For one of my focal students who has moderate academic knowledge and low processing ability, I use scaffolding and sentence structuring. The way I do this is by after we have gone over a concept in a lesson, I ask a question by setting up the sentence in a way that allows the student to have more context to answer the question. By doing this, it has helped this student understand what we are going over more, and allows them to answer me with the correct answer.
I have seen this help the student tremendously when it comes to understanding exactly what I am asking and how they should answer. This student is an English Language Learner as well, so scaffolding and sentence structure and has supported him and helped him not feel so lost or helpless. I have seen quite a change in him over the past month and he now feels more confident to answer questions because of the way the questions are set up.
The challenging part of scaffolding is coming up with the correct way to word the questions in order to get the desired answer. I need to really think about the questions and what it is I am actually asking of the students. Luckily by actually writing out the questions, I am able to make sure they make sense and will produce the desired answers with as little confusion as possible. I will continue to use this strategy throughout my teaching career as I see how well it works right now.
EDUC 416 Blog 
Scaffolding and sentence structure are great ways to help bridge content gap for students! I also think this method can be used easily throughout class and in ANY context which makes an awesome tool for agriculture teachers whom teach many subjects over the course of the day. Rewording and the way you organize a sentence can really help students use context clues and understand the meaning of vocabulary and identify exactly what you are asking them to answer. I totally agree this helps students that are english language learners by providing them more context to build their vocabulary. I also think this is important for students whom take longer to process, but scaffolding and sentence structure will help the ENTIRE CLASS bridge content. Great post Nicole!
LikeLike
Hi, Nicole! Thanks for your post on how you support the learning of one student in your class and bridge the academic knowledge gap. It seems like you have found success in providing sentence frames and posing targeted questions to check for understanding. I imagine these techniques may also be useful for other students in your class.
LikeLike