Presentation (Transcript)

Presentation (Transcript)

Curricular Design

Transcript for Lesson 4 Presentation:
Universally-Accessible Content

	Contextualizing Accommodations as They Relate to the Curriculum, Instruction, and Learner Characteristics Accommodations for students with mild disabilities become meaningful after examining the context in which such accommodations are necessary. The context includes the content for which the accommodations are needed (i.e., the curriculum), the instructional formats (i.e., the teacher’s planning, delivery, and assessment of the curriculum), and specific students’ learning characteristics. For example, a tenth-grade student with a learning disability in reading may require an accommodation for receiving print information (i.e., input) in a verbal and/or visual format using pictures or icons. The extent to which the tenth-grade English teacher already uses varied formats in planning, delivering, and assessing the competencies within English units factors into whether this particular student needs fewer or more reading accommodations within that course. Challenging students appropriately and providing accommodations does not need to compromise the integrity of the content nor the learning for other students in the classroom. For example, Mason, Schroeter, Combs, and Washington (1992) found that average-achieving students placed in advanced math classes performed better than their peers in less challenging math classes, and that the high achievers in the advanced classes were not adversely affected. Harris and Graham (1999) note that students with learning and behavioral problems, although varied in individual characteristics, have in common cognitive, affective, and behavioral difficulties. Such difficulties can either be exacerbated within a challenging and unresponsive instructional environment or ameliorated when the instructional environment is challenging, responsive, and proactive in designing and delivering instruction. Teachers’ flexibility and proficiency with how many students and how many accommodations they can develop and use across the course may depend on how much content there is to be covered in the curriculum. Walsh (2001) describes how teachers feel pressured to align the textbook with the local curriculum and with the state or local testing programs. Oakes and Guiton (1995) note how tracking decisions made for high school classes are based on the assumption that students' abilities, motivation, and aspirations are fixed. Such an assumption works in favor of students who are high achievers (i.e., Oakes and Guiton found that high schools do accommodate for these learners). However, the assumption does not work well for learners with mild disabilities, whose skills and abilities are malleable within the context of curriculum and instruction, depending on how a teacher designs and delivers them. For example, for some students with mild disabilities, the issue is not that they cannot learn the content. The issue is that they cannot learn the content when the information is presented in a traditional lecture format or with few concrete examples, or when the pieces of information are not connected to each other, or when only one abstract example is given, or when they have to learn most of the information from reading the text with little to no classroom presentation or practice. Moreover, both interesting and frustrating for teachers is the dilemma that results when they think the curriculum does not match the textbook and does not match their state and/or local assessment programs. That dilemma is only tangentially addressed here, as it is too comprehensive and varied by state and/or school system to address within this module. However, teachers can control how they align their curriculum, assessment, and instruction for diverse learners. In Lesson 4, the curriculum and instructional formats are described as they pertain to diverse secondary learners, including learners with mild disabilities.
	Curriculum Analysis Examining the curriculum itself is essential because it is perceived as the driving force for teachers who feel pressure to cover increasingly complex as well as increasing standards. Some general educators are both willing and skilled at providing accommodations for students, but feel conflicting and competing messages from school and state personnel who seem to be saying: "Accommodate, but cover everything with everyone at a high level." Moreover, some educators commonly use textbooks as the driving force for curriculum sequence and content. Yet, textbooks are not necessarily well organized, do not explore content in depth, make few if any connections across or among chapters, and contain few suggestions for differentiating instruction, assignments, or assessments (Lerner, 1998; Mayer, Sims, & Tajika, 1995; Tindal & Nolet, 1996). Each of these items "connections across ideas, different ways of presenting new information, and flexibility regarding how students show proficiency with competencies" is especially critical for learners with mild disabilities. That is, learners with mild disabilities may have problems making connections that are inferred but not explicit, receiving new information when presented in one way, and showing what they know and can do in only one way. Teachers must be experts in their content area to be able to analyze their curriculum. If teachers are not well grounded in the content they are teaching, it is more difficult for them to analyze the curriculum and discern the essential or foundational information that learners with and without mild disabilities need to learn (McCleery & Tindal, 1999; Tennyson & Cocchiarella, 1986; Wilson & Wineburg, 1988). Jitendra, Salmento, and Haydt (1999) analyzed seven mathematics programs and found that none of them satisfactorily accomplished nine important instructional design criteria, including clear objectives, resources for teaching concepts and skills, and sufficient and appropriate teaching examples. This does not necessarily mean the programs were poor; but it does mean that teachers need to be aware of the texts or programs they are using in terms of strengths and areas that need to be enhanced. Teachers wishing to analyze their text or program may find it helpful to use a rating scale similar to what these researchers used to target strengths and areas to enhance. The information from such ratings enable teachers to better plan instruction, gather resources, and determine enhancements that can benefit all students. Please refer to Handout #1. Teachers who expect the text to be the curriculum guide will be disappointed that the text reaches some, but not all nor most, students. Teachers who reach for their state’s curriculum standards may also be disappointed that, although standards are written, teachers need to further develop the content and instruction to better match students’ needs. Teachers should expect to "repackage" the curriculum and further develop it so it becomes clearer to both teachers and students what the learning is about. The reason this is so important is that some learners have difficulty following connections and knowing how to use the content; when the curriculum itself (e.g., the textbook) is not well organized, students with diverse learning needs have more difficulty with the coherence and relevance of the content. Consequently, teachers should expect to analyze their curriculum to determine strengths and areas that need to be enhanced, reorganized, and prioritized for instruction (Carnine & Kameenui, 1992; Keefe & Walberg, 1992; McDiarmid, Ball, & Anderson, 1989). As mentioned, how well teachers can conduct a curriculum analysis depends on how well they know their content area (Ball, 1991). Effective social studies teachers, for example, are proficient at designing their course so that relationships among and between the content are evident to learners (e.g., cause-effect-solution relationships; sequence and/or timeline items). Similarly, effective mathematics teachers are skilled at identifying the complex or underlying rules for equations so that they can make explicit for learners the rules or procedures that can be used for solving a variety of problems. Four types of knowledge and skills permeate all content: key facts, concepts, principles, and explanatory frameworks. Effective teachers know their content so well that they can identify the essential knowledge and skill areas, but when teachers are not proficient at a deep level with their content, they will have a more difficult time deciding what to teach. When teachers have difficulty analyzing curriculum to determine what to teach, they are prone to more haphazardly pick a topic out of the air and teach it. More commonly, teachers move from chapter to chapter or outcome to outcome without explicitly connecting the chapters or outcomes to each other or to real life. Such approaches may work well for learners who have a rich background in the content area from which to build, but they do not work well for learners who require a more deliberate and organized approach to that content. In the next section, six curriculum design principles are described that can assist teachers in reconceptualizing and delivering their curriculum in a way that is more accessible for diverse learners.
	Six Curriculum Design Principles There are six curriculum design principles that, when built into the planning and delivery of content, enhance learning for all students, including students with mild disabilities (Burke, Hagan, & Grossen, 1998; Kameenui & Carnine, 1998; Kameenui & Simmons, 1999; Simmons & Carnine, 1996). The six principles are: Selecting BIG ideas to teach. Priming students’ background knowledge so they are ready to learn the new content. Conspicuously teaching strategies that students need to know how to master the content. Integrating strategies while teaching. Mediating learning by providing scaffolds or supports as students are learning and becoming more proficient and independent with the new content. Using judicious, or wise, review of previously taught content by having students practice, apply, and integrate content in meaningful and new ways. When teachers apply these principles consistently, students with mild disabilities are more likely to understand, remember, and apply the content. Moreover, other students also benefit when these principles are used (De La Paz, Owen, Harris, & Graham, 2000; Guastello, Beasley, & Sinatra, 2000). For example, learners who have a rich background knowledge and experience with science vocabulary and processes may benefit from more implicit or discovery types of instruction. That is, the teacher may not need to do much to get those students ready to learn (i.e., prime their background knowledge) and may find a brief review of scientific processes (i.e., the strategies) is sufficient for those students. Conversely, learners who find the science vocabulary and definitions brand new and unfamiliar may need more explicit instruction (e.g., more direct teaching of new vocabulary and terms) along with demonstration and modeling of the scientific process (i.e., conspicuous strategy). Tennyson and Cocchiarella (1986), in their summary of empirically based instructional design for teaching concepts, note that the content teachers’ design and the delivery of instruction influences students’ understanding and use of cognitive processes. The researchers point to the importance of presenting information using examples that clearly represent a category, discussing attributes of that category, and presenting procedural strategies so that learners can further develop concepts in that content category.
	1. Big Ideas Lerner (1998) reviewed states’ science standards, scoring the following two categories (among other categories): organization and coverage of content. From these two categories, some states ranked well, while others ranked low. Consequently, some states’ science standards are already organized well and delineate the amount of information to be taught by providing teachers with "big ideas" to focus on. Using "big ideas" as an example, Lerner notes that big ideas may also be called themes, and he distinguishes themes from other content within science by quoting from the California Science Framework: [Themes] could also be called big ideas, overarching concepts, unifying constructs, or underlying assumptions. They are distinct from facts and concepts. A fact is a statement based on confirmed observation and inference, such as the number of electrons in an atom of iron, the date of the discovery of helium, or the descent of birds from dinosaurs. A concept often involves several facts; for example, the concept of continental drift, the need for repeatable observations in constructing science, or how magnets work. Themes are larger ideas; they link the theoretical nature of the various scientific disciplines and show how they are logically parallel and cohesive. Scientific literacy lies not only in knowing facts and concepts but also in understanding the connections that make such information manageable and useful. Further, Lerner makes the following observations about big ideas, or themes, as they relate to science: They represent only one way to integrate the overarching concepts of science into a curriculum. There may be alternative big ideas or themes that work equally well. The major point is that some thematic structure or big idea will assist to improve students’ learning of unconnected scientific facts.
	2. Background Knowledge Colorado’s state standards for geography illustrate how important students’ background knowledge is (Colorado Content Standards, 1995). For example, a sixth-grade standard is: "Students apply knowledge of people, places, and environments to understand the past and present and to plan for the future." Prior to sixth grade, students should have demonstrated skill and knowledge in a variety of geography areas, including how to describe or explain: How places change over time. How places and environments may have influenced people and events over time. Changes in the spatial organization of a society over time. How places and environments influenced events and conditions in the past. How differing perceptions of places, people, and resources have affected events and conditions in the past. Consider that a sixth grade geography teacher, at the beginning of the course, wants to know how well students have remembered skills and knowledge from their previous grades. The teacher could use a number of techniques to access this information, including developing a pretest or inventory, reviewing students’ records or report card grades, or using information from a class discussion to discern current performance levels. Typically, some students will recall that they have been exposed to the information, and may need some review in order to recollect it. A teacher could prime their background knowledge by using local (even school or classroom) events and places to discuss some of the items listed above (e.g., how does this classroom being located under the trees influence the conditions of the air in our classroom?). Or a teacher could extend previous knowledge by building on an example that is more familiar to students (e.g., in what ways do teachers’ views of homework influence how much homework you receive?). Primed background knowledge involves both determining what skills and knowledge students bring to the learning situation and getting the students ready to learn the new content and skills. Using familiar events, stories, and situations that are meaningful and authentic for the students is an excellent way to prime background knowledge and connect it to the new learning. For students with mild disabilities, exercises that get students ready to learn can be essential for ensuring that they receive the new information. The extent to which teachers can build connections into lessons, relate the new information to familiar information, and remind students of previously learned information that they can connect to new information can be an accommodation that benefits all students in the class, not just students with mild disabilities. A similar concept is conveyed by a phrase used by Tennyson and Cocchiarella (1986): "embedded refreshment." Their interpretation of this phrase could be aligned with both primed background knowledge and judicious review. They refer to embedded refreshment as actions, whether verbal, visual, or multisensory, that assist learners in retrieving information they have learned previously (e.g., short-term memory to long-term memory). More about this aspect of embedded refreshment falls under the judicious review principle conducting frequent and novel review activities. Their definition of embedded refreshment also encompasses the need for establishing connections between existing knowledge and to-be-learned concepts. For learners with mild disabilities who have memory and organization problems, embedded refreshment benefits them in several ways.
	3. Strategies Some strategies may be content-specific (e.g., solving a math word problem) or span several content areas (e.g., reading comprehension in math, reasoning in science, analyzing in social studies). For example, d’Ailly (1995) describes strategies in learning and teaching algebra as specific to mathematical problem solving, yet another content teacher may use the same processes: Understand the problem. Ask yourself: What am I supposed to find out? What information do I have? What information do I need? If I need additional information, where do I go to get that? Devise a plan. Ask yourself: Do I have all the information I need to develop a plan? Do I know what I’m supposed to do? Do I know how to do it? If I don’t know how to do it, where can I go to get help with how to do it? If there is more than one way to solve the problem, am I selecting a way that works for me? Have I missed any parts of the plan that I’ll need to solve the problem? Carry out the plan. Ask yourself: How is the plan going? Am I doing it the right way? Am I getting the results I’m supposed to get? Is what I’m doing helping me to solve the problem? Am I monitoring how the plan is going so that I can make revisions or refinements when necessary? Does my response make sense? Looking back. Ask yourself: Did the plan work? Would I change any aspects of the plan next time? If yes, what and how and why would I change things next time? Are there ways I could’ve developed a more efficient and effective plan? What can I look for in future problems that will help me know to use the same plan again? Jitendra, Hoff, and Beck (1999) describe how middle school students with learning disabilities were able to increase their skills in solving math word problems using an explicit or conspicuous strategy approach. Although the students did not achieve grade-level performance after learning the strategy, their proficiency did increase, and the techniques used by the teachers could also be used when instructing other students on word problem strategy solutions. Harris and Graham’s (1999) research on writing and self-regulated strategies found that students with the following characteristics are responsive to conspicuous strategy instruction: (a) difficulty monitoring organized strategic behaviors; (b) lack of or failure to use effective mediation processes involving internal verbalizations to guide their behavior; (c) problems comprehending task demands and making decisions about when and how to organize and complete tasks; (d) impulsivity, which can lead to less thoughtful and planful completion of tasks; and (e) poor memory and processes for remembering important information. Harris and Graham acknowledge that although no single intervention or technique can ameliorate all these areas, their findings indicate that students benefit when taught in an explicit manner, with scaffolded feedback, how to self-regulate their performance.
	4. Integrating Strategies Secondary teachers frequently feel overwhelmed by the amount of curriculum they are asked to teach to diverse learners, including students with mild disabilities. Consequently, it is imperative for teachers to select the BIG ideas to teach. Other ways to conceptualize what your content’s BIG ideas are is to consider your responses to these questions: What is the foundational learning that I expect all students to leave this course knowing and being able to use? What are the essential outcomes that span the entire course? What rules or principles underlie the content? Am I teaching multiple examples of something in my content without teaching the rules or principles for classifying that example? Am I focusing too much on multiple problems that have the same solution process instead of focusing more on the "how to" of the solution process? If you answered "yes" to the first three questions, you have just narrowed down the curriculum and now need to plan how to teach the BIG ideas. If you answered "yes" to the last two questions, you probably answered "no" to the first three questions. That means that you need to further examine your content and curriculum to determine that you know what to teach with depth. You may find it helpful to return to the curriculum analysis section of this module to assist you in determining which areas of the curriculum need strengthening and how to strengthen them. For a curriculum analysis that focuses solely on these six curriculum design principles, use the evaluation and scoring process developed by Lenz and Schumaker (1999).
	5. Scaffolding Rosenshine and Guenther (1992) describe scaffolds as "a temporary support provided by the teacher (or another student) to help students bridge the gap between their current abilities and the goal. A scaffold is temporary and adjustable, and it is gradually withdrawn as the learners become more independent." Mediated scaffolding as a curriculum design principle is the verbal, visual, modeling, demonstration, prompting, cueing, and guiding that teachers do when moving students from knowing little about a topic to knowing more and more about the topic. Mediated scaffolding is not about telling students the correct answer, but about assisting and supporting students as they learn more and more toward getting a solution or an answer or developing the entire project on their own. For an example of a student-teacher dialogue that mediated scaffolding, please refer to Handout #2.
	6. Review of Previously Taught Material The point about mediated scaffolding is not that a teacher would never give a direct answer to a student, or that a teacher would never tell the student exactly what step to do next. Mediated scaffolding does mean, however, that although it may be easier and faster to simply tell the student what to do, the focus becomes assisting the student with figuring it out. Although more time-consuming initially, the time investment should pay off when students become more independent at processing information and solving problems proficiently, efficiently, and effectively. Some other considerations for lesson planning, presentation, and practice include: Tell stories that integrate the new content with previously learned content. Use analogies for the course content that taps into students’ familiar experiences that they can then use as a springboard for understanding the new information. Provide sufficient guidance and resources if using a structured discovery or implicit instructional technique. Begin instruction using concrete experiences, manipulatives, or other appropriate (but not abstract) forms of representing the new content. Analyze the essential content to determine BIG IDEAS. Organize the BIG IDEAS so that the units within the course connect well to each other. Explain the unit connections to the students. Link course content to previously learned content. Connect course content to real life. Use concept maps and graphic organizers. Conspicuous strategies can be considered the "how to" parts of learning. Figuring out what to do first, what to do next, and so on, and monitoring how one is doing while carrying out a plan are essential steps for proficient strategy use. Deshler and Schumaker (1986) define a strategy as a plan in which learners determine what to do, how to do it, why to do it, how to monitor their implementation of the plan, and how to solve similar problems using the same or revised plan. To view examples and nonexamples of the six curriculum design principles, please refer to King-Sears(2001) and Lenz & Schumaker(1999). In the next section, the Strategies Instruction Model is described as a comprehensive program that was researched and developed to assist general and special educators to be responsive to secondary students with mild disabilities.
	Strategies Instruction Model The Strategies Instruction Model (SIM) was founded in the late 1970s in an effort to develop techniques for adolescents with learning disabilities (Alley & Deshler, 1979; Deshler & Schumaker, 1986). The first areas of research focused on techniques that special educators could use to provide intensive and extensive instruction in critical learning areas, the Learning Strategies Curriculum. It quickly became apparent, however, that techniques also were necessary for general educators to use when planning and delivering instruction. Consequently, the Content Enhancement Model became a research focus around critical areas of concern for secondary content area teachers (Fisher, Schumaker, & Deshler, 1995; Lenz & Schumaker, 1999; Tralli, Colombo, Deshler, & Schumaker, 1996). For example, at the planning level, the Course, Unit, and Lesson Organizers address how teachers prioritize and sequence critical curriculum outcomes (Lenz, Bulgren, Schumaker, Deshler, & Boudah, 1994; Lenz, Marrs, Schumaker, & Deshler, 1993; Lenz, Schumaker, Deshler, & Bulgren, 1998). The Organizers are not just planning tools, they are also used in delivering instruction so that learners who have difficulty seeing the links or making connections among all the instructional content have more explicit and visual information available (e.g., using graphic organizers). As planning tools, the Organizers assist teachers in "repackaging" the curriculum into logical and coherent "boxes." These "boxes" may be categories of information, prerequisite or review information, timeline sequences, or logical "chunks" of information that, in essence, ensure that the targeted content is sequenced, prioritized, connected, and coherent. Moreover, planning using the Organizers assists teachers in determining what the essential or foundational content is for their course, where they want learners to be at specific times during the course, and selecting a cohesive and coherent flow of which information should be delivered first, second, and so on. Consider that a teacher’s curriculum contains the following information to be taught: apples, oranges, carrots, chairs, watermelon, pansy, snapdragon, banana, footstool, roses, desk, beans, perennials, furniture, kiwi, broccoli, fruit, table, lettuce, and vegetables. If you were organizing this information, what are the BIG IDEAS you would sort out first? Probably you would sort the information into three major categories: food, furniture, and flowers. Then you might organize them so that there is a natural flow to how you teach the details within each category. One teacher’s course may organize for food, furniture, and then flowers. We’re first going to learn about food to nourish our bodies, then talk about items where our bodies can sit in a building, and then talk about how flowers can be used inside and outside the building to achieve a more pleasing environment. Another teacher’s course may organize to teach furniture, then food, and then flowers. We’re first going to learn about furniture that we use for different functions, then learn about how food groups help our bodies to function well and live long lives, and then learn about two different kinds of lives that flowers have [perennials and annuals]). For this example, the order may not matter, what matters is how the teacher organizes the content and explains the connections among the content. The same idea is applicable to more complex content which is the middle and high school curriculum. That is, there may be a variety of ways to organize the information and connect it to each other. Learners who have teachers who examine, prioritize, sequence, and explicitly connect the content for them are more likely to understand, remember, and use the information. Teachers who plan lessons or activities for the day or the week may find the Organizers especially useful in that they: (a) prioritize to determine the long-term course outcomes; (b) plan the units; (c) plan the lessons; and (d) plan the activities. For learners with mild disabilities who already have problems organizing information and processing or connecting new content, teachers who use the Organizers to plan and teach may be building accommodations into their instruction. The Organizers can help learners with mild disabilities see more quickly, coherently, and visually which course information is most important, how course information connects within and among the units, and how details of course content may be subsumed under larger categories. For additional information, please refer to the readings page for this lesson.
	Geddes (2001), a beginning social studies teacher for eighth graders, describes how completing the Unit Organizer as a planning tool and using it during instruction accomplishes several benefits. First, he notes that he is no longer planning day-to-day activities, so that the course long-term outcomes and sequence of instruction is more evident to him. Second, collaboration with the special education teacher becomes a more strategic process in that long-term planning can be accomplished and accommodations for activities and assessments can be planned. Third, the selection of activities and projects, as well as the criteria for scoring projects, is more cohesive and coherent for both him and his students. Finally, developing the content for the Unit Organizer enabled him to smoothly integrate several of the curriculum design elements described by Simmons and Kameenui (1996). For example, a section on the Unit Organizer calls for inserting unit relationships. Here he inserted some of the patterns of thinking, or strategies, that are used throughout the content, such as cause-effect relationships. By doing so, he made those strategies conspicuous. However, simply inserting the strategy name does not make it conspicuous for learners with mild disabilities. Teachers must prepare to teach the strategy by identifying cause-effect as the pattern, describing several examples, and perhaps nonexamples, of cause-effect relationships, reviewing how to determine whether a relationship is cause-effect, and practicing using several content passages and the application of cause-effect relationship strategies. Other unit relationships may be cost/benefit, sequence or timelines, or compare and contrast strategies. An example is identifying the advantages and disadvantages of British and American armies. Geddes (2001) links the unit’s content directly to the Unit Organizer graphic structure: "The British made laws and acts that regulated trade, where colonists could settle, and raised taxes. Students are asked to link the causes of these laws and acts, the effects they had on colonists, and reactions by the colonists." Housner and Griffey (1985) researched how beginning and experienced physical education teachers planned, delivered, and reflected on instruction. They found that more experienced teachers made more decisions at the planning stage about strategies for implementing activities, which enabled them to respond more individually to the students’ psychomotor performance during classes. One could posit that the teachers’ years of experience enabled them to predict where students may have problems, or that the content area of physical education lent itself more readily to observable thinking on the students' part. That is, the teacher could see a student’s performance and provide corrective feedback right then, whereas in other subject areas or in the less overt areas of physical education, a teacher usually does not see the thinking a student does until some sort of physical or overt product is completed. The major point here is the importance of teacher planning in advance for varied strategies that can be used when needed during instruction. For students with mild disabilities, it is especially critical that the teacher has varied strategies to use when needed and that feedback occurs along the way of learning. Another set of routines within the Content Enhancement Model focuses on teaching concepts. Graphic Organizers are used with these routines. Some teachers may think that they already use Graphic Organizers and that these routines are the same as what they already do. Teachers should use graphics and visuals to assist them and students during instruction, but a major difference when using these graphics is the type of information that is targeted for the graphics, as well as the way in which the graphic information is taught and used with students. Consider the Concept Mastery Routine (Bulgren, Deshler, & Schumaker, 1993), and the way in which the graphic can depict a BIG IDEA as a concept. The teacher plans in advance which concepts are foundational and/or span the course or unit. The Concept Mastery Routine is not necessarily used with all concepts it’s used with select critical concepts. If a teacher uses the routine to plan, introduce, practice, and review examples and nonexamples of the concept, students with mild disabilities are more likely to see the organized information, remember it, and apply the concept’s characteristics to new examples. Consequently, students who require accommodations in how information is presented to them (i.e., the input) can benefit from this tool not only in presentation format, but also in using the graphic as a study tool.
	Universal Design for Learning The Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) uses the term universal design for learning (UDL) to describe instructional and assistive technology that can be used with and by learners with and without disabilities (Rose & Meyer, 2000; Rose, Sethuraman, & Meo, 2000). Some of their technological materials focus on curricular design and classroom practice. For example, CAST initially developed electronic books for learners who could not read well but were capable of understanding and using the written information. When the text information was transformed into an electronic book that featured text-to-speech and speak-aloud controls, students who were previously unable to access the print information now could do so using the electronic book as an accommodation. Rose and Meyer (2000) distinguish, however, between access and learning. If the educational outcome in an eleventh-grade social studies class is to compare and contrast the governments of two countries, an electronic book can assist a student who has a learning disability in reading. That is, given the teacher’s intended learning outcome, the student can access the text by using an electronic text instead of a traditional textbook to gather information and respond to the same outcome as the other students. However, if the educational outcome is to increase the student’s independent reading level (which is an IEP goal for many learners), an electronic book may not be the best fit during intensive reading instruction sessions. Moreover, Rose and Meyer are clear that UDL is not a "one size fits all" enterprise. Rather, the emphasis is on how technology can be used with the curriculum so that alternatives for students’ learning are available, flexible, and individualized based on the specific student’s needs related to the learning outcome. For a summary of concepts used by CAST in describing technological universal design elements, please refer to the CAST Website (listed in Readings page). An early version of universal design applied to instruction categorized three areas in which teachers could design and use flexibility (Orkwis & McLane, 1998). The three areas are how a teacher represents content to students, how student engage in practice toward proficiency with the content, and how flexibly students could express what they have learned. Representation, engagement, and expression choices during instruction could provide for students with and without disabilities multiple means of accessing, using, and showing what they know about the content. Examples of each of the three areas are:
	Representation: Enhance representation of new content by using: (a) digital computer text that can be transformed in size, shape, or color, or could be transformed into spoken speech; (b) audio with captions, similar to what most televisions are capable of being programmed for today; (c) images or graphics to illustrate content or process; (d) verbal and visual explanations and presentations; or (e) any combination or extension of the above. Ensure students have prerequisite skills and prior knowledge of the new content by: (a) assessing what content skills, knowledge, and background experiences the student brings to the course; (b) targeting big ideas and essential skills and knowledge as the focus of instruction for more depth versus breadth; (c) building into lessons ways to link new information to students’ existing experiences to prime their background knowledge; (d) eliciting from students what their interests and background experiences have been, as well as what they want to learn from the course; or (e) using any combination or extension of the above.
	Engagement: Provide practice toward proficiency with new content by: (a) determining an appropriate balance of challenge and support for students; (b) using novel as well as familiar items to increase motivation and ensure relevance; (c) building on students’ background knowledge and interests by using relevant examples; (d) providing stimulating and challenging content for learners; (e) using peers as tutors and students, such as with peer-assisted learning systems; (f) organizing for learning centers within the classroom that can be developed around differentiated and varied activities; (g) setting up individualized learning contracts with students so they can choose what types of formats they would like to practice with (a variation of this for an adaptation would be having a student set up a challenging learning contract that changed in a minor way the amount of content that student would be responsible for from the course); (h) having students self-evaluate their work using scoring rubrics or similar types of self-evaluative frameworks; (i) setting up for cooperative learning processes or projects; or (j) using any combination or extension of the above.
	Expression: Determine the criteria by which projects or assignments are scored, and then determine: (a) who needs alternatives to writing and can use computer software; (b) who needs alternatives to speeches or oral presentations and can use a multi-media presentation instead; (c) who will benefit from using graphics and illustrations to depict their knowledge and skill; (d) who needs explicit or conspicuous strategies in order to successfully, independently, and proficiently complete course tasks; (e) who needs more verbal or visual guidance and support as a scaffold or temporary support; or (f) who needs any combination or extension of the above. Module readers can also refer to a website developed by Bauwens (2001) for another visual depiction of these three categories of universal design. Although the six curriculum design elements (e.g., big ideas, primed background knowledge) and the Content Enhancement Model (e.g., Unit Organizers, Concept Mastery Routine) and Universal Design for Learning (e.g., using technology) are presented separately in this module, there is considerable overlap and similarity with what each is providing for teachers. All three of these are, separately, together, or used in combination, ways to respond to students’ diverse learning needs by designing and delivering more thoughtful and flexible instruction. When such universally applicable concepts are used in planning and teaching, the likelihood that more learners, including learners with mild disabilities needing more specialized accommodations and adaptations can be reduced. Consequently, teachers can use some of these universally applicable areas to enhance their planning and teaching for all learners, and then determine which learners need even more specialized accommodations or adaptations.
	Conclusion In summary, the curriculum that teachers are expected to teach to the wide range of diverse learners in today’s classrooms is not usually designed to be responsive to all learners. Consequently, it is recommended that teachers first examine their curriculum and determine areas that need to be enhanced. Three models for enhancing curriculum design and delivery for learners with and without mild disabilities are described: the six curriculum design principles, the Strategies Instruction Model focusing on Content Enhancement Routines, and the concept of universally applicable teaching and learning. Many elements among these three models overlap. For example, using the Concept Anchoring Routine is a way to prime students’ background knowledge, the Unit Organizer Routine is a way to target the BIG IDEAS and explicitly show connections within and among content, and flexibility with how students show, take in, and practice information can be judicious review. In Lesson 3, traditional accommodations and adaptations were described. This lesson featured ways to build accommodations and adaptations into lessons. In the next lesson, more differentiation techniques are described that can be used by teachers and students during instruction to promote learning.