Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning

42. Scaffold up, don't dumb down! with Alex Fairlamb

• Bedrock Learning • Season 2 • Episode 35

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What if the supports we give students could raise the bar instead of lowering it? We sit down with Alex Fairlamb, Trust Teaching and Learning Network Lead and Assistant Principal, and author of The Scaffolding Effect, to unpack how temporary, responsive scaffolds help learners move from guided practice to genuine independence without sacrificing high expectations.

We dig into scaffolding as a core part of adaptive teaching: anticipating barriers before a lesson starts, using data and recent assessments to plan, and then adjusting live through tight loops of checking for understanding. Alex explains why “scaffold up, don’t dumb down” matters for every learner, including those with SEND and EAL, and how to avoid diagnostic overshadowing by focusing on actual barriers like organisation, attendance, and gaps in prior knowledge. We challenge prescriptive routines, exploring why rigid I, we, you mandates can backfire across subjects, and how subject-specific modelling, comparative exemplars, and teacher judgement create better outcomes.

Literacy takes centre stage with practical strategies you can use tomorrow. We cover teacher-led modelled reading and reciprocal routines that turn fluent readers into strategic readers, explicit vocabulary instruction that lives inside rich texts, and writing supports that span the full process - from decoding prompts with RUSS to planning, drafting, revising, and editing with clarity. Metacognition runs through it all: narrating decisions, using “weak” nudges that provoke deeper thinking, and building automaticity so working memory is freed for higher-order tasks. Most importantly, we talk timing: fading scaffolds too late creates the illusion of learning; too early undermines confidence. The craft is knowing when and how to step back so students step up.

If you care about high expectations, smarter modelling, and literacy that sticks, this conversation brings fresh, usable ideas. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review to tell us which scaffold you’ll add or remove this week.

SPEAKER_00:

Hi everyone and welcome to the Bedrop Talks podcast. Thank you for continuing to subscribe and follow the pod and uh review it and all that type of thing. It's really helpful because it means that everyone can find it and listen along. It is much appreciated. It's lovely. One of my favourite parts of the week is uh getting my weekly digest of how many people have listened and so forth. And it's lovely. It's great to see that people are so so interested in what we're what we're doing. Uh today we've got Alex Fairlam, who is a trust teaching and learning network lead and assistant principal and author of the new book, The Scaffolding Effect, which I think is a timely addition to everything that's going on in schools right now, um, to kind of put our foot on the ball and keep things simple and make things explicit for our learners. So I think that's a really, really it's a powerful book. Do give that a look. Um so, Alex, first of all, thank you so much for coming on. And actually, most of all, thank you for being so patient while we lined up the time. I think it's taken us a I reckon we're into the months now, aren't we?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Yeah, it's it's definitely taken us time to put heads together.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but it's it's such a pleasure to have you on. And and just I mean, we obviously always have a quick chat before recording and just listening to what you've said prior to this, it's I'm really excited to hear what you've got to say about everything and what you've been doing and your views on on scaffolding and and and so on and so forth. I think it's a really important piece of work. So, first of all, when it comes to scaffolding, um, and you know, that's a word that teachers since the dawn of time will probably have heard that word and or or a version of it. What, if anything, you know, when it comes to kind of warnings and key ideas and your views on this, what do you think are the most important aspects of that for people to know about when it comes to scaffolding?

SPEAKER_01:

I think with scaffolding, it's important to know that it's a part of adaptive teaching, because adaptive teaching is something which is also used within kind of similar conversations. Um, and I think it's important that we recognize that um scaffolding is something which is temporary. Um, and I think the EEF definition is really great for summarising it. And it's something which is verbal, written, and visual. Quite often we'll think of a writing frame when we think of scaffolding, but actually it is so, so much more than that. It can be something as simple as a verbal nudge, whereby we will say to someone, um, you know, when was the last time that we did this? What did that look like? Or how might we start this sentence? Um, I think it's really important that we know that scaffolding is um something which is both heavy and light. So we may start off with something which is quite heavily scaffolded for either the whole class, a group of learners, or an individual. But then the hope is that with a gradual release, what we will see is that that fading out of that scaffold. Because in the end, what we want them to be is we want them to be independent and autonomous. Scaffolding is very much about teaching to the top and having the highest expectations of all students and being aware of conscious and unconscious bias and making sure that we are aware of those and planning for the for the highest part. And Haile Hughes came out with a really great quote um last week, which is that we need to scaffold up and not dumb down. So scaffolding is very much not about dumbing down, it's about the same high expectations for all students, irrespective of their barriers. Um, and it's um about how we ensure that we anticipate the barriers that those children may experience and provide suitable scaffolds for them.

SPEAKER_00:

I I really like what you said there. I mean, there's so much to unpick, but in terms of the the different types of scaffolding, because it's an easy thing to say, because we we we we are used to scaffolding being perhaps more recently, maybe bookmarks down the side of a page with some sentence openers on or what's happening, whatever's on the board. But I think if we start thinking about scaffolding, as as you say, those verbal nudges, and it reminds me, because um, I reckon this is a record for me, three minutes and 47 seconds to mention that my I my my my little boy's dyslexic, and I mention it, seem to mention it every episode. And one of the key pinch points of our day is when we go out to school, and often we're both working, and then because for some we work from home and we get him in the car and we're out to school and that's it. And that's and actually he can find that quite upsetting because he um he often he often hasn't got his, he hasn't brushed his teeth, hasn't got his water bottle, hasn't got everything in his bag, all of that thinking that needs to go on. And we failed him there because we've not given him any of the scaffolds and the prompt to get ready and to be able to start that process of moving towards going to school. And that's that can be learning. That's it, that's anything that requires cognition, right? And I think it's and that's what you just said there, it triggered me when you were talking about a verbal cue. And that's I think it's really important for teachers to be aware of all of those cues they can be giving their learners in a classroom, right? That's really important.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know, verbal nudges are really, really powerful because they lend itself well to adaptive teaching in terms of that efficiency of being able to adapt live in the moment. And it also helps to promote deep thinking and those kind of mental models. And Protect Rakura has done some really great work on that in terms of how we make sure that when we're giving verbal nudges, that we wouldn't be kind of using things like it rhymes with or begins with, because that's going to lead to half-baked denances and misconceptions. Instead, what we need to give them is weak nudges, which are gonna get them to really then think deeply about the content, and then that'll help to build those kind of mental models. Um, now that you've mentioned dyslexia, it's actually really interesting because um McRae R have recently done um a discussion paper which has been looking at inclusion, and one of the things that they've identified amongst it is that we've got kind of diagnostic overshadowing, whereby the result of that is that sometimes we fixate on labels rather than barriers. So we see the label and not the learner. And that actually you may have a dyslexic student and by us using kind of generic strategies such as sit at the front colour overlay, we're perhaps ignoring the other barriers that that child, that child might experience. So it might be low attendance, it might also be poor organization. And that effectively we've got to step away from these generic approaches and instead really see the learner, see what their barriers are, um, and make sure that their scaffolds are appropriate and that we're adapting through a sequence of lessons or over the program of study so that that child, you know, we are not having this perception that because they have a learning barrier, that actually means that they are not able to produce the same outcomes as other students. Um because what that can do is those teacher expectations we know are massively important. And if we don't have high expectations for all students, then what we will do is we'll actually widen the gap and will contribute to their feelings of low efficacy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that's really interesting because you know it's you know, inclusion's been here for years and can understand why and and and and the importance of that of inclusive education. But I wonder if we're at a bit of a lagging point where teachers just and colleagues just haven't been given advice like you've just given us there. And actually it's not just about the advice and the training, it's about the data and the insights as well, you know, receiving and chunking for teachers that information in a really scalable and efficient way, so that, you know, you know, my son is is one of probably maybe I guess three or four students in his class who might be dyslexic or might have any other barriers, but how do you A get those insights to teachers in a really simple, digestible manner? And then how does the teacher then compute that into their lessons, compute that into the learning sequences? That's a really important point there, isn't there, about that? And you you mentioned prior um to the recording about lethal mutations when it comes to misconceptions and perhaps warnings when it, you know, with scaffolding, what can you just give us a sense of that and give us a flavor of what that means?

SPEAKER_01:

I think one thing that's really important that if you're a school leader or someone who's looking at developing scaffolding is to have a really clear vision of what it is and what it isn't, and to be aware of the misconceptions that people may hold about it. So misconceptions might be that actually adaptive teaching and scaffolding is just for SEND and EAL students, whereas actually adaptive teaching and scaffolding is for all students. And yes, there may be person-specific adjustments which are made as per NEH CP, but effectively what every lesson should involve is, and it's John Eaton that comes out with this, is that basically we should anticipate and in advance of the lessons what the barriers may be for students. And that's using information that we may hold about people such as attendants, um, it might be in the HVP or people passport, but then also your knowledge of their progress over their past sequence of lessons or your formative and summative assessment, which children are getting it, which ones aren't. And then within the lesson, having continuous loops of checking for understanding and adapting by either removing or adding a scaffold. So that's kind of really a key thing. It's it's not that you have a scaffold in place and then you just blindly follow that through the rest of the lesson, not thinking actually, do they need it or do they not? Because as Rachel kind of quite rightly says, is you know, if the scaffold is there to be like a permanent part, that's not that's not a scaffold, that's a lesson plan. Um and effectively we need to be really using those checks for understanding. I think sometimes as well, people can have this misconception that um scaffolding is dumbing down work, and it was Heidi Hughes. That's, you know, as I mentioned before, saying about that we scaffold up, we don't dumb down. Um actually, this is about having the same high expectations of all students and putting into place the scaffolds. It may take some students longer, they may need more support, but effectively it's having that. Um the example that I give is that my students are always going to have to write a 12-mark answer in a history exam. I'm not going to say to some students you'll only have them write a four-mark standard piece of work and show them examples of four mark. It might take them longer to get closer towards that 12-mark point, but I'm still going to push them towards that 12-mark point. Um, a thing that me and Rachel are really wary of is prescriptive approaches to scaffolding. As I've said, I think it's really great to have a vision and to have like uh an overarching bank of kind of general scaffolding strategies so that everyone is rowing in the same direction. Everyone knows what kind of quality scaffolding is, we're using the same language. But then actually, how that is developed and evolved should be through a subject or age and stage specific lens, because how you scaffold in DT is very different to how you scaffold in history to P to art. And so we've got to avoid being too prescriptive. And we have seen in the case of scaffolding strategies such as I, we and you, where schools have mandated that every lesson must have an I, we and you. And that's problematic because one, that's counterintuitive to adaptive teaching. Because what if they're not ready for the we or the you part of it? Um, you know, it we would just be jugnauting the children forward without actually maybe they need another I. Um, and that stops you from being adaptive and teachers using their expertise to know. And also, as well, when we look at different subjects, in a maths lesson or an MFL lesson, you could do multiple iterations of IWU. So maths two-digit multiplication, you know, you could go through an IWU sequence very quickly and then move on to something else. And in MFL, there'll be perhaps a speaking component of a lesson and a writing component, which would have multiple IWU. Whereas actually in history in English, it might be that an I takes up a whole lesson. And over a sequence of lessons, we've got the IWU. And then other to that, is IWU the only modeling way? No, there are lots of other ways that we can model comparative. We can use um live modelling. So I think we're really keen about making sure that there is effective um PD which is in place, which celebrates and elevates the nuances of each subject.

SPEAKER_00:

That's so interesting. And that the other thing just to just a comment on there, or uh to ask the question would be what's your view on um producing a model in a class versus preparing one prior?

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's horses for courses, effectively. Um, so I think you know, it's I think there'll always be, or I would hope that there would always be kind of like a form of prepared one, because if you're gonna do something live, then you've got you kind of script of what you're gonna do. There may be times when you know you have to think on the spot and kind of do one. But for me, in my context, um I normally have a teacher-prepared one, which we kind of work on um when we're doing an I, we, and maybe a you, depending on if we get there. Um, because you know, I I have the six success success criteria, and that's what works for me. Some people prefer having, you know, it noted down as a script in front of them and live talking through as they're putting it through. I think it's, you know, whatever's appropriate for the teacher, the class, and the task. And that's why I think we can't be too prescriptive about these things and instead really develop that expertise amongst our staff to be able to use both of them and then have that agency to know when it's right to choose whichever of those mechanisms.

SPEAKER_00:

It really comes back to that idea of teaching being an art and a craft, as you know, and I think there can be, you know, I think current systems might might um facilitate um, you know, commonality of approach and and everyone doing the same thing. But I think as well, there's what you're saying, there's an what you're arguing is is about the importance of nuance, the importance of teachers being able to make empowered choices for their pupils and having the training, the knowledge, the resources in order to be able to do that um in the most effective way. So if someone said to you, I don't know if they ever have, why have you written a book on this? What wh why is this so important to you? I mean, we we all right, so you can tease out that scaffolding isn't just sentence starters, but for you, just give us, give us, put some colour on why and why is scaffolding so important.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I think scaffolding is really important because in the end it's about having the highest expectations of all our students. I think one of the key reasons why educators get into the sector is because we want the greatest possible outcomes for our students, whether that, you know, and I'm not saying that just academically, but I mean in in all aspects of their life, the holistic part of it. And scaffolding really does have at the heart of it this ethos of teaching to the top and really not putting a limit on children's capabilities, which we have seen with teaching-related strategies such as differentiation. So for me, it was really important in order to make sure that we synthesized a lot of the research that was out there. There are so many great blogs and so many great pieces of work. We just wanted to pull that all together in one text that was therefore accessible to a broad range of people. And that's why we've made sure that we've got case studies from different key stages and from different subjects, because it needs to draw together all that brilliant stuff that's happening elsewhere. So we've got a chapter which is on practical subjects, and it's right that that's written by practitioners. So we've got music, DT, um, we've got um also got um science where you do practicals. And then we've also got age and stage two as well, you know, what it looks like in key stage one and key stage two, but also at key stage five and in the writing chapters and reading chapters again, you know, reading, looking at it in that stage-specific way. So I think for me it's it was this thrive for this is what I believe about education and is really right for our students. And then also how can I contribute to really effective PD on this area and support staffing? Because, you know, the the education world is full of lots of noise. There is a lot of kind of information out there, and it can be a little bit overwhelming. So we just really wanted to put that in a text that could be used as part of the PD cycle or perhaps your own personalized CPD so that you could greater kind of understand what that could look like in your own context.

SPEAKER_00:

And obviously, one of the big things that the EEF has has given us information on is around the um the high the high impact and low cost of metacognition. I suspect you probably do a lot of thinking about thinking, about thinking, um and overlap when it comes to metacognition. Um, what's been your involvement and your thoughts on the metacognition piece in schools over the last few years?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, metacognition is a big part of scaffolding when we think about it. Um I don't need to kind of keep on going on about modeling, um, but but with modeling, it will be that we are, particularly during an eye phase or or live modeling, we are narrating aloud what we're doing, how we're doing it, and why we're doing it. And what we know is that learners really benefit from seeing the thinking that the expert is doing. Um, and I think, you know, it's that part of supporting the children to be able to see what we are doing. But likewise, when it comes to things such as, you know, in the book we talk about success criteria as a scaffold, and we talk about how you can break down a question in an exam. So scaffolding them to be able to rust the question, which is read it, underline it, summarize, and solve it. Because how often is it that we see students just jump into a question without reading it properly? They don't get the time frame right or the focus right. So really getting them to metacognitively think about how they're going to break down that question, how they're going to understand the component parts and then plan effectively their response, using things like the EEF planning process and you know how you do the writing process, getting them to really think about each stage and what are the different strategies that they can employ when we're not there standing over their shoulder in an exam to help them to be successful.

SPEAKER_00:

All of these things, uh you know, a little bit lacking um, I was just actually out with my my wife a while ago and we're uh this morning and we were talking about psychology. She's a psychologist, and um a lot of the things when it comes to like mindfulness and talking therapies and mental health, they all have lots of overlap. And I says, and and what you're saying there, I think good teaching has got there's lots of overlap between the different sectors, isn't there, around verbalizing what you're thinking, rehearsal, like the idea of what you just described there was Russ. I when teaching, I'm emphatic with my pupils about when you approach an exam question, you've got to underline what's the key question, where does it link to other aspects of the text or whatever it is that we're doing. And it it's that and I and I'm in I'm again I'm emphatic about it. If you are not writing and everyone around you is, you're the only one that's doing it right. You have to pause and you have to have confidence that that two or three minutes will benefit the next 37 minutes of your writing.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. Like I always say to mine like there's no point in plumbing into a question and get halfway through and you realize that you've written about the wrong thing. Take that time, really think about the question, break it down, plan it, do kind of like a bit of a knowledge vomit. And I really wish I had a better phrase than that. Um, but like a knowledge vomit onto the page, you've got like actually, here are the bullet points I've got to discuss. Here's what I know about these things, and then you've got that as a scaffold to go back to so that when you've got that heightened anxiety, because we talk a lot about optimal anxiety, when you feel that tipping over into the negative anxiety, you know, you've got that there to refer back to to alch you, so that you're not mid-paragraph and left floundering without kind of a life boy there to support you.

SPEAKER_00:

It's interesting. Uh, what I'm learning from you here is that scaffolding has got lots of different implementations and lots of different phases to it. It could be around prompting, it could be around scaffolding of the way to mentally approach something. It's all of these things, as you say, it's and I love what you said before um about it being temporary. Because ultimately, if you think about driving and the when you learn to drive at you know, mirror signal maneuver, all those things that lots of us probably don't do textbook now when when we drive. Uh DVLA, please don't come and find me. Um but lots of us don't do those things ever, but actually, we're safe enough to know how to move away from a space. We're safe enough to be able to function on the road in any. I might not know and you know, might know every single road sign, but I know what feels safe and what doesn't. I know you know, and you got you know, I think that's a really important thing to say that scaffolding is about almost it's about developing automaticity, developing healthy automaticity on uh for the pupils, isn't it? Which I think is a really, really important consideration, which and it cut we're looking at automaticity. I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on how this links to literacy. And I was actually speaking to a school the other day about the importance of automaticity around writing exam answers, and deliberately I chose a history answer. Um, I'm not a history teacher, but what I did was I downloaded a top-level answer and I unpacked what's going on here knowledge-wise, what's going on here in terms of discourse markers, what's going on here in terms of the flow of what's been said, because this sub this child is what you might call the golden unicorn, this child is the grade nine, like this is the one that gets it. What can we learn from that child? What can we kind of, you know, um reverse engineer from that child if you like? So, what are your views on? I mean, this seems like a big question, but what are your views on scaffolding and literacy in its entirety? And how would you how would you advise a school on that or a teacher on that?

SPEAKER_01:

So I'll focus just to chunk it down. I'll focus more so on secondary because I think otherwise we'll be kind of all day. But I think, you know, looking at reading, a really powerful way that we can scaffold reading is through teacher-led modeled reading using strategies such as reciprocal reading. So reciprocal reading is where you ask questions, you clarify your vocabulary, you summarize. And I think teacher-led modeled reading is really powerful because it allows you as the expert to model the intonation, the prosody, and the fluency. Some people may say, well, okay, that's great for the low priority who are benefiting from you, you know, chunking down the text and stuff like that, but actually it's benefiting all readers because I've got students who are really fluent readers and you know their comprehension is great, but are they strategic readers? Probably not. They will still rush through a whole page of text and then try and answer some questions rather than chunking it down. Whereas actually, what we know is that in the exam, particularly English unseen text in history where you've got unknown interpretations and sources, you're going to have to in that moment digest and chunk down that. So I want to model them how to annotate, how to ask questions of the text, how to really think about how they can succinctly summarize the salient points and identify that new vocabulary. So I always advocate that teacher-led modeled reading is a key part of uh teaching and learning strategies across school. Obviously, in some subjects such as English and MFL, there's also this greater scope for things like echo reading and choral reading. And so echo reading would be um effectively where I would say something, I would read something, and then a child would read it back to me. So I might say it to child A, X, Y, and Z, and then they would repeat it back to me. And that I think works really well when you're doing paired reading between students as well, where you compare perhaps a more fluent reader with a less fluent, and you have the more fluent modelling that before the less fluent then engages in it because they've seen what that what success looks like. Choral would be more so where I would read to a class and the class would read back in unison with me. So again, they've had that model shown to them, and then they would kind of read it back to me. Um, it's not always something that is perhaps possible in subjects where you've got one or two lessons a week. So that's why I think teacher-led model reading is really high power, and perhaps in um subjects where there's greater curriculum time, you've you've got that opportunity. And I think in NFL, you've you've got to look at these different ways of kind of reading. So teacher-led modeled reading is something that I really um advocate. When it comes to things such as explicit vocabulary instruction, using teacher-led modeled reading, but then weaving in things such as um Freya models and incorporating within that vocal chanting, you say, I say, and getting them to use these words really malleably because ideally, what I want to do is introduce them to new words such as peristriker in the Cold War, but then get them to be reading about peristriker, so seeing it within context and then asking questions of them. So I think with explicit vocabulary instruction frame models, it's a great scaffold, but then you need to continue that scaffold by immersing it in a rich text and getting them to see what that looks like in context. Um, and then with writing, it's much more than just a writing frame. Writing frames are great. I use them 100%. But if we look at the EEF simple model of writing, we know that actually writing is is a series of different stages. So, actually, how are we scaffolding the editing phase, the drafting phase, the revision phase, which is quite often, and then we've talked about there, like how do we scaffold the breaking down of the question, that thought process part of it? And there's so many different things we can do, which is visual, verbal, or written. So we might have a success criteria, which they use as a scaffold, or it might be that actually just peer talk, incubating ideas through ORIC about what they may talk about or what they think could be a good idea, which then links us nicely to Orissey, which is symbiotic with literacy. Um, they absolutely go hand in hand, as Pie Corbett says, if you know, if they can't say it, they can't write it. Um, so effectively with Orisy, yes, again, having sentence stems to start them with how they may begin something. But actually, if we're getting them to talk about things, have we thought about putting someone on a spot? Have they got the knowledge that's there in front of them as like an A memoir? If they kind of, you know, in that moment feel that, you know, that their minds kind of gone blank. Yeah. Um, how are we providing them with mini whiteboards to kind of drop down their key thoughts before they present them to a class? So if we're asking questions, you know, providing that opportunity to either speak with their peer or drop down their ideas on a whiteboard, so they've got that there as a crutch, um, should they be called upon to provide their ideas.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh yeah, it's interesting because I often I got into the habit of paired work, um, giving a minute for paired discussion and then the other person to share their ideas for a minute pai discussion. So that there was that safe space so that both people had a chance to share their ideas before then potentially me asking them to feedback their ideas because there was the element of safety in numbers that they both had a chance to share, but also that's that paired accountability as well. And I think that all those things are really, really important when it particularly when it comes to something so multifaceted as literacy. I mean, you I can feel you're you're pulling yourself in lots of different directions when you're speaking about that because there's so much to it, isn't there? And I I wrote I wrote a blog the other day about this when I was doing my son's homework with him, and we were we had to, it was a comic strip we had to do of a moment in what he was reading. And if you were I to do that, we would just pick a moment, bullet point it into six or in our minds, and then just get going. It was so interesting that with with with with him that I I I had to force myself to slow right down, like pick the moment. We don't want to do the whole book, we're doing maybe a moment and what that might look like in six different stages and or whatever it is. And it was just that, you know, and it it it wasn't almost scaffolding, it was co-construction. That's what it was. It was co-construction. Eventually might go to a scaffold where you might give the template for six, but I'm not I've made the mistake any number of times in my career where I've expected too much too soon and everything's fallen flat on its face. And I think it's really important that we're not scared to take that time. Um, Jenny Webb spoke to me about this once. She said that we could potentially do a whole term on a paragraph.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly that. And that's why I think we've got to respect those different subjects in terms of what that kind of looks like. Yeah. And I think Alex quickly sums it up really well with, you know, we should see it as a continuum, that you know, it's it's not a case of getting from A to B to C job done. Actually, you know, we could be moving backwards and forwards across that continuum, and that could be at a whole group stage or individual. Say, for example, if a child's been absent for two weeks, you know, actually we may have to go back to putting that more scaffolding in place to help kind of close the absence gap. And likewise, when I'm teaching the 12-mark question, that might work in crime and punishment for them. But then actually, when we move on to Weimar and Nazi Germany and they're grappling with actually what is a constitution, that new content is going to be playing on their working memory. And so it may be that I've got to kind of put back in some scaffolding because actually, you know, to help balance that kind of the pressure that the substantive knowledge is placing, I've got to put that scaffold back in temporarily. So it's, I think it's about, you know, not seeing it as one and done. It's kind of, you know, we are always going to be sliding backwards and forwards across this. And that's not a failure. That's not to say that the learning isn't beginning to embed. It's just acknowledging that learning is messy, it's not linear, um, you know, it's subject to fluctuations. And what we've just got to do is therefore make sure that our checks for understanding are really guiding us in knowing when to remove or to add a scaffold because, as you alluded to earlier on, we don't want to leave the scaffold in place too long. Tom Sheraton says it kind of creates the illusion of learning. So, like this impermeable skin where actually when you remove the scaffold, you know, the learning isn't possible to take place because there's not that support there. And also, as well as we've talked about, also about not removing it too soon as well. We don't want to make them lose confidence and motivation by you know ripping away the scaffold before they've had the opportunity to really get that sense of ease and familiarity with what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00:

It's so important, isn't it? I never forget one so I. Was doing a piece of work and I looked at the board and I felt almost ashamed of what was on the board because it was literally pick a sentence then from column A, pick a sentence then from column B, pick one from column C, now link it, go back to the start. And I thought, this isn't teaching. This isn't this is not teaching. I like this this is not something that they're not learning anything for themselves here. And eventually I learned actually to less is more sometimes on on sometimes on a scaffold. I know it's as you said before, the the the best way is horses for courses, but it's about understanding and appreciating the nuance of what people need at any given time. Um so thank you so much for your time. Uh I I can't believe the amount of knowledge that you have. Um we could go for another two hours on this at least. Um it's been an absolute pleasure, Alex. Um, and thank you for coming on. And uh honestly, everyone, do check out that book. I think if there's if nothing else in your downtime, if you want to develop your own CPD or you're looking at developing CPD across your school or trust, I think this is one of those things that is not gonna hinder anyone. It's one of those things that's gonna, it's it's good for everyone. You know, as Amjad Ali kind of says, necessary for some, beneficial for all. And I think a really good scaffolding framework to get people to start thinking about is a is a fantastic, uh, a fantastic route forward. So, Alex, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Yeah, well, it's our completely our pleasure. I hope we have you on again sometime, and um, all the very best.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you.

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Andy Sammons

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