DIFFERENTATION AND SCAFFOLDING

There are differences between differentiation and scaffolding. Differentiation refers to the idea of modifying instruction to meet a student’s individual needs and learning styles. Scaffolding refers to modifications you make while designing and teaching lessons that allow all students to be successful in learning the same content.

Differentiation is often directed at individual students while scaffolding is done for the entire class. For example, when an individual  student can’t answer a Checking for Understanding question and you rephrase your question from open-ended to multiple choice, you have differentiated for that one student. When you pre-read a Learning Objective before having the entire class read chorally, you are scaffolding.

In reality, differentiation and scaffolding strategies overlap, but they have the same ultimate goal: increasing student success.