Sustainable Scaffold: Tri-Level Stem/Frame Bank
Did you know there's a very effective way to design stems and frames for students, and a not-so-effective way also? I will be honest and share that during seasons of survival during the school year (I'm talking to you, winter months), these often get less of my attention. However, if I systemetize this with my teams, it becomes a much more sustainable scaffold ! Here's a quick tool to bring to your next team meeting where you identify your unit's vocabulary, set a timer for 5 months, and knock these all out so they're ready to go for all students! I don't make separate stems and frames for every proficiency level - instead I design one that's newcomer-facing (sometimes these are just full sentences!), one that's middle-level proficiency, and one that's fully linguistically stretched! Don't think this works? I had eight and nine year olds in third grade using stretched stems. Instead of saying, "I was surprised when..." they started t