Let's take a look at a lesson outline that incorporates some foundational teaching concepts: scaffolding and cognitive learning strategies. But first, let us define our terms... To illustrate the concepts of scaffolding & cognitive learning, I will be using the topic of Earth's rotation around the sun, and exploring how that creates seasons. Students generally get to this lesson within their first few weeks of ninth grade, although they should have already learned the bulk of this material in the sixth grade ("North Carolina Essential Standards: Earth/Environmental Science," 2016; "North Carolina Essential Standards: Science 6-8," 2016). My first warm up question starts with trying to pull out any prior knowledge they have retained from middle school, and then building off of that. Starting with prior knowledge and bridging the known to the unknown is a central tenet of scaffolding (West et al., 2019). The second question strikes a slightly different n...