Very literally, "scaffolding" provides a learner with some support and security while they attempt to work on a literacy task, such as constructing a sentence. The use of scaffolds should be faded out over time, according to the learner's pace. There are four main types of scaffolds to use (alone or in combination) with learners,:
Written
Scaffolds: The tutor can employ worksheets that contain a set of partially
complete sentences (or question sets) that the learner can respond to. Each
worksheet could be on a specific topic, such as
Similarly, the learner could be presented with a set of "key words," and be asked to share her thoughts on the ideas generated from them.
Cloze exercises, where the learner fills in the blanks in a sentence using a word bank, is another scaffolding idea.
Also, the learner could fill in the first letter of similarly sounding words (that may be accompanied by pictures), such as bat, cat, and hat.