Scaffolding Assignments

With your capstone assignment in place, you’ll be able to build "backwards" through the term, ensuring that each of the preceding assignments gives students the opportunity to acquire and/or practice the skills and competencies they need. Low-stakes assignments offer students the opportunity to practice and get feedback that will help them develop the knowledge and skills for the capstone assignment.  

Lower stakes assignments can be composed of pieces of the later capstone assignment. For instance, if the capstone assignment is a research paper, scaffolded assignments might include an annotated bibliography, a close-reading of a primary source, a literature review or historiography, a sample image caption, an outline, or a draft of the introduction.

Alternatively, lower-stakes assignments might include group projects, games, or real-world applications of skills: