A scaffold is a temporary platform that construction workers stand on to reach high places. When painters need to paint the outside of a tall building or workers need to repair a brick wall two stories up, they build a scaffold: a sturdy framework of metal poles and wooden planks that creates a safe working platform at any height. You've probably seen scaffolds around buildings under construction or renovation, looking like temporary metal skeletons wrapped around the structure. Workers can move these platforms up or down as their work progresses, and when the job is finished, they dismantle the scaffold completely.

In education, scaffolding means the temporary support a teacher provides while students learn something new. Just like construction scaffolds help workers reach heights they couldn't reach alone, educational scaffolding helps students accomplish tasks they're not quite ready to do independently. A teacher might scaffold a difficult essay by first helping you organize your ideas, then gradually removing that support as you get better. The key word is temporary: good scaffolding gets taken away once you've developed the skills to work on your own, just like construction scaffolds come down when the building is complete.