CLASSROOM Q & A with LARRY FERLAZZO
My Latest EdWeek Blog Contribution:
October 02, 2026
‘Sets Students Up For Success’
Incorporating scaffolds into your lesson planning is a must for effective teaching. It meets students where they are and supports their growth and independence. As a whole-class instructional tool, the first step in creating lessons with scaffolds involves identifying the learning needs of the class and the context within which this new content is being delivered.
Some questions I ask to prepare a scaffolded lesson include:
What holes might students have in their learning that will make it difficult to understand this topic?
What background knowledge can students use to understand this new topic?
What misunderstandings might students have about this content?
What key vocabulary is needed to understand this topic?
What visuals can I provide to help them imagine this information in their minds?
How will I structure the lesson from “I do” to “We do” to “You do” to move students toward independence?
I choose which scaffolding strategies to use based on the answers to these questions. Below are the strategies I use most often, organized into those for direct instruction or class discussions and those students can use to complete written work.
Whole-class instruction and discussion scaffolds:
Preteach key vocab in context - Identify words students need to know in the unit. Read the words out loud and ask students which they recognize. Have students share the meanings they know, adjusting, if needed, to match the meaning related to the content before finishing with the meanings of words they do not recognize.
Structure academic talk - When planning a class discussion, incorporate strategies like Think-Pair-Share and Say Something to scaffold the discussion by structuring students’ roles and providing them specific language to share their ideas.
Activate background knowledge - Discuss previously taught topics that relate to the new content, bringing them to the forefront of their memory so students have a framework to link this new information.
Provide visuals - Use visuals to support new learning. Whether it be a map, a diagram, a slideshow, or written notes on the board, these all help students to process and comprehend.
Teacher think-aloud - Model your thinking process as you start to encounter and understand a new knowledge. Share mistakes you made in your initial thinking and show how you change and refine your thinking.
Questioning techniques - Use a mix of open-ended and literal questions to assess students’ mastery of the new content. Call on students to respond. If students struggle with a response, offer choices they can select from. Make sure they understand the question by asking them to repeat it. If a student gives a limited answer, provide questions to help them develop their idea. If a student says they don’t know, provide a series of guided questions to lead them logically to the answer. Ask classmates to expand on an answer.
Scaffolds for completing written assignments independently:
Show end product - Share examples of past student work for a project. Highlight where each of the parts required are found in the example.
Chunk steps of assignments - Provide checklists, charts, and visuals that outline the steps for completing a long-term project or that give dates by which parts of a project should be done. These aids help students develop their executive-functioning skills. In the future, students can create their own checklists incorporating the steps to complete a project.
Give sentence starters and graphic organizers - These tools help students organize their ideas and begin writing an essay. Over time, teachers can release more responsibility by shortening the length of the sentence starters or providing less pre-completed information on the graphic organizer and requiring students to complete more of it.
Provide page numbers - When asking students to answer text-dependent questions, add the page number and paragraph where the answer can be found. To release more responsibility, provide just the page number so they must skim the entire page to find the answer.
Remind to use spell check - Teachers can give verbal prompts to remind students to use spell check on a computer-based written assignment. Teachers can pull back by listing spell check as a step on an assignment checklist.
Using a combination of these scaffolding strategies sets students up for success and independence.