Scaffolding That Actually Gets Students to Grade Level
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why real scaffolding must help students reach grade-level work instead of keeping them on easier tasks.
Key Takeaways
- Scaffolding Must Lift - Support should help students climb to grade-level work, not just stay at their current level.
- Simplifying Isn't Enough - Rewriting texts with easier vocabulary and syntax can help initially, but it cannot be the final destination.
- Grade-Level Work Matters - Students who never engage with grade-level tasks will not catch up to their peers.
- Extra Support Takes Resources - Effective scaffolding often requires more time, more instruction, and sometimes another adult to help.
- Use Multiple Steps - Previews, vocabulary teaching, and repeated read-throughs can bridge students from below-grade-level entry points to rigorous texts.
Full Transcript
We need to watch out for one-story scaffolding, right? The whole idea of scaffolding is that it allows students who are working below grade level to do on-grade-level rigorous work by providing support, by providing a structure that they can climb to do grade-level work.
But as I look at what's done in the name of scaffolding in a lot of schools, it occurs to me that a lot of the scaffolding is just one story. Like, it's literally on the ground where the student is, and it's nothing for them to climb, right?
A good example is text. There are a lot of kind of sketchy AI companies now where their whole idea is take a grade-level text that is too hard for some kids...
And scaffold it for them, which means paraphrase it, simplify the syntax, rewrite the sentences so they're easier to understand, change the vocabulary so it's not grade-level vocabulary, but it's more where the student is. I think that can be a part of scaffolding, but it's not the whole job,
because if we just meet the student where they are, if we just lower the expectation, well, that's like scaffolding that's sitting on the ground. It does not let you reach the second or third story. The student has to climb So, for scaffolding to do its job, it has to not leave the student where they are.
It has to build them up. So, one way to do this with a text would be to first introduce the topic with the more simplified text, and then teach the vocabulary that is in the more difficult text.
Now, you're gonna stop here and say, well, wait a minute, that's gonna take extra time. I can't just substitute and use the same time with a different text, right? I think that's how a lot of differentiation supposedly works. You have the same amount of time for all the kids. You teach everybody at once, but in small groups, and some kids get an easier text. Well, that's not scaffolding.
That scaffolding is sitting on the ground, because all they ever get is the version that is below grade level. That is not going to get us there. What is going to get us there is extra time and extra support from an extra person.
And we don't like things like that that aren't free, but if we have students who are behind and we want to help them catch up, we can't leave that scaffolding sitting on the ground. We have got to build that two, three, four story scaffold if we have students who are two, three, four grade levels behind
and we want them to succeed with grade-level work. If they are not doing grade-level work, They will never catch up.
I don't know where we got this idea that you can scaffold by having a kid who is multiple years behind and give them work that is not on grade level and somehow magically catch up. How is that ever going to work? As the great Bart Simpson said, how are we going to catch up to the other kids by learning slower?
There's no way for that to make sense. So, we've got to put in the extra time. There have to be multiple levels to the scaffolding where...
Yes, it breaks it down. Yes, it gives them an intermediate step. And yes, it gets them to where they need to be. So, maybe there are a couple read-throughs. Maybe there are some previews. Maybe there's some vocabulary teaching.
But we cannot leave that scaffolding sitting on the ground and expect it to do its job. Let me know what you think.