PROVIDING SCAFFOLDING AND FEEDBACK Some students may need minimal support to complete an activity; others may benefit from additional scaffolding or feedback. Another way that educators can differentiate small-group instruction is by fine-tuning the level of scaffolding and types of feedback they provide based on the instructional needs of each student or group.
Teacher Feedback
Teacher feedback during small-group instruction may consist of verbal or nonverbal messages regarding students’ performance or understanding. Evidence suggests that teacher feedback supports student learning, and the most effective feedback is explicit, timely, and consistent (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Oakes et al., 2018; Wisniewski et al., 2020). Explicit feedback goes beyond general remarks about performance (e.g., “good job”). It specifically and clearly provides information about students’ current task performance, whether they are meeting their target goal, and what they need to do to move towards skill mastery. For example, in the Kindergarten Code-Focused Lesson 1 example, a teacher might provide feedback to an incorrect response by saying, “You said this letter says /mmm/, but the letter n actually says /nnn/. You try it: What sound does n make?” Timely feedback refers to the feedback being provided in temporal proximity to when the behavior occurred. The immediacy of the feedback ensures that the student can connect the feedback to their misunderstanding. The regular provision of feedback is also important. When teachers consistently provide feedback, both about things students are doing well and about areas for improvement, students develop a clear understanding of what is expected of them to reach their goals.
Teacher Scaffolding
Sometimes, instead of providing specific feedback to correct a student’s error, a teacher may provide extra support to help a student arrive at the correct answer. This extra, temporary support is called scaffolding and may include teacher feedback or materials. The purpose of scaffolding is to bridge the gap between what a student can do now and mastery of the target skill. Scaffolds typically move from minimal scaffolds to more intensive scaffolds. For example, in the Book Reading activity in the Upper-Elementary Lesson 2 example, if a student showed difficulty responding to the comprehension purpose question, the teacher could provide a sentence stem to get the student started off using a complete sentence to respond. If the student still had difficulty responding, the teacher might provide a response as a cloze sentence with one word missing for the student to fill in. As students develop competency, teachers can reduce or remove the scaffolding to foster independent skill mastery.
ALIGNING PRACTICE WITH RESEARCH TOPIC PAPER 23
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