(5 years old)
Five-year-olds, compared with their younger peers, are much more mature, controlled, and responsible. Many skills have been refined so that at this age children are more interested in projects and activities that result in products.
There is also greater interest in fine motor activities as children have gained many skills in accurate cutting, gluing, drawing, and beginning writing. This interest is spurred by the new desire to “make something” rather than merely to paint, cut, or manipulate the play dough for sheer enjoyment of these activities.
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Scaffolding
Definition
Scaffolding is the “process by which an expert, when instructing a novice, responds contingently to the novice’s behaviour in a learning situation, so that the novice gradually increases his or her understanding of a problem”. 34
Scaffolding means rendering temporary support (verbal or non-verbal) to children until they are able to function independently​
In scaffolding for children, the adults “support the child’s exploration of new meanings, relationships and knowledges, and this consolidates what is nearly known by the child” and this was “developed from the works of Leo S. Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner”
An educator attempting to scaffold “invites divergent responses” and “provokes lively discussions
Videos on Scaffolding
How is scaffolding related to the age group?
5 year old really want to know how the world works. Since children of this age want “do something more”, scaffolding is used to extend their thinking and to broaden their learning.
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Scaffolding is also “a useful technique for developing older children’s skills as written-language users”
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Scaffolding can also be used “with older children to support friendship-building in the classrooms where there are children with disabilities”
Theoretical Background
Vygotsky & Scaffolding
Features of good quality scaffolding
Joint Problem-Solving
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The first feature in quality scaffolding is that 2 or more people try to solve a problem together. They each must be interested in the problem and must be culturally meaningful to them.
Inter-subjectivity
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Involves trying to reach shared understandings (through interactions) between the involved parties of how each thinks and feels.
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Creates a common ground for communication as each partner adjusts to the perspective of the other’
Warmth and responsiveness
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As scaffolding involves social collaboration. It’s effectiveness as a teaching technique is dependent on the ‘emotional tone’ of the relationship between a learner and the teacher.
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Educators must acknowledge children’s efforts and understandings while staying closely attuned to children’s needs for additional support.
Keeping the child in the ZPD
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Learning is most effective when the child is regularly working her ZPD.
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Children’s learnings are maximized when they are regularly working at the upper level of their competence.
Promoting self-regulation
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When children self-regulate, they control their learning.
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Successful scaffolding involves a changing relationship between the scaffolder (tutor) and the scaffoldee (tutee) that involves calibrating and recalibrating the input from the tutor to match the changing capacities of the tutee and increasing activity for the tutee, with a positive and changing effect for each.
Example 1
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Take note of how the teacher is scaffolding the children towards creating a poster for a storybook
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​Look out for the questions the teacher is asking to facilitate scaffolding
Example 2
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Do you think the boy can bake a cake without the help of his mother?
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Look at the picture. Think about how his mother scaffold the boy in baking a cake.