In the education field, the term scaffolding refers to a process in which teachers’ model or demonstrate the problem-solving process, then step back and offer support as needed. Psychologist and instructional designer Jerome Bruner first used the term scaffolding back in the 1960s. Many lessons use scaffolding which the teacher builds onto the students’ prior knowledge giving them a new perspective on the information. For one of my lesson I help students that were struggling with the concept of using ten frames to do addition in math. When I first started working with the groups we worked together to solve sample problem that were a little simpler than moving on to harder problems using the same concept but with fewer help when solving the problem. After working and discussing how to solve the problem I introduced the concept of adding using two ten frames for solve addition problems. Scaffolding is an important aspect in education because it is said the students that do not complete one level of the scaffolding cannot build upon that level because the level of understandings is not complete and there is nothing for the students to build the new information onto. Many believe scaffolding and the theory of zone of proximal development are the same but they have a few differences people overlook. The biggest difference is once the student, with the benefit of scaffolding, masters the task, the scaffolding can then be removed and the student will then be able to complete the task again on his own.
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