Interactions That Scaffold Reading Performance

In this article, findings from case study research of two effective literacy teachers are presented in order to describe in rich detail the nature of effective scaffolding. The teachers worked one-to-one with first-grade students who were experiencing extreme difficulty in learning to read. The complexity of scaffolding is described in terms of the instructional decisions that teachers must make on a moment-by-moment basis about the kind of help (what to work on) and level or amount of help to provide at points of difficulty during reading.