#PAC MAN VOCABULARY TEACHER TOOLS HOW TO#

Sometimes you may have to offer hints and suggestions, leading them to the connections a bit, but once they get there, they will grasp the content as their own. Remember that children’s cognitive abilities are still in development, so opportunities for them to see developed, critical thinking are essential.Īsk students to share their own experiences, hunches, and ideas about the content or concept of study and have them relate and connect it to their own lives. Use think alouds, which will allow you to model your thought process as you read a text, solve a problem, or design a project.

You can guide students through each step of the process with the model of the finished product in hand. If a teacher assigns a persuasive essay or inquiry-based science project, a model should be presented side-by-side with a criteria chart or rubric. Always show students the outcome or product before they do it.Try a fishbowl activity, where a small group in the center is circled by the rest of the class the group in the middle, or fishbowl, engages in an activity, modeling how it’s done for the larger group.

#PAC MAN VOCABULARY TEACHER TOOLS HOW TO#

Have you ever interrupted someone with “Just show me!” while they were in the middle of explaining how to do something? Every chance you have, show or demonstrate to students exactly what they are expected to do. How many of us say that we learn best by seeing something rather than hearing about it? Modeling for students is a cornerstone of scaffolding, in my experience. Or perhaps you’ve not used them in some time and need a gentle reminder on how awesome and helpful they can be when it comes to student learning. So let’s get to some scaffolding strategies you may or may not have tried yet. Education researcher Eileen Raymond says, “The ZPD is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance.” In order to meet students where they are and appropriately scaffold a lesson or differentiate instruction, you have to know the individual and collective zone of proximal development (ZPD) of your learners. Scaffolding and differentiation do have something in common, though. For those students who are still struggling, you may need to differentiate by modifying an assignment or making accommodations like choosing a more accessible text or assigning an alternative project. Simply put, scaffolding is what you do first with kids. With differentiation, you might give a child an entirely different piece of text to read, or shorten the text or alter it, or modify the writing assignment that follows. When scaffolding reading, for example, you might preview the text and discuss key vocabulary, or chunk the text and then read and discuss as you go. Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk. Let’s start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things. What’s the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? Saying to students, “Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday.” Yikes! No safety net, no parachute-they’re just left to their own devices.

Pac man vocabulary teacher tools