To provide scaffolded instruction, however, you should have an expert understanding of the critical information and all its component parts that the adult is expected to learn and to weave into his or her background knowledge. Your questions and responses are carefully shaped by this expert knowledge. Intensive Instruction Intensive instruction involves helping learners to maintain a high degree of attention and response during instructional sessions that are scheduled as frequently as possibly. Instruction should occur frequently and demand a high degree of learner attention and response, as well as your evaluation and feedback. Literacy programs should offer instruction as often as possible, and instruction that is offered should fully engage learners attention.
Intensity also involves frequent exposure and opportunities for practice.
It is rarely enough for a learner who is practicing a basic skill in learning to read to have the opportunity to practice this skill only once or twice a week. Practicing something new once a week is like learning it over again every time. Intensity can be achieved through reflective or open-ended activities if the activities are focused on an outcome, engage interest, and maintain the learner s attention. The broad sequence of teaching procedures should take into consideration a variety of information-processing demands, including acquiring, storing, and retrieving information, and demonstrating competence. For example, instructional activities that enhance information processing include prompting metacognition, reducing memory load, modeling, prompting verbal elaboration and rehearsal, teaching strategies that show adults how to evaluate tasks, select and use needed skills, and checking accuracy.