This tool to scaffold students’ writing should be created from public charts developed during the unit. Using information from student-generated charts, the teacher can make this list and copy it for each student. Each student gets a vertical 1/2 slip of the paper and folds it in fourths to make a springboard. They can reveal each part of the springboard as they work on their explanation, making sure they include the ideas on the explanation checklist (ideally, a list generated by students, even if the teacher types it up to put on this springboard) and can use sentence frames if they’re stuck on how to phrase something. It also helps make students aware of what level of explanation they are writing – a what, how, or why level.
Writing Springboard
Ambitious Teaching—An overview
In this video we illustrate what Ambitious Teaching looks like in classrooms ranging from high school to kindergarten. The practices were developed through collaborations between teachers and researchers, and they are continually evolving as we learn more about how they work with young learners. There are several themes that you’ll see in all examples, such as a focus on puzzling and complex phenomena, opportunities to make sense through talk, making thinking visible, attending to who is participating, using various forms of scaffolding and tools, and much more.
This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award #1907471 and #1315995