CPD Session Idea 2: Stabilisers or balance bike? Lead a scaffolding workshop
Scaffolding is one of our essential 5 a day, but it’s often misunderstood when it comes to dyslexia. It’s surprising how many teachers don’t know how to scaffold precisely and effectively. Often generic worksheets are provided, knowledge organisers or word banks are provided, or an adult hovers to explain a task, but it’s less often that scaffolding is planned for specific learning needs.
I like use the balance bike versus stabilisers analogy. My son learned to bike ride with a balance bike. They’re cute little toddler power vehicles with no pedals and a whole lot of potential energy (especially through puddles on a hill!) The principle is that the essential first challenge is the skill of balance, while pedalling is a non-essential barrier to gaining this skill. Therefore the scaffold is that pedals are removed. In contrast, many of us adults learned on stabilisers. These work on the principle that pedalling is the essential first skill for budding cyclists to learn, with balance being the non-essential barrier that is removed.
In the same way, when scaffolding for learning, we must first establish what the specific challenges are for your learners. It’s important at this stage to be clear about what the essential, non-negotiable challenge is. This needs to be the focus, while other barriers can be reduced or removed.
For learners with dyslexia, these barriers might be writing (especially sentences and prose), spelling, remembering vocabulary and verbal information, remembering instructions, working on multiple things at once, speed and reading complex texts. Once you’ve established what the challenges are within a task, you can work out which challenge is essential for the task, and provide a scaffold for the barriers to learning.
Let’s use an example of a science task looking at chemical reaction. The essential challenge may be to measure and explain reaction rates and variables when mixing chemicals. A non-essential challenge for the dyslexic may be recalling vocabulary, writing in sentences and spelling names of chemicals. These could therefore be scaffolded, for example by providing specific word banks and recording learning in an alternative way to sentences.
A ready-to-use practical staff activity to work on effective scaffolding is the Scaffolding Learning Venn Diagram. You could use this in teams, by allocating time to plot learning tasks you have already set onto the Venn diagram, then consider practice and plan ahead. It can stimulate some great discussion about what pupils’ actual barriers are, as opposed to their perceived barriers.
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Scaffolding Learning Venn diagram for planning
A visual prompt to support teachers in scaffolding learning for learners with specific learning differences. For use by individual teachers or as staff CPD activity.
