SCAFFOLDING

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Learning to fail and  how to accept a mistake, learning from a mistake not to make it again is one of the ways to stimulate critical thinking, reflective thinking, divergent thinking etc 🙂 Nevertheless, encouraging students to “jump” into things without making sure you establish some scaffolding (visible or invisible) doesn’t seem a good idea to me. You need a certain level of guidance, modelling, prompts, to name a few, to  succeed. Everyone, according to their needs – so use their background knowledge as scaffolding, use teacher or student modelling or guided practice. Why don’t you use prompts, step-by-step instructions, graphic organisers to help your students build the new knowledge. The time will come, they will not need your scaffolding as they will build or use their own.

Everyone, according to their needs – so we need to know our student well and recognise what type of scaffolding their need. Maybe we should help them build their resilience?

Praise in public but criticise in private? It depends, in my opinion, on the context. I always say to my student – I don’t criticise you. I criticise your work. And it does make a difference as they accept this criticism, often public, as part of their own and other students’ learning process.