Scaffolding Literacy Instruction: Strategies for K-4 Classrooms

Helping emerging readers and writers reach their full potential requires a delicate balance between teacher assistance and student independence. With Scaffolding Literacy Instruction you can create that balance for every member of your classroom, gradually shifting the responsibility for learning to your students and creating confident learners in the process.

Editors Adrian Rodgers and Emily Rodgers frame Scaffolding Literacy Instruction, first giving you a valuable overview of guided instruction-the theory and scholarship behind it as well as its instructional goals-and then, in the final essay, anticipating its challenges and offering usable-on-Monday-morning tips for implementation. In between, wide-ranging essays from ten experts in the field, including Gay Su Pinnell and Irene C. Fountas, offer straight talk and well-researched ideas that scaffold lessons and strategies in support of:

• phonics instruction
• word solving
• partner reading
• working with special needs students
• building student identity.

As Rodgers and Rodgers write, "All scaffolding is teaching, but not all teaching is scaffolding." So whether you are a preservice teacher studying scaffolding in the literacy classroom, a novice looking for step-by-step ways to support students, or a veteran who wants to consider other case studies to see what might apply to your instructional setting, Scaffolding Literacy Instruction will help you do it and help you do it better.