conclusions together. 

Think-alouds

This technique works well for reading comprehension exercises, but can also work for mathematical exercises. The teacher reads a passage aloud as the students follow along. Whenever the teacher reaches a potential point of confusion for students — such as an unfamiliar vocabulary word or place name — they stop and think through the issue aloud, perhaps with the aid of some predetermined questions. As they continue to read the passage aloud, the teacher will stop and pose some of their questions for the students to answer. 

Eventually, students are asked to take over reading aloud (if they are able), pausing to think through or pose questions to their classmates. 

Mind maps and concept maps

To demonstrate their grasp of a new topic, teachers can direct students to create a mind map as a visual representation of that topic. For example, if students have just learned about penguins in the Arctic, they should begin to draw a diagram with “penguin” at the center, then make “branches” off of that central topic that lead to the penguin’s characteristics, including what it eats, where it lives and what its predators are. 

In a concept map, students are asked to take everything they know about a larger topic — for instance, the Arctic — and connect all the disparate concepts they know about that topic. An Arctic concept map might connect penguins to elements of the landscape and climate, other animals and the effect of humans on their habitat. 

Often, a lack of engagement results from students not understanding the purpose of school work, or the intended end result of a certain lesson or assignment. Showing and explaining to students what they are meant to create or achieve is not giving them the answers. Rather, providing students with a blueprint can help them take ownership of the learning process and, by extension, the finished product — their new knowledge. 

What’s the difference between scaffolding and differentiation?

While these are two approaches to classroom instruction, they are not interchangeable, although they can be combined. Scaffolding is the process of breaking lessons into manageable units, with the teacher providing decreasing levels of support as students grasp new concepts and master new skills. Differentiation is the act of giving certain students different types of assignments or learning engagements based on the way they receive and retain information, so as to help them succeed alongside their peers.

What are some examples of scaffolding in education?

Teachers use all sorts of scaffolding tools to help students along the path to comprehension. Show and tell, visual aids, flashcards and making real-world connections are all ways that teachers can transfer ownership of core concepts to students.

Classroom Management

This suite of courses can help teachers identify the best ways to teach diverse groups of learners, motivate students effectively and lead students responsibly through potentially difficult subject matter. 

Classroom Teaching Techniques

A number of courses in this series can help teachers implement scaffolding into their lesson plans concerning technology, critical thinking and reading comprehension.

Effective Classroom Management Solutions Certificate

Beyond ensuring that students grasp core academic concepts, teachers can use scaffolding to instill lessons in anti-bullying, positive social skills and inclusion. 

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Designing Research Assignments: Scaffolding Research Assignments

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What is scaffolding?

Educational scaffolding refers to the process of providing temporary supports for learners to guide them towards achieving a goal or completing a complex task. 

Scaffolding can take many forms. One type of scaffolding is called process scaffolding, where a complex task, such as a research paper is broken down into smaller, more manageable parts. 

Attribution

Portions of this page were modified from Lehigh University Libraries'  Information Literacy in ENG2: An Instructor Guide  and Modesto Junior College's Designing Research Assignments Guide . 

Scaffolding a Research Assignment

Scaffolding suggestions.

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Whether you’re teaching a course flagged as writing intensive, or a content-heavy course with minimal writing, you can effectively incorporate writing tasks to enhance student learning. The secret to effective writing instruction that integrates with your course content is to move from simple tasks to more complex tasks. Think in stages of skill development, as coaches do when training athletes. For instance, in baseball, players build their skills through batting practice, fielding practice, strength training, agility training, sliding, etc. In general, no one executes a home run before they learn to swing, or build their strength, or learn base-running strategies. It’s the same with writing. So, to integrate writing instruction effectively, you’ll want to do two things:

  • Sequence the assignments in your course strategically by creating a series of assignments that build on each other over time, each adding to—and even to some extent repeating—skills and knowledge gained in the ones before, and
  • Scaffold the tasks within your assignments by breaking assignments or units into manageable tasks that add up to a whole.

Table of Contents

General Considerations Strategies for the Classroom Further Reading

General Considerations

The key to integrating more writing is to do away with the assumption that writing and content are mutually exclusive. They actually inform each other. For instance, if you’re an instructor who only assigns one formal writing project in your content-based course, you may find that what you think of as comprising one assignment may best be structured as a sequence of smaller assignments that provide scaffolding: some that focus on developing content knowledge, and some that focus on synthesizing knowledge through simpler writing tasks that build toward the formal assignment. This process allows students to learn the content by practicing different aspects of writing, which composition scholars call “writing to learn.” If you’re an instructor who’s committed to fully integrate writing with your course content, strategically sequencing your course assignments and providing scaffolding for students to build skills within assignments makes writing instruction manageable.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you build your assignment sequences:

Build a sequence of assignments from simple to complex tasks. It’s important to develop a sequence of assignments over a course that allows students to develop discrete skills before they move on to more complex skills. When assignments are sequenced this way, each assignment provides a scaffold for the next, and so on. You can find some examples of successful assignment sequences for different types of courses in “Strategies for the Classroom” below and in Supplement 1: “Assignment Sequences & Skills Templates”

Whether or not you’re teaching a writing-intensive course, you might consider how professionals in your field approach writing tasks, and mirror this professional process in your sequence of assignments, or in mini-assignments built in as scaffolds for larger assignments. For instance, if you’re teaching a writing-intensive course in the social sciences, it wouldn’t be effective to have students write a research report before they know how an Introduction differs from a Discussion, and so on. Thus, having students analyze existing scholarship before writing their own reports can provide a way for them to learn how those arguments are structured. Alternatively, if your course isn’t writing intensive but you want students to write analytical reading responses, you may want to have them practice summarizing course readings before they attempt to analyze them.

Each writing assignment, formal or informal, should serve as a bridge to the one that follows and allow for some repetition. The most effective assignments build on one another, so that no assignment is entirely disconnected from what came before, and each assignment practices old skills and provides new skills students will also need to finish the next assignment. Further, research shows that students need repetition to begin to master a new skill or concept, so it’s best if some of the skills from previous assignments carry over into the next.

Revision options or requirements can be a great way to incorporate more writing. If you want students to write a lot, one way is to require or encourage revision. The goal is to delay students’ urge to consider their work “done” after a first draft by making the process of revision (of rewriting and rethinking) a normal and necessary part of writing. Taught to view their writing in this way, students can develop their thinking and gain confidence as writers. Built-in, low-stakes revision activities also have the benefit of undermining common bad habits by positioning writing as more than the typical two-stage drafting process—which often can boil down to the minor sentence-level revisions students make before they turn a first draft in, and the “final” revision that responds only to what was “marked” by the instructor. Approaching revision as an ongoing process allows students to gain ownership of their writing through collaborative discussions with peers and teachers, as well as the opportunity genuinely to “re-view” their writing. And it doesn’t need to take a lot more class time, as the activities outlined in Strategy 1, below, make clear.

While your feedback is an important part of a course’s sequencing and assignment scaffolding, you don’t have to grade everything you assign – ungraded, informal writing is also effective. You can find further suggestion for informal writing in “Integrating Low-Stakes Writing into Large Classes” and “Metacognition: Cultivating Reflection.” You’ll lighten your grading burden and empower your students by responding differently to different aspects of this process and relying more on formative feedback (e.g., feedback on the draft as a work-in-process) rather than summative feedback (e.g., evaluation of the finished product), until you collect final drafts. Further, engaging even in small writing activities that you never see (in class, for instance) helps students practice skills and consolidate content knowledge.

Explicitly talk with your students about what to expect in terms of feedback and what they’ll gain from doing each assignment. It’s a good idea to provide assessment guidelines with assignment prompts. There are a variety of rubric styles to suit your needs from those as simple as a series of checkmarks to complex analytic rubrics. (For more information, see Giving Feedback on Student Writing Supplement 1: “Designing and Using Rubrics.” ) Even if you don’t use rubrics, be clear and specific about how, when, and in what form they’ll get your feedback. It’s helpful to leave time in class to talk about this process with your students.

Strategies for the Classroom

In this section you'll find three sequencing and scaffolding strategies:

  • Sequencing writing tasks around the pre-writingàwritingàrevision cycle, which may be useful both for writing-intensive and content-based courses;
  • Scaffolding writing-to-learn sequences into your course, which is ideal for content-based course instructors who want their students to consolidate content knowledge by writing about it; and
  • Sequencing multimodal composition assignments, which may be adapted as larger or smaller projects for both types of courses.

All of these strategies can be adapted usefully for both writing-intensive and content-based courses. While a sequence of Assignments 1-12 below could be used to structure an entire writing-intensive course or unit that culminates in a large essay or project, very few instructors will have the luxury of time needed to incorporate all of the activities. At the end of the first strategy, we offer some possible shortened assignment sequences for both kinds of courses and advice for mixing and matching them.

Strategy 1: Scaffolding a Course, Unit, or Project Around the Pre-writing, Writing, Revision Cycle

You can get students actively engaged in thinking about the material of the course as well as about their writing processes by creating a sequence of assignments that build on each other and culminate in a polished essay (or research report or other genre in your field). Whether you’re teaching a writing-intensive course or a primarily content-based course, building structured revision processes into your assignment sequence has the added benefit of interrupting students’ tendencies to decide their work is “done” too early or to use your feedback merely as a checklist.

Even if you’re teaching a primarily content-based course where you assign only one formal project, you can break that large project into smaller, manageable writing tasks along the way to a complete rough draft, a revision (or multiple revisions, depending on your timeframe), and a final draft. This way, students can practice processes of inquiry and knowledge-building like those in your field, where smaller, simpler tasks are often embedded within larger, more complex writing projects.

Stage 1: Pre-Writing Assignments

Assignment 1: Project Pre-write. As you begin a new project (or exam, or unit, etc.), consider asking students, alone or in pairs/groups, to examine the project prompt and write a reflection that does some or all of the following:

  • Paraphrases what the assignment is calling for them to do
  • Identifies (again, in their own words) the individual pieces, or tasks, or things that will need to happen for them to successfully complete the project
  • Identifies areas of the prompt that need some clarification, if any
  • Identifies what their role as the author/architect/etc. of this project is (That is, who are they in the big picture? Who are they speaking to? For what purpose?)
  • Thinks through the purpose of this assignment—what is its role in the course, but also how might it help them in the future?
  • Lists or sketches out what they will need to know and/or know how to do (i.e. technical skills they may need to acquire) in order to complete the project
  • Lists or sketches out what they already know/know how to do
  • Lists or sketches out what they will need to learn (whether that’s a research question to pursue, a skill they need to develop, a tool they need to figure out how to use, etc.), and
  • Lays out a plan of action (this may be “broad strokes,” but the more specific it can be, the better—even with self-imposed deadlines for “deliverables,” etc.)

Assignment 2: Project Proposal. Having students draft proposals can be the most important part of a writing project, particularly for a longer, more formal research-based project or a complex new media piece (which you’ll find examples of in Strategy 3 below). Proposals provide an opportunity for students to articulate what they want to accomplish with a project as well as generate feedback from you and/or from their peers. For instructors, proposals offer a chance to course-correct if students’ plans seem unviable or off-task, or to offer guidance about potential resources, strategies for success, etc.

A good proposal includes the following:

  • a statement of the student’s planned topic and its potential significance (to them, or to the course, or to a larger context, depending on the assignment’s purpose),
  • a working thesis or line of inquiry,
  • a list of potential sources (or types of sources), and
  • the identification and description of model(s) on which the student will base their work.

Assignment 3: Reverse Outline of 2-3 Models. We often tell students that one of their best strategies for understanding good writing is locating models of what people have done before. Even when we explicitly tell them to find models that they can use as guides, though, often the resulting papers are perplexingly unlike the models. This happens when students “look” at models but don’t see how they work . Creating a “reverse outline” helps students to understand the piece’s characteristics, structure, language conventions, etc. Here is a basic approach to creating a reverse outline:

  • Number each paragraph of the model source.
  • In a separate document, type the number of each paragraph, and then
  • write a sentence that explains what that paragraph’s purpose is (for instance, “this paragraph is providing context for the author’s argument”) and paraphrase its main idea. Now, laid out in a document in front of you, you have the structure and main points of the model piece.
  • the kinds of language the piece uses (jargon? everyday speech?) and what the tone is like,
  • what kinds of evidence it employs (scholarly work? new media? interviews? anecdotes? Statistics? something else?),
  • how evidence is integrated (direct quotes? paraphrases? summaries? hyperlinks? graphs/charts?), and
  • how the evidence is applied (used as a model? used to establish context, fact, etc.? analyzed and taken further?)

Assignment 4: Present Work-in-Progress. Having students create and deliver class presentations on their work-in-progress can provide an opportunity for immediate, in-process feedback on their work. Depending on the conventions of sharing knowledge in the field you teach in, you might have them:

  • Read papers, as in a conference panel,
  • Create poster sessions,
  • Contribute to a listserv or blog
  • Present a Powerpoint or Prezi pitch

Assignment 5: Build in deadlines along the way for students to summarize reading/research before analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, or drafting their own arguments. Too often, because of their assumption that learning means having all the right information, rather than synthesizing information, students jump directly from reading to cobbling together bits of information. This way they inadvertently undermine their ability to create knowledge. One way to help students avoid this pitfall is to require research summaries for each source they consult on their way to their final project.

For example:

  • Ask students to keep a research/reading log with bibliographical citations and précis for each source. This can help them to consider what they’re reading methodically—to articulate what someone is saying and how they’re saying it before rushing to judgment on its value or making their own argument, which they may not yet be equipped to make. For an example of one way to handle this process, see Supplement 2: “Research Log & Summary Worksheet”
  • Ask students to keep a journal that chronicles basic terms and concepts in your field as they encounter them in the readings or other course materials. This work could even happen electronically, with students collectively building a glossary on a CTools Forum or course blog, for instance,
  • Have students write a brief paper that maps out (verbally or visually) where different writers stand on an issue they’re exploring, without yet inserting their own opinions

Stage 2: Writing Assignments

Assignment 6: Multiple Introductions. Often students draft introductions once and only once, marrying themselves to their first notion of what their argument is. If you ask them to draft at least two substantially different introduction possibilities before deciding on one, they may find a new way into their argument, or they may even find that they’re arguing something different altogether.

Assignment 7: Counterarguments. One way to help students complicate their thinking is to ask them to seek out potential counterarguments and give them a fair hearing. If they can clearly articulate what some possible objections to their argument may be, they have a better chance at being persuasive. This has the added side effect of reminding students that not everything has one clear, simple answer in college writing.

Assignment 8: Author’s Notes on Each Draft. Author’s notes are a post-draft note to an author’s peers or instructor to articulate where the draft is in-process, how it got there, and what help is needed. They can be a terrific way to encourage students’ reflection and metacognition, getting them to think about their processes and also explicitly about their audiences. It can be helpful to require author’s notes with every major draft of an assignment—for development and revision purposes in early drafts, and for evaluative purposes in final drafts.

  • A typical in-process author’s note attends to the following types of questions: At what stage of “readiness” is your draft at this point? How did you get here? What are some struggles you’ve encountered, and how have you dealt with them? Where are you still struggling? What do you have left to do? Where you do you most need another set of eyes? What kind of feedback is going to be most helpful for you at this point?
  • A typical final draft author’s note attends to the following kinds of statements: here are the kinds of changes I’ve made and why, and here’s what’s working and why/how (see post-write below).

Stage 3: Revision Assignments

Assignment 9: Peer Reviews. Conduct full-class or small group peer reviews that deal primarily with global issues: argument, structure, evidence, etc. Hold off on editing/proofreading until the content is set in a truly final draft. For information on how to structure full-class and small-group peer review, please see “Using Peer Review to Improve Student Writing.”

Assignment 10: Conferences. Having students conference with you to discuss drafts is an excellent way to save time on feedback and be certain that you’re making your expectations clear. You can read the drafts during the conference (either aloud, with the student, or silently) and respond in conversation on the spot, or you can read the drafts ahead of time, making notes about what you’d like to address with students, so that you save more time for conversation in the conference itself.

Assignment 11: Revision Plans. Have students draft revision plans based on their peer reviews: A revision plan is a written list of substantive tasks (not editing!) the writer needs to complete in order to create the strongest essay possible. It incorporates all feedback the writer has received and articulates how and why the writer will make use of the advice. This can be done in class or outside of class. For a handout to provide to your students, please see Supplement 3: “How to Write a Revision Plan.”

Assignment 12: Post-Writes. Have students turn in a final paper with a reflection on their revisions. For example, you might have them submit it with a final author’s note that describes the following:

  • Changes they’ve made to their final draft
  • Why and how they made those changes
  • What those changes demonstrate about their thinking/writing development

For a handout you can provide to your students, see Supplement 4: “Sample Post-Write,” and for further post-write ideas, see “Metacognition: Cultivating Reflection.”

Below, you’ll find a chart of all of these assignments, divided into “Pre-Writing,” “Writing,” and “Revision” categories. Following the chart, we’ve provided some possible sequences using these assignments: some for writing-intensive courses and some for content-based courses. You should feel free to mix and match these assignments as you see fit, though we encourage you to select at least one assignment from each category.

Possible Sequences for a Writing-Intensive Course:

While the sequence of Assignments 1-12 above could be used to structure an entire writing-intensive course or unit that culminates in a large essay or project, very few instructors will have the luxury of time needed to carry it through. The following sequences, or others you could imagine, might serve as scaffolding for a whole course. Alternatively, they might make up a unit structure, or simply a structure for one project—pick and choose which assignments are appropriate for your course, unit, or project.

  • Assignments 2, 8, 12: This sequence represents a very basic choice, which has the benefit of allowing you to spend ample time on each of the assignments, while ensuring that students have at least one assignment at each stage of their writing.
  • Assignments 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 &/or 10, 12: This longer sequence has the benefit of checking in on students’ progress via presentations (during which you can also provide instant feedback) and ensuring they engage in self-reflection with each draft. Plus, it dedicates focus to some of the most difficult writing tasks—introductions and counterarguments. It also incorporates multiple avenues of peer and instructor feedback without overwhelming you.
  • Assignments 1, 4, 5, 8, 9 &/or 10, 11, 12: This sequence is more intensive, but it ensures that students are creating a lot of writing, practicing synthesis of their research as they go, and engaging in multiple kinds of feedback and revision.

Possible Sequences for Content-Based Courses:

For these variations we’ve recommended a couple of condensed sequences that would be more manageable for primarily content-based courses. Keep in mind that you can alter these sequences in whatever ways make the most sense for your course goals and time available.

Notice that assignments 2 and 12 are the only activities that require your formal feedback (as long as you’re clear with students up front about how you’re responding to their work), and even your feedback to assignments 2 may be informal. It might take place in a 10-minute conference with each student, or 10 minutes in class when you address common strengths and weaknesses you saw in the proposals, so that students can self-correct or make an appointment to see you if they need to troubleshoot.

  • Assignments 2, 8, 12: This sequence represents a very basic choice, which has the benefit of allowing you to spend ample time on each of the assignments while ensuring that students have at least one assignment at each stage of their writing. (Alternatively, if you started with Assignment 1 instead of 2, you could save the time of responding to proposals by discussing their ideas in the classroom in small groups, and/or as a whole class.)
  • Assignments 1, 4, 8, 9 &/or 10, 12: This sequence has the benefits of checking-in on students’ progress via presentations (during which you can also provide instant feedback) and ensuring they engage in self-reflection with each draft. It also incorporates multiple avenues of peer and instructor feedback without overwhelming you.
  • Assignments 2, 8, 9 &/or 10, 11, Final draft: This sequence, ensures a lot of self-reflection on the students’ part and provides an option for you to check in on their process by scanning their revision plans, without requiring a lot of your time for formally responding.

Strategy 2: Scaffolding Low-Stakes, Writing-to-Learn Sequences into Your Course

If you’re teaching a mostly content-based course but want your students to practice writing, consider integrating “writing-to-learn” or “exploratory writing” exercises along the way, which get students actively involved with course material while generating writing. For an extensive discussion of the benefit of low-stakes writing and some additional low-stakes writing activities not mentioned here, please see “Integrating Low-Stakes Writing Into Large Classes”   and “Metacognition: Cultivating Reflection.” While the first resource is specifically written for large classes, all of its exercises are equally applicable in smaller classes as well.

Assignment 1: Study questions for class readings or lectures: Responding to study questions helps students keep up with reading or lectures while allowing them to frame their experience and make connections to other texts or concepts discussed in the course. Though study questions may require students to do some summary, study question prompts should invite a student to synthesize their understanding of course material with their personal experience or opinions or make connections that go beyond the reading. These questions may be responded to on CTools forums, a class blog, or a private journal kept by each student, depending on the needs of your class.

Assignment 2: Text annotations: Research shows reading effectively and writing well are interrelated. Instead of allowing students to passively highlight or underline their texts, consider providing them with directions for having active conversations with their texts. When they have the impulse to highlight, ask students to think about why they were going to highlight, and instead write a note or question in the margin. Some prompting questions you might provide include:

  • Why is that passage important? (Is it a shift in the argument? Particularly compelling or weak evidence? An overview of the opposition? etc.)
  • Use the margins to summarize, paraphrase, ask questions of the text, argue against it, etc.

In addition to helping students think about what they’re reading, these annotations can spur in-class conversations. While you probably won’t respond formally to this writing task, it can be helpful to ask students to share some of their annotations during a class discussion.

Assignment 3: Five-minute in-class writings: Having students take just five minutes in class (at the beginning, middle, or end) to synthesize course material, reorient discussion, or ask questions can yield incredible benefits in a very short amount of time. You can make a habit of assigning in-class writing on a schedule, or you can keep it in reserve and pull it out when it’s needed. Here are a few helpful options:

  • Write at the beginning of class to get the wheels turning: Having students write for five minutes about the reading they prepared for class, or in response to a discussion question you want to start with, can help them prepare and focus on the task ahead. It can also be useful for students who need time to gather their thoughts and tend to be quiet in class.
  • Write in the middle of the session to kick-start a lagging discussion or focus a heated one: Sometimes class conversations can go astray in a couple of ways: either they spiral out of control because everyone has something to say, they all feel strongly about it, and they’re all talking over each other; or else they lag because people run out of things to say. In either case, stopping to write and collect thoughts for five minutes can help get the conversation back on course.
  • Write in class to check in about comprehension: If you’re giving a particularly dense lecture or facilitating a complex conversation, it can be useful to stop at some point and have students either summarize the main points so far or, if they’re confused, express their confusion and articulate questions. One professor prompts his students this way: “If you have understood my lecture so far, summarize my main points in your own words. If you are currently confused about something, please explain to me what is puzzling you; ask me the question(s) you need answered.” You could then either take and address questions in the moment, collect questions they’ve written, or have them submit their questions on a CTools forum or course blog.
  • Write at the end of class to synthesize/sum up: Another variation of the exercise above is to have students sum up the day’s lecture or conversation in the last five minutes, preparing follow-up questions or issues to return to in the next class. (You may have heard of “one-minute papers,” which are a variation of this strategy, but in one minute’s time.)

Assignment 4: Self-reflective pre-writing for essays or other projects (even group projects!): As you begin a new project (or exam, or unit, etc.), ask students to examine the prompt and write a reflection that does some or all of the following, according to your class time and needs:

  • Paraphrases what the project is calling for them to do in terms of the “big picture,”
  • Identifies (again, in their own words) the individual pieces, or tasks, or things that will need to happen for them to successfully complete the project,
  • Identifies areas of the prompt that they need some clarification on, if any,
  • Identifies their role as the author/architect/etc. of this project (That is, who are they in the big picture? Who are they speaking to? For what purpose?),
  • Thinks through the purpose of this assignment—what is its role in the course, but also how might it help them in the future?,
  • Lists or sketches out what they will need to know and/or know how to do (i.e. any technical skills they may need to acquire) in order to complete the project,
  • Lays out a plan of action (this may be “broad strokes,” but the more specific it can be, the better…even with self-imposed deadlines for “deliverables,” etc.)

Because research has shown that reflection is often effective when it’s social, where possible, consider giving students time in class to break into pairs or small groups so that they can talk these items through with each other before writing.

If you read these pre-writes quickly and respond to their questions for clarification as soon as possible, you can help students identify strategies that might need rethinking before they begin, or course-correct misunderstandings about the project. A good time-saving strategy here can be to identify common questions that you can clarify for the whole class, and then respond to those that need individual attention either in writing or via conference.

Assignment 5: Essay, project, or exam post-writes: You can help your students identify strengths and weaknesses in their writing and learning processes by asking them to write reflections after they’ve completed an essay, project, or exam. These questions encourage thinking about writing process, content, and skills transfer. For example:

  • Identify and explain one or two challenges you faced as you wrote this draft.
  • What specific strategies did you use to overcome the challenges?
  • If so, where and how do we see them working in the draft? How successful were they?
  • If not, why do you think they weren’t as successful as you would have liked? How would you approach the same type of challenges differently in the future, given what you know now?

Strategy 3:  Sequencing and Scaffolding Multimodal Composition Assignments

Structuring multimodal composition assignments can seem unwieldy or intimidating, especially for instructors who may be unfamiliar with the various technologies involved. Here we suggest a basic framework for sequencing and scaffolding multimodal composition assignments, presented below in a series of steps that can be adapted to a variety of course contexts.

Step 1: Help students analyze models that you provide: Whatever kind of media work you want your students to create, it’s useful to find examples of work in that media. (Both good and bad examples can be equally helpful!) Then you can guide students in identifying the features of the genre, the audience(s) it appeals to, where and how it’s used, and how it makes its points. This process helps students “reverse engineer” the models to see how they work.

As with any writing assignment, a great place to start is with a discussion of audience, purpose and context. That means asking questions such as:

Who is this composition for, and what are the signs that it’s aimed at this particular audience? What stakes does this audience have in the content of the composition?

What is the purpose of this composition? Does it aim to educate, entertain, persuade?

What is the context of this composition? Who writes/records/makes it? How is it distributed? What similar compositions exist, if any? How do these factors inform our analysis of this composition’s content?

Sweetland’s resources on Supporting Multimodal Analysis offer useful concepts and vocabulary for analyzing multimodal texts.

Step 2: Have students find and analyze models they want to base their own projects on: After working with students to guide them through the analysis process, let them find and analyze their own samples, with particular attention to work they want to emulate (or avoid!).

Step 3: Provide a list of resources that students can use to seek help with technologies/platforms they’ll need to work with: You should plan enough time for students to build competency in the technologies/platforms you are asking them to use. The ISS Media Center offers a variety of personal assistance, access to technology, and tutorials. Sweetland also works with students on multimodal composition projects of any kind in our Writing Workshop and Peer Writing Centers [link to our multimodal flyer].

Step 4: Have students formally propose their projects: Proposals provide an opportunity for students to articulate what they want to accomplish with a project as well as generate feedback from you and/or their peers. For instructors, proposals offer a chance to course-correct if students’ plans seem unviable or off-task, or to offer guidance about potential resources, strategies for success, etc. A good proposal includes:

An overview of the project’s topic, genre, and goals (including a working thesis, hypothesis, or line of inquiry)

A plan detailing how the project will create and support the argument, what technologies it requires, where help with those technologies is available, and how those technologies will illuminate the research/line of inquiry

A justification for why and how the chosen media and genre are appropriate to the goal and audience of the project

A timeline for completion

This proposal could be formally written, and you could provide feedback in writing, in class, or in face-to-face conferences. Alternately, you could have students “pitch” their projects to the class for on-the-spot feedback.

Step 5: Have students create mock-ups or storyboards for their projects: Mock-ups and storyboards are two forms of early rough drafts (what you might call sketch drafts) for multimodal composition projects.

Mock-ups are visual representation of static pieces, such as web pages or posters. They should provide a sense of the visual design choices and organization of the project.

Storyboards (a term you may recognize from film and TV) are a sequence of drawings to represent the progression of movement- or time-based pieces, such as videos, podcasts, or animations. They should include visual sequences and descriptions of actions or sounds for each major shift in the project.

Both mock-ups and storyboards allow students to seek and incorporate feedback before they go through the painstaking process of editing their material.

Step 6: Have students create rough cuts: Rough cuts are one step further in development than mock-ups and storyboards. Like mock-ups and storyboards, they provide an early draft of most of the project’s basic elements, in order, but without everything yet in place. A rough cut provides what some people might call a “prototype” of the project--complete enough to understand, but still early enough to allow students to seek feedback and fine-tune their work as they go.

Step 7: Have students peer review each other’s mock-ups, storyboards, and rough cuts along the way: As with any writing project, peer review of multimodal compositions can provide students with helpful insight into how their project is working, and where they may need to make adjustments.

For more on peer review, see Sweetland’s Using Peer Review to Improve Student Writing resource.

Step 8: Have students create final cuts: Ask students to revise their projects, to the extent that they can given the time and resources available, incorporating feedback they’ve received along the way.

Step 9: Assign a final reflection: Because few students’ multimodal composition work is likely to be at an expert level in the short time they have to create it, it can be useful to ask students to submit reflections with their final cuts. These reflections should explain and justify the rhetorical choices they made as they planned, researched, designed, executed, and revised their projects. In other words, this step asks students to make an evidence-based argument about what they were doing and how it met or didn’t meet their aims for the project. You can then use this reflection to inform your own assessment of their projects.

For more on reflection, see Sweetland’s Cultivating Reflection and Metacognition resource.

Step 10: Assessment: As Step 9 suggests, assessing multimodal composition assignments presents special challenges--are you grading based on who made the best multimodal composition, or whose composition best reflects the learning goals of the class? Once again, we recommend using consistent terminology throughout this 10-step process; for example, you can crowdsource evaluative criteria from students’ analyses of models in Step 2, use these criteria during peer review, and then use them again in a final assessment rubric.

For a broader consideration of effective multimodal assessment practices, see Sweetland’s Some Considerations for Multimodal Assessment resource.

Further Reading

Ambrose, Susan, et al. How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010.

Arola, Kristin L., Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multi-Modal Projects . New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014.

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Beaufort, Anne. “ College Writing and Beyond : Five Years Later.” Composition Forum 26 (Fall 2012). Online.

Glenn, Cheryl and Melissa A. Goldthwaite. The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing . 6 th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.

Gottschalk, Katherine and Keith Hjortshoj. The Elements of Teaching Writing . New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.

White, Edward M. “Writing Assignments and Essay Topics.” Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guid e. 4 th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. (1-24)

---. “Helping Students Do Well on Writing Assignments.” Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guid e. 4 th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. (25-48)

---. “Responding to Student Writing.” Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guid e. 4 th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. (49-72)

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Moscow expat communities

Expat’s life is full of unusual adventures, interesting discoveries and strong emotions. That is the reason why expats need some special places, where they can share newly gained experience, find congenial people and step-by-step come closer to their main aim – self-actualization in a new place, in a new country.

Moscow Expat Football League

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English Language Evenings meeting

Founded in 2003, Moscow Expat Football League holds local championship between company clubs in Moscow.

Site: http://www.moscowfootball.com

English Language Evenings

English Language Evenings

This is an independent Moscow public lecture forum. Every time the organizers of the forum host many ambassadors, invited professors, international journalists, lecturers and heads of various institutions. The lectures in this club are always breathtaking and let people widen their knowledge.

Site: http://www.elemoscow.net

Wine Club Marketing & Consulting

Wine Club Marketing & Consulting

Wine Club Marketing & Consulting meeting

These are educational events, where local wine lovers and Moscow-based expats are introduced to various wines from the whole world. The Wine Club is an educational monthly program of wine tasting aimed to bring to wine lovers some extraordinary examples of wine every month.

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The International Women’s Club

The International Women's Club

The International Women’s Club Winter Bazaar

The IWC is an international club for expatriate women and men living in Moscow. This is an open club aiming to promote friendship and cultural interaction among women of the most nationalities appearing in Moscow. The club offers interest groups, charitable projects, general meetings and coffee mornings to give a nice opportunity to socialize.

Site: http://www.iwcmoscow.ru

American Woman’s Organization

AWO Arts and Crafts Festival

AWO Arts and Crafts Festival

AWO in Moscow is a welcoming group of true women who have strong life positions, progressive ideas and are very active in daily lives. AWO in Moscow provides every necessary aspect for women to enhance their time in world’s busiest capital.

Site: http://www.awomoscow.org

American Center Moscow

American Center Moscow

Lecture in American Center Moscow

This is a progressive public library organized on the base of American model. Open public library, numerous reference services, various cultural and educational programs are the main points that single out this Center among others. Moreover, there exists a large network of American Centers around the whole country.

Site: http://www.amc.ru

Hikers

«Hikers» is a kind of a sport club. It is an open non-profit organization for everyone willing to join. The hiking club is open all-year-round and hikes are organized every Sunday in the forests around Moscow. No difficulty ratings and divisions according to age, sex or physical form. The most commonly used in the club are English and Russian; still some European languages are spoken as well.

Site: http://hike.narod.ru

Moscow Expats Facebook Group

Moscow Expats Facebook Group

Like any other group within a social networking,this group aimed to help foreigners to accommodate and meet new people in Moscow. The group is open and rapidly growing. The users are rarely active: they start topics, discussions and organize various events.

Site: https://www.facebook.com/groups/moscowexpats/

Moscow Spartans American Football Team

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Moscow Spartans is one of the youngest teams in Russian League. However, it has shown amazing progress during the last years. Found in 2011, team spent 3 years in ELAF (Eastern League of American Football — amateur league for young Russian an Belarus teams) with 5-12 record. In 2015, Spartans decided to join Russian American Football Championship and managed to appear in play off. Team reached semifinals, where they only lost to future champions — Saint-Petersburg Griffins. Spartans showed great skills and character in both offense & defense and were proudly honoured with bronze medals.

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Building up to big assignments and complex tasks: making the case for assignment scaffolding.

by Jeanne Kerl and Kristina Wilson

Introduction

Do some topics or skills seem too large to approach in your course? Are your students struggling with time management? Do you want to provide students with thorough, meaningful feedback but find it difficult to keep up with all the grading? Do you want your students to learn more effectively? Assignment scaffolding could be the answer.

Metal scaffolding alongside a brick building.

Source: Pixabay

What is assignment scaffolding and why is it important?

Simply put, assignment scaffolding helps break down large ideas or tasks into smaller steps that build on each other. Consider the analogy at the root of the term. Scaffolding, like the multi-level, metal structure above, is a temporary support that helps construct a building. At the end of the project, the scaffolding is removed and the building stands on its own.

Imagine trying to create that building without the help of scaffolding. How would workers move between levels of the building? How would it be built beyond a story or two? To zoom out even further, how do workers know what the building looks like? Where are they getting materials from?

Now imagine asking students to complete a 20-page paper that is due the last day of class. You never discuss their thesis with them, read a draft, or review their resources in advance. How will they organize their work? How will they push their critical thinking skills to the next level? Furthermore, how will they decide what to write about? What research will support their argument?

In these cases, showing up empty-handed–to a vacant lot, to a blank page–doesn’t often lead to brilliant work. Both the building and the research paper should be carefully planned, with input provided throughout the process. Otherwise, the building may look nothing like what the architect envisioned or the paper may look nothing like what you intended in the prompt.

Process scaffolding and critical thinking scaffolding

Ryerson University’s Best Practices in Instructional Scaffolding explains Lev Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” as the place where what you do know intersects with what you don’t know yet. A scaffolding structure is designed to make the most of this theory, making sure there is room for development after each effort. This document goes on to differentiate between process scaffolding and critical thinking scaffolding .

Process scaffolding separates an assignment into components that build on each other. It asks the question, “How do I break down this large task into smaller, more manageable tasks?” Critical thinking scaffolding develops lower-order critical thinking skills before requiring higher-order critical thinking skills. It asks, “What skills do I need to master before the next part of the task can be completed?” A well-scaffolded course does both, as you’ll see in the examples below.

Scaffolding in a graduate public policy course

One example of scaffolding is from MPPA 409: Effective Writing & Communication, taught by Professor Meghann Pytka. Pytka is a big advocate for the use of scaffolding as a way of ensuring that students put the research writing process under the microscope.

She found that many students reached the capstone course with an inadequate understanding of some of the more nuanced aspects of academic research and writing, so she developed a course that is a deep dive into academic writing. Each week builds toward the creation of a final research paper, moving through:

  • Brainstorming a topic
  • Topic Selection
  • Refining the Topic
  • Annotated Bibliography
  • Literature Review
  • Substantive Outline
  • Background Section
  • Analysis and Policy Implementation Section
  • Introduction/Conclusion/Abstract/Title
  • Final version

The course is structured so that each week has a mini-assignment that builds toward the whole. In this way, students question their assumptions about the entire process of“writing a public policy research paper. Mirroring Professor Pytka’s approach, Columbia College provides a handy guide to Scaffolding Research Assignments that breaks the writing process up into six stages: selecting a topic, finding background information (“presearch”), research, source evaluation, drafting, and final drafting.

The course also uses peer review as a way to gain new perspectives on one’s work. This mirrors the best practice of having colleagues give you feedback while writing.  Each person has a peer buddy who gives them feedback on three of the mini-assignments.The feedback is highly structured–a peer fills out a worksheet and everyone works from agreed upon ground rules. These peer review assignments are low stakes, but they can provide invaluable help and the experience can build a sense of community in a course.

Scaffolding in an undergraduate organizational behavior course

This example is much smaller in scope, but just as effective. In ORG BEH 311: Conflict Resolution, Professor Patty McNally planned an assignment to help students analyze the concepts of negotiation and mediation. Students were asked to find videos that were examples of either good or bad negotiation or mediation. Students then watched each other’s video choices and answered a set of questions about them. They were asked to draw upon the readings and media within the course.

The next week, students looked over comments left on their own video selection as well as the whole experience of watching and commenting on their peers’ selections and used all of this as fodder for a reflection paper about how the experience 1) deepened their understanding of the concepts and 2) what they learned about “best practices” for negotiation and mediation.  

This assignment encourages natural interaction about content that they’ve chosen to add to the course, and we think students feel more of a sense of ownership in this assignment. It also adds variety to the course and makes the class engagement stretch beyond the normal discussion board post. Students have to show that they’ve mastered the content, but a great deal of choice is baked into the assignment. The reflection piece allows students to make their own connections between the readings and the experience of choosing, watching and commenting on the content.

Now that you know a little about the theory of assignment scaffolding and have examined a few case studies, it’s time to think about implementing scaffolding into your course. For example, you might be thinking, “How can I explain scaffolding to my students so that they don’t think of it as busywork?” or “How can I articulate the value of peer review?” The University of Colorado Denver provides an excellent chart that maps active verbs in Bloom’s Taxonomy to a critical thinking scaffolding (page 4).

You might also consider reviewing resources specific to your context. For example, are you asking students to complete a multimodal assignment such as a video recording? Scaffolding a video project may look very different from a research paper; you might have a script instead of a draft, or need to learn technology skills during the research phase. Check out the University of Michigan’s guide to Sequencing and Scaffolding Assignments (see Strategy 3: Sequencing and Scaffolding Multimodal Composition Assignments ).

If you’re interested in learning more about assignment scaffolding, ask your Learning Designer for more information or e-mail [email protected] .

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19th Edition of Global Conference on Catalysis, Chemical Engineering & Technology

Victor Mukhin

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Victor Mukhin, Speaker at Chemical Engineering Conferences

Title : Active carbons as nanoporous materials for solving of environmental problems

However, up to now, the main carriers of catalytic additives have been mineral sorbents: silica gels, alumogels. This is obviously due to the fact that they consist of pure homogeneous components SiO2 and Al2O3, respectively. It is generally known that impurities, especially the ash elements, are catalytic poisons that reduce the effectiveness of the catalyst. Therefore, carbon sorbents with 5-15% by weight of ash elements in their composition are not used in the above mentioned technologies. However, in such an important field as a gas-mask technique, carbon sorbents (active carbons) are carriers of catalytic additives, providing effective protection of a person against any types of potent poisonous substances (PPS). In ESPE “JSC "Neorganika" there has been developed the technology of unique ashless spherical carbon carrier-catalysts by the method of liquid forming of furfural copolymers with subsequent gas-vapor activation, brand PAC. Active carbons PAC have 100% qualitative characteristics of the three main properties of carbon sorbents: strength - 100%, the proportion of sorbing pores in the pore space – 100%, purity - 100% (ash content is close to zero). A particularly outstanding feature of active PAC carbons is their uniquely high mechanical compressive strength of 740 ± 40 MPa, which is 3-7 times larger than that of  such materials as granite, quartzite, electric coal, and is comparable to the value for cast iron - 400-1000 MPa. This allows the PAC to operate under severe conditions in moving and fluidized beds.  Obviously, it is time to actively develop catalysts based on PAC sorbents for oil refining, petrochemicals, gas processing and various technologies of organic synthesis.

Victor M. Mukhin was born in 1946 in the town of Orsk, Russia. In 1970 he graduated the Technological Institute in Leningrad. Victor M. Mukhin was directed to work to the scientific-industrial organization "Neorganika" (Elektrostal, Moscow region) where he is working during 47 years, at present as the head of the laboratory of carbon sorbents.     Victor M. Mukhin defended a Ph. D. thesis and a doctoral thesis at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia (in 1979 and 1997 accordingly). Professor of Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia. Scientific interests: production, investigation and application of active carbons, technological and ecological carbon-adsorptive processes, environmental protection, production of ecologically clean food.   

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COMMENTS

  1. PDF Scaffolding and Sequencing Writing Assignments

    Scaffolding is the process of breaking down a larger writing assignment into smaller assignments that focus on the skills or types of knowledge students require to successfully complete the larger assignment. Sequencing is the process of arranging the scaffolded assignments into an order that builds towards the larger writing assignment.

  2. Making the Case for Assignment Scaffolding

    What is assignment scaffolding and why is it important? Simply put, assignment scaffolding helps break down large ideas or tasks into smaller steps that build on each other. Consider the analogy at the root of the term. Scaffolding, like the multi-level, metal structure above, is a temporary support that helps construct a building.

  3. 6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

    Teaching Strategies 6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each. By Rebecca Alber May 24, 2011 Updated January 24, 2014 ©Ikon Images/Josep Serra What's the opposite of scaffolding a lesson?

  4. Scaffolded Assignments

    Scaffolded Assignments In construction, a scaffold supports a structure as it is build. In teaching, scaffolding is the process by which students are supported during learning.

  5. Scaffolding and Sequencing Writing Assignments

    This page offers some guidelines for scaffolding and sequencing writing assignments. Scaffolding and sequencing are closely related terms. Scaffolding assignments entails breaking longer writing activities into shorter tasks. Sequencing assignments refers to the specific ordering of those writing tasks.

  6. 6 Ways You Should Be Scaffolding Student Writing

    How can we set our students up for writing success? In this post, I hope to share some tricks and techniques that have helped students in my own classroom. Scaffolding Writing for Struggling Students Scaffolding, which basically involves breaking down large tasks into smaller steps, is helpful for all learners.

  7. PDF Effective Assignment Sequencing for Scaffolding Learning

    When assignments are sequenced this way, each assignment provides a scaffold for the next, and so on. You can find some examples of successful assignment sequences for different types of courses in "Strategies for the Classroom" below and in Supplement 1: "Assignment Sequences & Skills Templates"

  8. Scaffolding: Using Frequency and Sequencing Intentionally

    Scaffolding is important for both "traditional" and "creative" assignments. In the case of traditional assignments (like academic papers), students benefit primarily from the sequential accumulation of analytical skills.

  9. Scaffolding and Sequencing Writing Assignments

    Scaffolding is an instructional strategy that breaks down a writing task into manageable steps. These steps align with the steps of the writing process: prewriting, planning/outlining, drafting, revising, and editing. Once an assignment is chunked in this way, instructors can employ instructional strategies to coach students through completing ...

  10. Partnering Formal and Informal Writing: Scaffolding Daily Assignments

    Resources for Scaffolding Writing Assignments. The process of scaffolding writing instruction is one that is highly applicable to the college classroom, both in discipline-specific contexts as well as general composition courses. Massengill (2011) describes a discipline-specific approach to instructional scaffolding in a sociology seminar course.

  11. 18 Ways To Scaffold Learning, as Recommended by Teachers

    What is scaffolding in education? Scaffolding is a way to provide support for students by breaking down learning into manageable chunks as they progress toward stronger understanding and ultimately greater independence. In other words, it's a way for teachers to provide support while students master new concepts and skills.

  12. Scaffolding assignments

    Why is scaffolding assignments an important part of student learning? It helps students master the intended learning outcomes of the assessment by breaking up the cognitive tasks so that they are smaller and more manageable. It recognises learning as a process where one skill or achievement is mastered before the next.

  13. Scaffolding Writing Assignments

    Scaffolding Writing Assignments Scaffolding your larger, complex writing assignments allows students to break down the writing process and develop their work in smaller manageable pieces.

  14. Scaffolding

    With the structure scaffolding provides, you can make assignments much harder and more interesting, which will challenge and satisfy the best students, while still making it possible for everyone to succeed. Adapted from Skene, Allyson and Sarah Fedko. " Assignment Scaffolding ." Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Toronto ...

  15. Chunking, Scaffolding, Pacing

    Scaffolding is a similar concept addressing the pedagogy of your assignments and assessments: breaking them into smaller, cooperative pieces that provide opportunities for formative assessment and facilitate students achieving the learning goals you intend. Both of these are naturally significant contributors to the pacing of your course.

  16. 7 Scaffolding Learning Strategies for the Classroom

    Scaffolding is a classroom teaching technique in which instructors deliver lessons in distinct segments, providing less and less support as students master new concepts or material. Much like scaffolding on a building, this technique is meant to provide students with a framework for learning as they build and strengthen their understanding.

  17. Scaffolding Research Assignments

    Student Research Needs Assignment Guidelines Assignment Ideas Scaffolding Research Assignments BEAM Method What is scaffolding? Educational scaffolding refers to the process of providing temporary supports for learners to guide them towards achieving a goal or completing a complex task. Scaffolding can take many forms.

  18. Sequencing and Scaffolding Assignments

    Sequencing and Scaffolding Assignments See the main Teaching Resources page for licensing information. Sequencing and Scaffolding Assignments (PDF) Supplement 1: Assignment Sequence and Skills Template (PDF) Supplement 2: Research Log and Summary Worksheet (PDF) Supplement 3: How to Write a Revision Plan (PDF) Supplement 4: Sample Post-Write (PDF)

  19. Moscow expat communities

    The IWC is an international club for expatriate women and men living in Moscow. This is an open club aiming to promote friendship and cultural interaction among women of the most nationalities appearing in Moscow. The club offers interest groups, charitable projects, general meetings and coffee mornings to give a nice opportunity to socialize.

  20. Building Up to Big Assignments and Complex Tasks: Making the Case for

    What is assignment scaffolding and why is it important? Simply put, assignment scaffolding helps break down large ideas or tasks into smaller steps that build on each other. Consider the analogy at the root of the term. Scaffolding, like the multi-level, metal structure above, is a temporary support that helps construct a building.

  21. PDF Fish 530 Advanced Limnology (University of Idaho Moscow)

    Assignments will be distributed with each module and will be due at the start of the next module. Some laboratory work and writing will need to be completed outside of regular class time. Electronic submission of assignments is encouraged. Please only send one file (PDF preferred) that includes all of the required material for each module.

  22. Active carbons as nanoporous materials for solving of environmental

    Title : Active carbons as nanoporous materials for solving of environmental problems Abstract: However, up to now, the main carriers of catalytic additives have been mineral sorbents: silica gels, alumogels. This is obviously due to the fact that they consist of pure homogeneous components SiO2 and Al2O3, respectively.

  23. Moscow's UNESCO World heritage site in flames Scaffolding on ...

    On the evening of March 15, the 16th century Novodevichy Convent caught fire. This is one of Moscow's most famous landmarks. It was granted UNESCO World heritage status in 2004. The fire seems to have started in the upper levels of scaffolding surrounding the convent's signature bell-tower. Emergency crews extinguished the fire in a matter of several hours.