Welcome back to another post on my inquiry.

Last time, I touched on how I have been working on allowing students to demonstrate their understanding through different avenues. The students did a great job on their fairytale projects because they were able to choose how they wanted to present their fairytales as a group. Many students chose to do a drama and made their own costumes and props! Other groups decided to use puppets. One group made a pop-up presentation of their fairytale, which was so creative!

Moving onto the intent of this post: scaffolding and modeling. During my research on my inquiry topic, I came across many articles that discussed the importance of scaffolding and modeling as a way of helping to build student self-confidence. I have kept this in mind during my practicum as something that I am constantly striving to do. Has it always been perfect? No, but I believe that I am getting better at this aspect. I like to call it “front-loading” or “pre-loading” as it is also called. Front-load all of the expectations of what students are to do before they begin an activity to: 1. prevent misbehaviors and 2. so that students have the confidence in themselves that they know what to do and how to complete the activity. I am finding that fewer students are coming up to me feeling confused or asking questions because I have scaffolded and modeled the activity.

I have also found that anchor charts have aided students who are visual learners and need those drawings to make sense of their learning. I display anchor charts around the classroom (wherever there’s space!) to help students remember key pieces of information about concepts. They can feel confident that they can look at the chart whenever they need that extra support.