How to Scaffold Learning and Maintain Rigor

As a West Coaster who has found a home in the Midwest, I love many things about my new home. I love having four distinct seasons. I love lake life and prairies. I love the cost of living. One thing I could do without is ice dams.

For those of you who haven’t had the displeasure, ice dams form at the edges of your roof when escaping heat or sun melts snow. The water eventually refreezes near the edges, creating a kind of barrier that causes all kinds of problems, such as water creep and ice damage, and sometimes pulls rain gutters down.

Because I’m from the San Francisco Bay Area, I had no idea what ice dams were or how challenging it can be to mitigate the issues they cause, but I had to figure it out. I consulted experts, did my own research, checked in with neighbors, and invested in a wide variety of tools. Today, I can confidently say that I’ve mastered the knowledge required to manage all things roof ice.

I’m sharing my experience overcoming ice dams not because it’s a fun story to tell, but because it illustrates a very important, and sometimes misunderstood, relationship between rigorous learning and scaffolding. I didn’t learn the intricacies of roof maintenance by myself. I was able to figure them out with the aid of many peers and scaffolds. It wasn’t easy, and at times was frustrating, but eventually I succeeded because of the resources that I selected or that were provided by experts.

When teachers ask me, “How do I keep learning rigorous while still providing scaffolds?” I let them know that they aren’t diametrically opposed, they are interdependent.

Finding the Zone of Proximal Development

The importance of maintaining rigor is discussed often in education. The goal is for all students to learn at high levels and be appropriately challenged without feeling overwhelmed. This area between “can do independently” and “can’t do” is what Lev Vygotsky described as the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)—the learning sweet spot where growth potential is maximized, but it’s highly dependent on balancing challenges against the kinds of support that are offered.

Rigor doesn’t mean more work, and it doesn’t mean figuring it out on your own without support. It should mean achievement at a level just outside of a student’s ability to do things unaided. For example, a second grader reading a short narrative passage can be expected to read grade-level text fluently and identify a main character on their own. They’re probably not yet able to compare the author’s style with another text or analyze how tension is built across multiple characters.

The ZPD exists between the areas—where the student could probably infer the theme of the passage or why the main character made certain decisions. This is the space where students engage rigorous learning—but only through scaffolds like teacher-provided questions or modeling a think-aloud process.

Rigor Through Scaffolding, Not in Spite of It

Just like the temporary structure that serves as its namesake, scaffolds are designed to provide access to rigorous learning for all. We don’t want to dumb down the tasks or lessons, we want our learners to have what they need in order to experience productive struggle at a higher level of challenge. Tools and strategies that support independent learning and student agency are as varied as the colors in the rainbow; what they all have in common is that they’re essential to maintaining rigor.

You most likely have diverse learning needs in your classroom and don’t have the time to create individual learning pathways for every single student. You’re right, and that is omnipresent truth in every discussion about scaffolding.

4 Scaffolding Strategies to Support Student Learning

There are definitely strategies and tips that can help you continue to meet the needs of all your students without sacrificing the rigorous learning that you want them to experience.

1. Design for access. Many times, scaffolds are used to supplement lessons rather than something that’s already built in, so try to flip the script on that when you’re planning lessons. One way to do this is to design with a specific high-needs student in mind, an approach that my friend Dr. Ryan Sprott introduced me to that is called the curb cut method. That way, you’re creating pathways that will benefit not just one student, but all of the others who may have less extreme needs.

2. Scaffold for invisibility. Sometimes scaffolds come with a stigma and students are reluctant to use them. They may feel as though they’re being identified as a student who always needs help. Because we know that some scaffolds are essential for a student to be able to participate, it’s important to help remove the stigma by removing their visibility. For example, if you have an article or a stack of readings that you intend to pass out to everybody, there’s no reason why you can’t have a lower-level reading at the bottom of your stack to help obscure the fact that some learners are getting one article while others are getting a different one.

3. Model, then release. Ideally, you don’t want students dependent on you for their scaffolds. It’s better if you introduce the scaffolds, model how to use them, but eventually relinquish your role as the provider. The goal is to have your learners engage in a task, and then when they feel challenged, recognize the need for the scaffold and get it themselves. That is how you move from teacher-guided scaffolding to independent learning.

4. Utilize peer learning. Learning shouldn’t be done inside a vacuum. When I was dealing with my lack of ice-based knowledge, I tapped neighbors, experts, and family. This provided me with not just a model for what I should do, but an opportunity to have my thinking pushed. For example, you can use collaborative learning strategies such as cloze reading to help students pull a source apart. You can also use thinking routines like think-pair-share prior to any request for help to give students a chance to verbally process their thinking or bounce ideas off a classmate.