Being SDI-Focused In a nutshell: Specially designed instruction (SDI) is a Federal requirement under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for all eligible students with disabilities who have an Individualized Education Program (IEP). It essentially calls for instruction to be designed by a special education professional that includes: It’s More Than a Lesson There […]
What does engagement sound like? Allowing students to have a say in their work is not enough to build engagement. Adam Fletcher writes a great blog on engagement, including this entry: voice and engagement are not the same. In the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom (described in my books, Students Taking Charge), engagement refers to the state […]
If you owned an auto factory and the conveyor belt kept delivering cars that had no doors, or had faulty headlights, would you run the factory for a few more hours a day? Of course not! You’d redesign the system to address the root cause. When students attend school all day long and are not […]
Universal Design for Learning by CAST.ORG The amazing cast.org has developed a wonderful framework for ensuring that all students have access to rigorous content through lesson and curricular design, as opposed to after-the-fact accommodations and reteaching. In 2017, I wrote a blog post that shares the quintessential explanatory images: from adding a ramp to designing […]
If you’re looking to shift your secondary schedule to longer blocks of time and you want to support teachers in thinking differently about time … well, that’s why I’m writing this blog! What’s Your Why? I won’t spend too much time on this, but changing a schedule is not a goal, an end, or a […]