Traditional single-chip microcomputer teaching based on the its structure, pays attention to the architecture, which makes it difficult to understand and accept for the students, and poor teaching effectiveness. In this paper, a single-chip microcomputer teaching mode based scaffolding instruction is proposed, in which the technical requirements of a completely practical engineering system act as the scaffolding of the entire microcontroller course teaching, then the knowledge of all sections is expanded from the above "system model", and the Porteus software developed by British Labcenter Electronics is introduced as the platform of theoretical and practical teaching, thus the students can have intuitive understanding, and help them to independently explore and interactive learning. Since 2007, the teaching mode is used in the speciality of automation, the results prove to be effective.