Sydney Henderson

Professor Boyd
Early Childhood Education 3304
20 October 2016
Journal 2: Scaffolding Response
"When you incorporate scaffolding in the classroom, you become more of a mentor and
facilitator of knowledge rather than the dominant content expert." Northern Illinois University

Scaffolding is a theory introduced by Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky asserted that students

have a Zone of Proximal Development. This zone has a low end that consists of things a
student may find easy or that they do really well at executing on their own. The higher end of
this zone is assignments or tasks that may be too difficult for a student or that may overwhelm a
student when asked to complete it alone. Scaffolding is the idea that a teacher can introduce a
task to a student by showing it to them. Then, they can execute the task together and achieve
an answer as a class, small group or one-on-one with the teachers help. Lastly, the will ask the
student to complete the task on their own. The teacher has then successfully scaffolded the
students learning by helping them to move high us in the zone of proximal development.
The definition of a facilitator is someone who helps a group or people to understand
something. A teacher assumes the role of a facilitator when scaffolding student learning.
Scaffolding involves helping the student to understand a new concept and be comfortable
enough in their knowledge to be able to do it one their own. When a student successfully
achieves a new task after being shown how and participating with a teacher, thee information is
more valuable to them. These students are also confident in themselves and seem to have
higher grades due to their lack of questioning themselves.