Making complex texts a reality for all students: Dynamic scaffolding that bridges the gaps between student and text

Reynolds, D., & Goodwin, A.P. (2016). Making complex texts a reality for all students: Dynamic scaffolding that bridges the gaps between student and text. Voices from the Middle, 23(4), 25-31.


Demystifying the art of scaffolding seems to be the intent of this article. The heart of the article, and of the study reported therein, is a list of 22 different ways teachers might scaffold students’ reading of complex texts.

The 22 scaffolding moves in Figure 1 (p. 26) are organized in three categories, depending on the size of the unit of text involved. The first category of scaffolds, Vocabulary, provides “word-level support”. The second category of scaffolds, Fluency, provides “phrase- and sentence-level support”. The third category of scaffolds, Comprehension, provides “text-level support”. For each of the 22 scaffolds described in the table, an example is given.

Figure 1 is the kind of information-packed but concise document that teachers and teacher educators will find useful. I can already imagine that page of the article being copied and posted as a sort of “scaffolding cheat sheet”. The list can indeed help us think about what scaffolding moves we might use, though I do worry a bit that a list like this may oversimplify the complexities of scaffolding and encourage a formulaic approach to the way we work with students.

In Reynolds and Goodwin’s study, tutors intentionally used these 22 scaffolds with middle school students they were tutoring in small groups. A four-lesson “guided reading intervention” (p. 27) with scripted reading lesson plans was used, and tutors’ scaffolding choices were reported (by the tutors). The 215 middle schoolers being tutored were diverse in terms of ethnicity and home language, and 74% scored below the 50th percentile on a reading comprehension pretest (p. 28).

Tutors reported what scaffolds they used, and percentages were found for how often each of the 22 scaffolds was used, plus which scaffolds were used more with students who were considered “struggling readers” (based on the pretest scores) and which were used more with students not considered to be struggling. The researchers found that all three categories of scaffolding (Vocabulary, Fluency, and Comprehension) were used frequently, but the highest percentage was for Comprehension scaffolds (used in 90% of the sessions). This percentage was higher when they worked with readers considered “struggling”. For Vocabulary and Fluency scaffolds, there was little difference in the frequencies, no matter if students were struggling or not.

The specifying of specific scaffolding moves is a useful thing for teachers to have, and it makes the often abstract-seeming concept of scaffolding easier for us to wrap our minds around. That being said, I do have some reservations about the data in the study reported here. It appears that the frequencies for each type of scaffold are based solely on the tutors’ reports of what they said they did in the group tutoring sessions. It is not clear whether any sessions were actually observed to verify those data. I also worry that distinguishing between struggling and non-struggling readers on the basis of one pretest may not be the best way to look at whether the tutors differentiated their scaffolding or not. I’m not sure the data provided here provide strong support for the conclusions that are made.

I can see the usefulness of specifying what scaffolding can look like. It’s not magic; it’s actual skills and routines that can be practiced and learned by teachers. If these scaffolds can be used to help teachers become more thoughtful about how they support young readers, that’s a good thing. However, it seems to me that turning scaffolding into a scripted, formulaic practice that can be reduced to frequencies may be problematic. Yes, we want to provide frameworks for effective practice, but we also must balance that with thoughtfulness. It’s the quality of our interactions with young readers, not the quantity, that really matters.