Strategies

There are many different strategies that research has shown are effective in literature-based instruction. These include modeling, cooperative learning, scaffolding of instruction, self-initiated reading and writing, student choices, using different modes of reading, activation of prior knowledge, and student responses to literature.
The purpose of my research is to show under what circumstances the instructional strategy is appropriate and why.
“A common and effective strategy for helping students develop their higher order thinking skills is scaffolding. My own first exposure to scaffolding in education came when I was attending a high school where there was some construction in progress. The workers had erected a series of temporary structures (called scaffolding), which permitted the workers to carry out their work in high places. When the work was finished, the scaffolding was removed. The term scaffolding has been developed as a useful metaphor for an effective method for helping students develop their thinking skills. The teacher, the textual materials, or other students provide temporary support (like scaffolding in the construction industry) to help students bridge the gap between their current abilities and the intended goal. Scaffolds can be tools, such as written guidelines or cue cards, or techniques, such as modeling or prompting by the teacher. Like the physical structures supporting construction around my high school, instructional scaffolding is temporary and adjustable. As students demonstrate greater proficiency on their own, the scaffolding is gradually removed.” (1)
Good ways to introduce a strategy to students include demonstrating or explaining a prompt, modeling the skill, or thinking aloud while performing a task that applies the strategy. Various writers have developed prompts that are useful for particular thinking skills, such as summarizing, asking questions to promote reading comprehension, solving difficult problems in mathematics, and planning a composition.
The next step is for the student to practice the strategy while the teacher manages the level of difficulty. For example, to teach a five-step thinking strategy, the teacher might try any of the following methods:
Begin by modeling all but the final step in the application of the strategy, and then gradually requiring the student to perform more of these steps.
1. Ask the student to name each step for the teacher to model.
2. Provide cue cards to prompt the student to perform each step.
3. Start with easy problems to which the strategy can be applied and then move to more difficult problems.
The idea is to provide the support necessary to enable the student to meet with continuous success.
The third step is to vary the context in which the student can practice the strategy. Three basic contexts are (1) teacher-led practice, (2) reciprocal teaching, and (3) small group sessions. An important component of these practice sessions is the opportunity for the students to verbalize what they are doing. It is more likely that students will generalize strategies if they are able to label the steps; this will enable them to encode the information about the strategy in a more meaningful manner and thereby enable the learner to retrieve it more easily for later applications. In addition, verbalizing the information often exposes misconceptions and enables the students to expand the limits of their understanding of the process. In addition to varying the audience with whom the learner practices a strategy, it is useful to vary the content of the problems, so that the learner masters a general thinking strategy rather than a mere algorithm for solving a specific type of problem.
The fourth step is to provide feedback. This feedback can come from the teacher and from other students; but it is also useful to enable the students to give feedback to themselves by realizing that a strategy has been effective. One good way to stimulate self-reinforcement is to have the students use checklists to evaluate their own performance. Another possibility is to provide expert models; for example, after asking a set of questions about a reading passage, the student could compare this set to those developed by the textbook author or by the teacher.
Modern research continues to find that scaffolding is an effective teaching strategy. Two recent studies regarding the use of inscriptions for teaching scientific inquiry and experimentation (external representations – graphs, tables, etc.) found that the use of external representations, representational scaffolds, can serve as an effective strategy for teaching these scientific skills. In one study the instructional goal was to teach fourth graders valid experimentation skills. During the first part of the study a teacher-specified table of variables was the scaffold provided. Students had to select the appropriate variable related to their experiment. The results of this part of the study led to the conclusion that the “… use of the pre-developed table representation may have helped students abstract the overall structure of the experiment and thus aided their understanding of the design…” (Toth, Results and Discussion section, para. 1). The teacher designed table helped focus the learners’ thinking on only those items that were important for the task. Additionally through the use of the table it became obvious to the students if they had omitted an important variable from their experiment. This helped the students learn what things must be considered when designing an experiment (Toth, n.d.).
In the second study, “… the effects of two different external representations (evidence mapping vs. prose writing)…” were evaluated in research with ninth grade students (Toth, n.d., Representational scaffolding while coordinating data with theories section, para. 1). Students used either a software tool or prose writing to record their thinking during a problem-based-learning activity in which they had to find a solution to a scientific challenge. The software tool provided epistemological categories linked with unique shapes. The students that used the software had to categorize the information they were evaluating by selecting the appropriate shape and entering the information into the shape. The students in the prose writing group just documented their thinking by writing. One finding of the study was that the students who used the software tool correctly categorized more of the information as hypothesis and data than those students in the prose writing groups. The correct categorization of information was attributed to “…the effect of the mapping representation that scaffolded students’ categorization efforts” (Toth,). Eva Toth concluded from the research that the use of , “…teacher-developed table representations was found to scaffold students’ progress of inquiry by making the variables of an experiment salient and by perceptually constraining the students’ attention to abstract the characteristics of correct experimentation” (Toth). She also concluded that the evidence mapping, which used the software tool that scaffolded students’ thinking and categorization efforts, was a “…successful instructional methodology to teach how to categorize and label scientific information and to teach students how to evaluate hypotheses based on empirical data.” (Toth). The study also found that the use of explicit rubrics supported the scaffolding effect.
One of the primary benefits of scaffolding instruction is that it engages the learner. The learner does not passively listen to information presented instead through teacher prompting the learner builds on prior knowledge and forms new knowledge. In working with students who have low self-esteem and learning disabilities, it provides an opportunity to give positive feedback to the students by saying things like “…look what you have just figured out!” This gives them more of a can do versus a “this is too hard” attitude. This leads into another advantage of scaffolding in that if done properly, scaffolding instruction motivates the student so that they want to learn.
Another benefit of this type of instruction is that it can minimize the level of frustration of the learner. This is extremely important with many special needs students, who can become frustrated very easily then shut down and refuse to participate in further learning during that particular setting.
Scaffolded instruction is possibly one of the most important (and most frequently neglected) techniques teachers can use when working with students at computers. By using scaffolded instruction at the computer, teachers can help students develop thinking and study skills while they are studying the subject matter that is the focus of the unit of instruction.
As the conclusion it is useful to show where we can use this strategy.
1. The teacher does it - The teacher models how to perform a new or difficult task, such as how to use a graphic organizer. For example, the teacher may have a partially completed graphic organizer on an overhead transparency and "think aloud" as he or she describes how the graphic organizer illustrates the relationships among the information contained on it.
2. The class does it - The teacher and students work together to perform the task. For example, the students may suggest information to be added to the graphic organizer. As the teacher writes the suggestions on the transparency, students fill in their own copies of the organizer.
3. The group does it - Students work with a partner or a small cooperative group to complete a graphic organizer (i.e., either a partially completed or a blank one).
4. The individual does it - This is the independent practice stage where individual students can demonstrate their task mastery (e.g., successfully completing a graphic organizer to demonstrate appropriate relationships among information) and receive the necessary practice to help them to perform the task automatically and quickly.
1. http://education.calumet.purdue.edu/vockell/edpsybook/edpsy12/edpsy12scaffold.htm
2. Toth, E. E. (no date). Representational scaffolding during scientific inquiry: interpretive and expressive use of inscriptions in classroom learning. Retrieved October 19, 2002, from http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ircs/cogsci2000/PRCDNGS/SPRCDNGS/posters/toth.pdf


3. http://education.calumet.purdue.edu/vockell/cai/Cai3/cai3scaffold.htm