Scaffolding Works Only Within Reach
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why scaffolding only works when students are close enough to grade level and why major gaps require more time, not just better differentiation.
Key Takeaways
- Scaffolding Has Limits - Scaffolding works when it bridges a manageable gap, not when students are years behind grade-level expectations.
- Lowering Expectations Isn’t Scaffolding - Simply reducing the task to the student’s current level does not help them reach the actual standard.
- Some Gaps Can’t Be Bridged in Class Alone - A high school chemistry teacher can’t realistically reteach years of missing math during chemistry instruction.
- Foundational Literacy Skills Matter - Middle school teachers cannot scaffold students into complex texts if those students still lack decoding and phonics skills.
- Time Is the Real Intervention - Students with significant unfinished learning need more instructional time, not magical thinking about differentiation techniques.
Full Transcript
Scaffolding has to be a couple stories tall for it to work, right? I said in my last video that one-story scaffolding is just sitting on the ground, right? We're just lowering the expectation to where the student is so they can meet it, but,
like, not helping them get to where they need to be to grade-level standard. That doesn't work, right? Like, that's not scaffolding. But it occurred to me today that there's another kind of scaffolding that doesn't work, and that is scaffolding that is too tall, right?
Like, scaffolding is meant to be a couple stories tall, but not, like, eight or ten or thirty stories tall. And I think academically, sometimes we talk about scaffolding as if you can build an eight-story scaffolding up the side of your house. It was not made for that.
I think scaffolding works best when it's just a couple of stories. I think, like, the metaphor holds pretty well. And when we're talking about meeting a student where they are and then giving them something that allows them to meet the grade level standard, it has to be within reach.
And high school teachers know this, right? Like, if you're a high school chemistry teacher, you know if you have a student who can't do seventh grade math, They are not going to be able to do chemistry, and you are not going to be able to catch them up.
You do not have time in your class, no matter how hard you differentiate, no matter how dedicated you are, there's just not time. Like, the number of stories that you would need to scaffold is unrealistic. I was looking at some of the state ELA standards today,
and a colleague of mine was trying to trace them all the way through and say, okay, well, like, what's the through line of these standards all the way K through 8? And he discovered that a lot of the elementary standards just stop.
Right? If you're a middle school ELA teacher and you're thinking, man, my kids are really struggling with reading. What's going on here? Where are their gaps? If you look at the standards, you're going to find that you, as a middle school teacher, do not have a lot of the elementary ELA standards. And I'm sure you know why this is.
Because they're about things that you don't teach in middle school. They're about things like phonics, decoding. Things that have to be taught in elementary school. And if we have students coming into 6th, 7th, 8th grade unable to decode, there's no scaffolding for that.
You are not going to be able to decode great expectations if you can't decode, right? Like, we're not going to be able to scaffold you so that you can succeed with a upper-level text if that distance is too great.
So I think we have to be realistic about what scaffolding can do. And when kids need really intense intervention, they need a lot to catch up, What they need a lot of is not just technique, right? It's not just be clever. It's not just differentiate. It's not just do something special for them in the same amount of time. What they need more than anything else is time.
And I think we have to not downplay that. We have to not deny that. And we have to not engage in magical thinking that says, well, just differentiate really well. Just scaffold really well. And magically, these kids who are years and years behind are going to get to where they need to be. We need to give them the time.
There is no shortcut. Let me know what you think about multi-story scaffolding.