Students are expected to write effectively about what they have learned, but not all students have had the opportunities and support in school that are needed to effectively express their ideas through writing.

Scaffolding helps many students, particularly English learners, develop both their writing skills and their understanding of how writing works so that they can become effective and informed writers.

The Teaching and Learning Cycle (TLC) is a pedagogical framework for scaffolding academic writing through deep and critical thinking tasks, academic discussions, interactive reading, and language development.

Through the TLC, students delve deeply into disciplinary learning, examine and unpack discipline-specific written text types, practice writing the same text type, and independently write using tools that support their reflection on (and self-evaluation of) both the content and language they are using.

In this report, Pamela Spycher of Leading with Learning at WestEd:

  • Shares what happened when one team of teachers implemented TLC in their classrooms
  • Defines scaffolding, and explains what it entails
  • Describes how the language in different genres (or text types) works
  • Provides concrete strategies for scaffolding writing through the five TLC stages

Read a blog post on this topic, “Scaffolding Science Learning and Science Writing with a Little TLC.”