Article Review, Scaffolding Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Article Review, Scaffolding - Essay Example A qualitative research approach was used for the program. A phonemic awareness lesson taught by a preschool teacher was taken for analysis which showed that children picked randomly were unable to comprehend or understand phonemics of words. Several factors, such as socio-cultural, non-understanding of the teacher’s instructions, or of the words used or what they are exactly required to do, could be the reason for the silent responses of these children. Hence support systems that could be provided by the teachers were worked upon which lead to devising the scaffolding method of creating phonemic awareness, which is reviewed in this article. Through the process of scaffolding teachers provide a support system, through comments and instructions, to children to complete a given task. It is not a random assignment process as it is tailor-made for each child depending on their inherent ability to perform the task. Keeping in mind the outcomes that could be expected from children wh o have varying grasping and performing abilities, three levels of scaffolding have been proposed. Beginning with children who have the least ability to grasp what is being told up to children who have a good grasping power, each level in scaffolding provides specific help to the children until the desired result is obtained. The authors have provided a transcript which outlines how the three levels of scaffolding have been used with children in a preschool classroom. However the effect size in this study is too small to ascertain the reach of this process among children. The three levels of scaffolding explained in the article include: intense, moderate and minimum. In the case of intense scaffolding the beginning phoneme is isolated and the teacher emphasizes on the phoneme while saying the word. In addition the teacher also instructs the children to watch them as