Differentation and Scaffolding

The techniques of Differentation and Scaffolding are instructional methods used in today's classroom. Therefore, teachers should know what they are and how they can be applied in class.

DIFFERENTIATION

Students have different needs and learn in different ways. Therefore, the teacher who applies the differentiation technique has to take into account the learners' differences to make the most of those differences and improve the students' learning. When a teacher modifies and makes efforts to adapt his/her instruction to meet individual needs, then he/she is differentiating instruction.

These teachers have take into account the content, process, products and learning environment in order to help students to improve their learning skills.

Examples of differentiating include: 

1. Organising the room so that there are different places to work in groups fostering collaboration or alone without distraction,
2. Varying the length of time to complete a task depending on the skills of the learner. 
3. Teaching through different means such as auditory, visual or kinesthetic. 

SCAFFOLDING

On the other hand, Scaffolding refers to a wide range of instructional techniques used to improve progressively the understanding and independence of students in the learning process. The techniques are provided successively as the students progress. When a technique is no longer needed, it is removed. Little by little, students are able to take more responsibility for their own learning. 

Scaffolding techniques are used by all teachers since more or less all of them consider the level of students when teaching them and adapt their lessons to what students are expected to know and to what they are able to do at a certain point. 

Examples of scaffolding techniques include:

1. Simplifying lessons and increasing gradually the difficulty. 
2. Giving a model to the students of an assignment they will have to do.
3. Giving them vocabulary lists they need to know to understand a text. 

All in all, scaffolding and differentiation have many similarities since both of them refer to a wide range of different techniques that teachers use to adapt to the different levels of students and to instruct them considering their individual needs. However, they also have differences such as letting students choose among several texts (differentiation) or giving them the vocabulary they need to understand a text (scaffolding).

References

6 scaffolding strategies to use with your students. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/scaffolding-lessons-six-strategies-rebecca-alber

Concepts, L. (2013). Scaffolding definition. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/scaffolding/

What is differentiated instruction? (2015). Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-differentiated-instruction