Scaffolding for Teaching New Concepts

While tutoring, a significant challenge when teaching a new concept is making sure the student understands the process, rather than copying solutions. In order to do this, I like to use a technique called "scaffolding". This process breaks down the learning process into three parts. The first part is demonstration of the concept using an example question. The tutor completes a question explaining their thought process and allows for the student to ask questions about why certain techniques are used. This step is important to show students how a concept is tackled in practice. However, after, it is important to make certain that a student truely masters the topic on their own. The next step is a guided question where the tutor works through an example with the student. There are many ways to do this. One strategy is to ask open ended questions to prompt a student towards completing the correct steps. Often at the start, the student needs a lot of guidance as the topic is new, but as time progresses, and more example questions are completed, the student slowly begins to understand the framework to completing questions. The third step is the most important step in ensuring that a student masters a concept. That is individual practice. This usually takes the form of independent study and homework such that a student completes questions on their own. Without this important step, and regular practice, the student may not be able to complete questions when it matters most: under time conditions in their exams. Another important aspect to this individual practice is that students should try to complete this revision as close to exam conditions as possible; a quiet area, under time conditions. The last aspect is that the tutor reviews the individual revision with the student and answers any further questions, especially as questions become more challenging.

This scaffold, I find, is one of the most helpful strategies of teaching new concepts.