ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS RESOURCES
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS RESOURCESSUPPORTING STUDENT WRITERS
Olson (2003) points out that instructional scaffolding is an effective model for supporting student writers as the teacher "… analyzes the language task to be carried out by the students, determines the difficulties the task is likely to pose when students undertake it independently, and designs guided practice activities in strategies that enable students to complete the task successfully" (p. 19). Adapting the five components of effective instructional scaffolding proposed by Langer and Applebee (1986), Olson argues that instructional scaffolding involves the following:
- Ownership: Providing students with a sense of purposefulness
- Appropriateness: Selecting tasks that build upon students' existing reading, thinking, and writing abilities and that will stretch students intellectually
- Structure: Making the structure of the task clear and guiding students through the specific task so that it can be applied to other contexts
- Collaboration: Promoting collaboration among students and between students and the teacher so that meaning can be constructed and shared collaboratively
- Internalization: Transferring control to the students as they gain competence and can apply the strategies independently. (p. 20)
When teachers use writing to reinforce and extend teaching in the content areas, they can support their students throughout the process by intentionally scaffolding their instruction so that students are given an opportunity to make sense of the content in intellectually challenging ways. Using what they know about course content, the writing process, and their own students, teachers can design instruction that engages their students in writing that is meaningful, authentic, and stimulating.
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