Scaffolding Like a Pro: Powerful Ways to Support Learning

In her plot to ruin the first day of summer vacation, Mom dragged me to Angle Lake—a couple of miles from the Sea-Tac Airport—for free swim lessons at 7:00 a.m. While Mom sat bundled up in her corduroy coat, I met my swim instructor on the dock. Jessica, a tall 18-year-old, wore a red sweatshirt with the word “Lifeguard” in peeling white letters. Her face coated in thick sunscreen, Jessica crouched down, locking eyes with me and the three other beginners, all of us shivering in the cold.

She had us mentally picture the water as a friend. “It will feel really cold, but just for two minutes. You’ll trust the lake. You won’t fight it. You’ll relax your body, take a deep breath, and feel how the water supports you. Today we’re just floating—breathing, relaxing, and floating. You’ve got this.” Later that week, I remember Jessica shouting, “You’re swimming all on your own!”

Years later, I realized that when Jessica told us water-shy kids to imagine relaxing and breathing, she had employed the mind movie strategy (described below) to give us a sense of control before we entered an intimidating environment. That’s scaffolding—guiding, minimizing frustration, building confidence, simplifying a task, and keeping learners on track. Because of Jessica’s intuitive instructional skills, I never felt overwhelmed or scared. On the contrary, I felt seen, supported, and capable. Had Jessica been around to scaffold arithmetic, I’d have ended up a mathlete champion instead of panic-sweating through remedial algebra.

The Foundations of Scaffolding

Most teacher education majors learn in their first methods course that “instructional scaffolds are temporary support structures that faculty put in place to assist students in accomplishing new tasks and concepts they could not typically achieve on their own.” It’s a mistake to view scaffolding as an overused instructional metaphor; rather, it serves as a transformative teaching protocol that can “reduce the learner’s cognitive load” and “increase learning outcomes.”

Scaffolding is anchored in contingency, fading, and transfer of responsibility:

• Contingency is targeted support based on the student’s current learning ability and needs.
• Fading refers to the intentional withdrawal of assistance as the student’s proficiency increases.
• Transfer of responsibility occurs when the learner can independently complete the task.

To the untrained eye, effective scaffolding looks like tactical alchemy, as the teacher determines when support is needed, what tools to use, and the precise moment to step back and let the child proceed independently. For students, the process should feel automatic, inevitable, like a clock chiming the hour.

Popular Scaffolding Strategies

Whenever students are challenged by new or complex material, or when a class has a diverse set of skill levels that require customized support, teachers commonly turn to these scaffolding models to support learning:

• Modeling
• Sentence stems
• Advance organizers
• Guided practice
• Concept maps
• Hints
• Chunking
• Mnemonics
• Graphic organizers
• Cooperative learning
• Anchor charts
• Scaffolded reading experience

These tried-and-true strategies are essential, but the lesser-known techniques shared below will make you wonder how you ever taught without them.

Scaffolds That’ll Make You Ask, ‘Why Didn’t I Know This?’

Scaffolding provides tailored support through three approaches. Cognitive scaffolding is the general process by which a teacher provides targeted guidance and resources to help learners gain new skills that are initially beyond their independent abilities. Metacognitive scaffolding supports learners in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their own learning strategies. Procedural scaffolding guides students through the steps required to complete tasks. These approaches translate into specific, actionable strategies.

Cognitive scaffolding: By breaking down abstract concepts into manageable, relatable, or visual formats, the following cognitive scaffolds make new and complex classroom content more accessible.

• Layering Texts: The teacher curates texts (primary sources, narratives, videos, podcasts, etc.) of varying complexity, using a resource like Padlet (see Shelli Thelen’s example) or Thinglink. Learners choose which texts to read based on interest and ability as they progressively build understanding of the topic.
• Think-Aloud Strategy: The teacher verbalizes their thought process while completing a task like comprehending a text, modeling cognitive strategies for the class. In a YouTube video, Kristina Smekens demonstrates the think-aloud while showing how to shoot a free throw in basketball.
• Infographics: An infographic visually communicates ideas through graphics, data, and copy. Designed to simplify complex concepts, infographics can be created using tools like Canvas, PowerPoint, or Adobe Illustrator. For example, Simeon Netchev’s illustration of the Dowding System describes the integrated air defense system used by Britain in World War II.
• Stretch a Sentence: In this technique, students expand simple sentences, gradually developing more complex sentence structures to deepen their understanding of the topic and language.
• Collaborative Summarizing: Student pairs “read and summarize a section of complex text” and ultimately create a concise takeaway of the section in 15 words or less.
• Stories: Because narratives align with the brain’s natural way of organizing and retaining information, they make complex material easier to grasp. For example, a teacher narrating a day in the life of Geoffrey, a medieval peasant, could vividly illustrate the social, political, and economic dynamics of feudalism.
• Analogies: In an Edutopia article, Matt Kuykendall shares how analogies create a “cognitive framework” that makes the unfamiliar more accessible. In one example, likening mental health to physical fitness conveys the importance of daily, intentional self-care practices.
• Video Clips: Short explainer videos simplify abstract ideas, such as the depth of the ocean. Such clips use visuals and concise narration to clarify complex topics and engage learners.

Metacognitive scaffolding: Through structured reflection, the following metacognitive scaffolds cultivate the skills necessary for self-regulation and independent learning.

• Checklists: By helping students plan, monitor, and evaluate their task progress, checklists build organizational skills and reinforce progress.
• Concept Cloud: Using tools like EdWordle or Mentimeter to improve their essays, learners “can plug their writing into a word cloud site and see whether their intended main ideas came across as important, or incorporate new words for those that are often repeated throughout their writing.”
• Mind Movie: Students visualize a scene or concept based on a sensory-rich description. While reading a chemistry text, for example, students could visualize water molecules vibrating faster (heat energy) and spreading apart (kinetic energy), breaking free from their liquid bonds and rising as steam (transition from liquid to gas) during boiling. This strategy also works, as noted above, for getting kids who can’t swim to jump in a frigid lake.
• Reverse Brainstorming: Students consider what might hinder their success before identifying solutions, promoting reflection and self-assessment.
• Learning Contract: This document “outlines actions the learner promises to take in a course to achieve academic success.” Example: “I will review my notes from each class and create flash cards to reinforce key concepts.”
• Question Ladder: As modeled in this short video, a learner generates a simple question about a topic or chapter, then increases the complexity of questions (e.g., “What happened?” and then “Why did it happen?” and then “How could it have been different?”). This technique guides students in crafting their own thoughtful questions.
• Self-Check Bookmark: Active reading bookmarks provide students with strategies for self-monitoring, visualizing, predicting, and inferring, among other comprehension strategies.
• Brain Bubbles: Students write a question or an “aha” moment on paper shaped like a thought bubble and pin it on a designated bulletin board. These contributions are revisited during a class discussion, encouraging reflection and deeper learning.

Procedural Scaffolding: By breaking tasks into manageable steps and offering guidance at each stage, procedural scaffolding techniques keep learners focused, reduce cognitive overload, and build independence.

• Task Cards: A versatile teaching tool that allows for differentiation, task cards feature questions, challenges, or instructions that guide students through an activity.
• Phased Instructions: The teacher provides an initial overview of the task, and then reveals one step of the task at a time. In a French language lesson, a teacher might identify the conversation theme, direct students to practice relevant vocabulary, guide them in constructing sentences, facilitate role-playing of the dialogue, and finally cue students to review pronunciation and accuracy.
• Sentence Stems: Used either in discussions or in writing, sentence stems assist students in focusing on content without being hindered by language formulation challenges.
• Classroom Debate: Structured classroom debates help students develop and refine complex skills—preparation, presentation, rebuttal, questioning, and closing statements—ensuring that they engage with the task in manageable stages. 
• Time Blocking Template: Using a structured time framework, such as one created by Oscar Gonzalez, helps students break tasks into manageable chunks and prioritize academic work effectively.
• Guided Annotations: By equipping students with structured prompts and tasks, this guided annotation template created by Texas A&M University Libraries helps students engage actively with a text and focus on specific elements, such as vocabulary, rhetorical strategies, or literary devices, without feeling overwhelmed.
• Process Prompts: A specific type of sentence stem, process prompts guide students through each stage of their work (e.g., “After completing ____, I will…,” “I completed ____ and my next step is ____,” or “Based on the feedback I received, I will ____”). These prompts exemplify procedural scaffolding by providing structured guidance that helps students organize their thoughts, reflect on progress, and plan next steps, fostering independence over time.

Cognitive, metacognitive, and procedural scaffolding techniques, when artfully executed, provide a pathway through the beautiful mess of learning, equipping students to confidently navigate difficult schoolwork and life challenges. Whether taming fractions or mastering flotation in Angle Lake, the promise of scaffolding is the same: “You’ve got this.”