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VELS level 4 – Designed in scaffolding: an example using speaking and listening as preparation for writing

Designed in scaffolding

‘Designed in’ scaffolding is the kind of scaffolding that begins during planning. At this stage teachers consider both the outcomes that will be assessed (knowledge, skills and behaviours) and the students’ previous experiences.

This consideration occurs in the light of the cognitive and language demands of the specific domains. The teachers then design a series of learning experiences – a designed in scaffold – that will support students in developing new knowledge, skills and behaviours.

Consideration needs to be given to the kinds of activities planned to connect with students’ existing knowledge. For example:

• reminding the class of a shared activity such an excursion or a text type that they have already learned to write
• asking them to brainstorm what they know about a topic.

Transcript

In the following transcript a teacher scaffolds a group of upper primary students. The classroom is located in Darwin and the lesson comes from a social education unit of work on uranium mining that the teacher and class were engaged in for a period of three weeks. In Darwin, the issue of uranium mining is a controversial one.

The teacher began the unit by reading an imagined advertisement from a local newspaper with the class. The advertisement asked for people to express their views about the building of a nuclear power station in Darwin. In the transcript below, the teacher and students jointly discuss what they will ‘do’ in response to this advertisement.

Read the transcript and answer the questions. (T is teacher).

T: Well what are we going to do?

Marcus: We’re going to write and tell them we don’t want the power plant.

T: All right. What are we going to write?

Richard: Personal opinion.

T: How are we going to write it?

....................

Layla: Well a petition might help. If there are people who don’t actually have the time to write they could just sign their names so they know actually how many people.

....................

Richard: Maybe we could write like an argument or something that shows both points of view and putting your personal opinion at the end.

T: Great. Now is it called an argument when you put both points of view across? Is it?

Marcus: Mrs W, a discussion.

T: It’s a discussion. All right. Now what does a discussion show? What does a discussion show Ashley?

Ashley: Two sides of a story and it sort of like depends on which side wins.

T: And how do you decide which side wins? When you give a discussion how do you know what side wins?

Marcus: By the one that goes last. Like you put the one that you think is wrong before.

T: How do you decide that? What gives you . . . how do you know which one to decide? Richard?

Richard: Because after listening to all the information you found out you can make up your own mind if it benefits you or if it benefits other people.

T: Good so you’re saying that it’s the information that tells you?

Richard: Yeh.

T: Do you make up your mind now?

Several students: No.

T: See, when we first started talking that’s what I felt you had done. All right, maybe because of that story that we read. I felt that maybe you’d made your mind up and it’s really good to see that people actually haven’t made their minds up and that they’re prepared to look at both sides. And it’s that evidence that will tell us. And I think writing a discussion is an excellent idea. It’s probably the best idea. Because when we send that in it means that we’ve been fair. We’ve looked at it properly, we’ve looked at both sides and we’ve thought about it before we’ve made the decision.

(F. Christie 1997)

Professional learning

Questions

• What previous knowledge of text types does this class have?
• How does the teacher connect to this previous knowledge?
• How does the teacher point forward to the goals of the unit and the activities the class will be involved in? What activities do you think they will be involved in?
• The teacher is also scaffolding the class into a set of values. What are they?

Below is a short extract from the next part of the lesson where the teacher revises the stages that a discussion genre moves through.

T: Now let’s have a look at see if we can work out how a discussion is structured. OK: We’ve identified the issue. What other things are there that you’re aware of in a discussion? Layla?

Layla: They have an introduction.

T: Right. Yes. They have an introduction. It has a special name.

.........

Richard: It’s a preview, kind of preview.

[Asked what this means, the students go on:]

Marcus: I was going to say previews are like telling you what it’s going to be about.

[The rest of the transcript is too long to reproduce here but the teacher and class revised all the elements of the discussion genre: Arguments For a point of view, Arguments Against a point of view and a final Recommendation.]

(F. Christie 1997)

Withdrawing support: independent writing

The teacher should only withdraw their support when they are confident that the students have the skills, knowledge and behaviours to write successfully without their support. This should follow class discussions of the transcript, continued debate and the continued scaffolding of the class over several weeks.

Uranium mining discussion (PDF - 18Kb)

This transcript is a written text produced by a student in the class from the activity above.

• Look at the overall organisation of the text. Does it have a clear preview stage, arguments for, arguments against and recommendation? Mark these stages on the text.
• Is this text closer to spoken language or written language?
• What evidence is there that this student is developing control over written language?

Consider:

• context dependent versus context independent (a ‘stand-alone’ package)
• fluid, open-ended interaction versus a semi-permanent record
• lots of turns joined together with linking words versus compression via long noun groups.

Note that the stages in this text are very clearly organised. The student makes many successful language choices in the texts such as the use of linking words or conjunctions to signal when the text shifts from one stage to another e.g. ‘On the other hand’ and ‘Thus, in summary’.

Being able to compose a written text which engages critically with two opposing points of view, weighing them up and making a final recommendation, is a very important part of critical literacy – the critical dimension of literacy development in the middle years.

Hybrid texts

As students progress in their learning, they are expected to produce blended, multi-purpose genres with complex structures. These are hybrid types of texts and the transcript of Amy’s talk on mythical dragons is a good example of this.

Hybrid texts – a report on dragons (PDF - 19Kb)

This is a transcript of student Amy’s talk on mythical dragons.

It presents an information report on dragons. Towards the end of the speech, the text changes gear and shifts into an explanation of the origins of the dragon myth.

As students become increasingly competent as readers and writers, the texts they are required to produce are also increasingly complex (structurally).

Students are also expected to explore new genre variations, such as complex or hybrid texts known as macro genres, as well as interpret and construct texts that deal with different perspectives and adopt a critical stance.

This also has important implications for the scaffolding and support they will need from their teachers.

In terms of the spoken-to-written continuum, this text is clearly moving towards the latter end of the continuum. The text stands independently of the context in which it was produced – all the meanings are in the text and can be retrieved, it is a fixed record of the argument and there are lots of long noun groups in this text.

The student uses both pre and post-modifiers. These are all important features of literate language, especially the long noun groups which ‘squeeze in’ lots of content.

As students build depth and breadth in their literacy development, they need to be able to do two things: understand and produce increasingly technical language and increasingly complex noun groups.

In their reading, students are expected to take on all four of the reader roles outlined by Luke and Freebody as well as comprehend and compose complex multi-modal texts including electronic texts, hypermedia and hyperlinks.

This report is unusual because it was prepared as a speech to give in front of Amy’s teacher and classmates. Producing a written text that will be orally delivered extends students’ grasp of both oral and written modes of language, making it a very useful activity.

Amy shapes her language to deal with these challenges in several ways. Primarily, aware that she and her audience can both see and hear one another, she begins by greeting them and concludes by personally thanking them. Although these choices are not characteristic of written information reports, they signal that Amy is learning to speak in a range of contexts.

Amy’s greeting is immediately followed by a ‘text preview’ (included in her Introduction). Here, Amy outlines the aspects of dragons that she will be talking about and demonstrates her ability to focus clearly on what she wants to discuss.

Amy has included her preview to guide her teacher and classmates as they listen to her speech.

The demands of delivering a speech have had a significant impact on how Amy’s has organised her text.

Amy takes quite a formal approach to her audience: she is the expert who is to inform her listeners, and to this extent her language shows many of the features of expert written language. She introduces a degree of judgement, expression and evaluation about her topic, illustrating a skilled use of language.

Having completed her introduction, Amy uses a series of sub-headings to introduce and sequence her information. She reports on eating habits, dragon’s habitats, and their appearance and bone structure, before going on to offer her opinion on myths about dragons.

Each section has a clear opening topic sentence:

‘Dragons will eat any type of meat except another dragon; A dragon’s habitat depends entirely on what type of dragon it is;The appearance of an Asian dragon is:… Finally the concluding section starts confidently, In my opinion, a dragon’s skeleton is actually what the myth of dragons started with’

This opinion is then developed in a sequence of subsequent sentences or clauses within them, several of whose openings (really thematic choices to start each sentence or clause) signal that a series of clear connections is made in order to develop the opinion:

It (i.e. the myth ) started quite a while ago…
Of course the large tooth they found was actually a dinosaur’s tooth…
As you can see, thi s is a picture of a dinosaur…
The dragon’s skeleton is a lot like a dinosaur’s skeleton in many ways…
The first is that the jaw is the same…
The second is that…
The third is that…
And the last is that…
So as you can see , this dragon’s skeleton could just as easily have been a dinosaur’s.

Amy is aware that she is dealing with an issue that is problematic or provocative and she reflects on this issue. This demonstrates what Unsworth (2001) called ‘reflection literacy’.

Amy interrogates contrasting views about dragons. In the section on eating habits Amy observes: It’s funny how there are two creatures of exactly the same species with two almost completely different diets!

She is clearly taking a reflective stance towards the information she has gathered. In particular, she is able to distance herself from the so-called ‘facts’ and ‘problematise’ them.

She does this by critically commenting on one anomaly in western and eastern constructions of knowledge about dragons: namely the apparently contradictory statements made about dragons’ diets.

Amy makes good use of several language features that reveal she is aware she is expressing judgment, as in her use of modal adverbs: Europeans usually eat fish… Asian dragons will usually eat… a dragon’s habitat depends entirely on… they are usually one colour; a dragon’s skeleton is actually what the myth…

Amy is capable of producing a text that shows density, expressed for example in the noun groups, some of which have clauses embedded within them: dragons are mythical creatures [that are commonly used in European and Asian legends] ; the appearance of an Asian dragon; they have long whisker-like things [sticking out of their cheeks].

Overall, Amy performs well for a child of her years in the last stages of primary school and she is well prepared to progress to the secondary school, able to deal with the challenges in language and literacy that she will meet there.

Related Materials

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Teaching strategies - Basic text types (not yet available)