MWSubstack 006: Scaffolding; Executive Function
Students need solid executive function skills to succeed. Scaffolding strategies need to match specific learning goals. Two entwined topics.
Welcome to MiddleWeb Substack. It’s a twice-monthly, two-topic, five-minute read for middle grades educators, featuring several of MiddleWeb’s most popular and influential articles, a book review, and a noteworthy 4-8 resource or project we’ve spotted. That’s it!
► SCAFFOLDING LESSONS
How do we design scaffolds to support learning targets?
Former middle school teacher and school leader Karin Hess is a learning scientist. Her mission? Turn education research into actionable strategies that help kids achieve more. In "How to Be Strategic with Scaffolding Strategies" Dr. Hess walks us through practical ways to match scaffolding techniques to learning goals and individual student needs. She writes:
Scaffolding strategies need to be used strategically. For example, a strategy intended to support executive functioning or language development may not be effective for deepening content knowledge and thinking.
Educators should begin by asking themselves: Why did I choose this strategy? Does it match my learning target and how will it optimize learning for some or all of my students?
Hess begins by dispelling three common scaffolding myths (e.g., scaffolding and differentiation aren't the same) and then details specific strategies and when to use them.
For more thoughts about scaffolding, see these MiddleWeb articles:
Scaffolding Instruction: How Not to Learn to Ride a Bike (Terry Thompson)
ELLs: Try These 5 Scaffolds in Any Subject (Valentina Gonzalez)
Scaffolds & Bridges: Reading and Writing about Nonfiction (Cummins & Genchi)
Planning Our Lessons: Forests, Trees, Leaves (Tan Huynh)
► EXECUTIVE FUNCTION
Helping students hone skills for a lifetime
Memory overload is a big issue for middle graders as they begin class-switching and learning from multiple teachers. In "Tools to Help Students Lessen Memory Overload" Rachel Tew and Susanne Croasdaile help us understand the critical role executive function skills (vividly defined at Edutopia) play in reducing overload and "making every second count as we support the diverse needs of our students."
In our own teaching, we use Universal Design for Learning (UDL)...as our lens for seeing the world and reducing barriers to student success. The UDL framework has helped us make our students independent learners, and a critical component has been teaching learner-owned strategies that address executive function weaknesses and increase learner expertise.
Tew and Croasdaile go on show how sharpening students' executive function skills and teaching them routines relieves memory overload and improves their ability to hold and process new information.
For other insights and tips about executive function, see:
Helping Students Learn to Organize Their Lives (Cheryl Mizerny)
How Executive Function Links SEL and Academics (Marilee Sprenger)
Executive Function Is Key to Student Achievement (Nancy Sulla)
Use ‘First 20 Days’ Planning to Prep Kids for Success (Costley and Croasdaile)
►ELSEWHERE
How to create a middle school editing community
Do some of your students ignore the feedback you give them on longer-form writing assignments? Middle school teacher Carly Van Der Wende solved the problem in her classes by establishing editing communities "where students take an active role in building each other up as writers through a communal experience." Learn her step-by-step process. (Edutopia)
►OUR BOOK REVIEW
Deliberate Optimism: Still Reclaiming the Joy in Education (2nd Edition) by Debbie Silver and Jack C. Berckemeyer
Silver and Berckemeyer guide educators through five practical principles to achieve deliberate optimism "despite all that we have endured," writes middle grades teacher Kathy Palmieri. She responded to the authors "authentic wit, writing, and tell-it-like-it-is style" and found the book "to be exactly what I needed." (Read the complete review.)
►REVIEW THIS SPOTLIGHT BOOK FOR US
Patterns of Revision: Inviting 5th Graders into Conversations That Elevate Writing (Whitney La Rocca & Jeff Anderson). Routledge/Stenhouse, 2024
How do we get fifth-grade writers to revise? And once we do get them thinking about revision, what, exactly, do they do? The first in a new series on revision by La Rocca and Anderson, with separate books for each grade, 4-8. GO HERE to find the book and our reviewing guidelines.
►NEXT TIME
Effective teachers know that lesson starters can set the mood and boost the learning. We'll share a bunch. And we'll also point you to our most popular articles about behavior management.