The Importance of Scaffolding

 When creating scaffolded reading experiences, teachers must teach students how to utilize specific comprehension strategies, as telling students what to do is not enough for them to benefit from the strategies. Explicit and direct instruction involves deciding which specific strategies to model, telling students the strategy you will model, reading and modeling the strategy, and giving students the chance to participate in the process. After students understand how to use strategies, they can begin to use them independently. Similarly, teachers must teach students how to make inferences about texts step-by-step. 

Spending extra time teaching comprehension strategies may make it seem like less time can be spent on content. However, taking the time to teach comprehension at the start of the year ensures students will be able to strategically read content later in the year and more effectively analyze it. This also means teachers can spend more time having deeper discussions about content instead of having to teach students how to understand it. 

Using before reading activities helps students frontload their knowledge of a text and helps them to be more engaged while reading texts. Teachers can use strategies like anticipation guides to help students preview the themes of texts before they read and begin thinking about them prior to seeing the text. While it’s important to use pre-reading activities to frontload knowledge, students should also engage in during reading activities. Teachers should encourage students to appropriately find ways to “talk” about the text as they read. Using the “Say Something” strategy, teachers can have students say something about what they’ve read after reading a portion of the text aloud. Students can respond to each other and aid each other’s comprehension of the text as they work through it. If students are reading independently, they can use strategies like bookmarks and Post-it notes to track their own thoughts as they read the text. All of these strategies ensure students actively think about the text in the process of reading, as comprehension is a process.