Professor Anne Wilson uses a series of scaffolded writing assignments in her FYW 150 course. You can find her detailed course structure outline here.

A scaffolded approach to writing is particularly helpful for first-year students as it not only helps them develop their writing skills across different genres, but also introduces them to different practices and strategies that will help them write effectively.

In Professor Wilson’s course, the semester culminates in a 5-7 page research paper. As a result of the scaffolded course design, by the time students reach this final assignment, they have sufficient preparation to write a strong, insightful, and well-researched paper.