Scaffolding

The reality for a lot of teachers in the Junior Cycle English classroom is to be teaching a cohort of mixed abilities. An effective way to manage varied abilities and different levels in the classroom is to teach to the top and scaffold up. There is no extra preparation time needed, as effective strategies are integrated into all of the units and tasks in this programme.

What do I know?

This information-download activity appears at the beginning of each new section. The rationale for this activity is to attempt to get students to attach new information to any prior learning they have on a topic. This helps the new learning to stick. Key concept explanations Building students’ critical vocabulary is an important foundation in First Year English. All of the key concepts, ideas and techniques are explained using dual-coded explanations, with multiple concrete examples to assist students’ understanding and processing of new ideas. Reading strategies There are a number of reading strategies used in this book to help students make sense of texts when reading. These include the Frayer method, summarising activities, quote quests, inference activities, generative learning activities and graphic organisers. Pre-teaching challenging vocabulary In order for all students to be able to access and make sense of the texts in the book, the most challenging vocabulary is pre-taught before the students encounter the text. The Frayer method explores a new word in four different ways, giving a student four ways to remember it and interact with it. Quote quests These activities help students understand how to use quotations and how to infer meaning from a text. Inference jigsaws These activities break down the process of making inferences about a text. Graphic organisers Organisers are used throughout the book to help students to structure their thinking and writing. Writing groups Writing projects and activities could be conducted in supportive mixed-ability writing groups.

Structured group discussions Group discussion activities are based around sets of questions to provide stimulus and structure for discussion. Success criteria These can be used to guide students to focus on the steps to success in the task. Modelling A variety of different forms of modelled writing is used throughout this book: annotated text examples, modelled sentence types, sentence stems, writing frames and writing activities from models.©The Educational Company of Ireland