Empowering Middle School Students to Create Their Own Scaffolds

For a new middle school teacher, helping every student access grade-level assignments can feel overwhelming. Scaffolding instruction can help by giving students the resources they need to succeed. But scaffolding itself isn’t the whole picture. As their teacher, you have to determine what scaffolds students need, how to introduce them, and how to empower students to create their own scaffolds without your help.

Once students have explicitly learned about different types of scaffolds—chunking the task, graphic organizers, sentence starters, essay templates—teachers can begin to gradually release responsibility to students. Eventually, students are able to fill blank pages to create their own scaffolds based on the task ahead. But to get to that point, it is important to first introduce scaffolds, explicitly teach students how to use them, and finally show students how to create scaffolds on their own.

Introduce or Remind Students of Different Scaffolds

Students have likely used a variety of scaffolds in the past, so instead of just jumping into the ones you think they need, start by asking students what scaffolds they’ve used in the past. In my classroom, students shared the kinds of scaffolds they used when writing an essay: write notes in the margins of the text, break down the essay prompt, create a general five-paragraph essay outline, draft a graphic organizer such as a T-chart or Venn diagram to compare and contrast.

Considering the scaffolds students already know, you can determine what scaffolds to introduce and explicitly teach students how to use.

Teaching Students How to Use Scaffolds Effectively

Teachers should model how to use a given scaffold so that students understand the thought process behind why that scaffold was chosen and how to effectively use it for the task at hand. It can be helpful to do a think-aloud with students, showing them the task and walking through the various questions one might ask themselves before beginning. For example, you might ask yourself: What is the goal of the assignment? Do I need to collect evidence from the text? Am I making comparisons about characters or settings? What kind of end product am I creating—a five-paragraph essay or a short response? 

After understanding what is needed to complete the assignment, model what kind of scaffolds you might consider and how to use each one. For example, you might model creating a Venn diagram and a five-paragraph essay outline because those are requirements for the assignment at hand.

During the model, you may provide students with a guided handout to fill in, asking them to notice what is included on the handout and how it helps them organize information. You can then create the same scaffolds, here a Venn diagram and an essay outline, from scratch on blank paper with students, inviting them to share what you should include on your paper.

It is critical to help students understand how and why you chose a specific scaffold—this will be the biggest shift in responsibility when students have to create their scaffolds, as they will need to know what to create. Focus on this during your modeling process by asking students about different types of scaffolds and whether or not they might be helpful—if the assignment doesn’t require any comparisons, would a Venn diagram be a good choice?

Additionally, remind students that not all scaffolds have to be written out on paper. Rereading the text, chunking the question into parts, and annotating the text are all options your students may want to consider when approaching an assignment. You can model these on an ongoing basis, since they are strategies your students are likely to need on most assignments, as opposed to only a few.

If your students need additional support with these strategies, you may want to introduce a more standardized way of annotating or chunking a question so that students can practice doing this as a whole group before trying it on their own.

Shifting Scaffolding Responsibilities to Students

Once students have gone through the modeling process for a variety of scaffolds, helping to create resources on blank paper as a class, you can begin allowing them to create these resources completely from scratch on their own.

As you begin this process, you will have to spend more time modeling and can gradually move to shorter models as students take on the process themselves. It can be helpful for students to start creating their own scaffolds on shorter, simpler tasks rather than jumping in on a multi-paragraph essay.

But, over time, students should be given the opportunity to tackle these more complicated assignments, as these are the moments when scaffolds are the most important—as students move through their schooling, they will have more complex tasks, and equipping them with the skills to create their own scaffolds sets them up for success.

When students are responsible for choosing and creating their own scaffolds, not only are they better prepared to complete assignments, but they are empowered to understand themselves as learners. Students learn how to identify what they need to be successful and have the skills to create what they need.