5 Steps for Designing Instruction that Engages and Supports ALL Students

At Goalbook, we’ve developed a 5-Step Instructional Design Process that blends standards-based instruction with Universal Design for Learning. The process brings together the WHAT behind a lesson (learning standards) with the HOW (UDL instructional strategies) so that educators can design multiple pathways of learning that ensure a diverse classroom of students can access and achieve College and Career Readiness.

Whereas traditional curricula focus on content or performance goals, a UDL curriculum focuses on developing ‘expert learners.’ This sets higher expectations, reachable by every learner.

— National Center on Universal Design for Learning

Steps 1–3 are based on standards-based instruction, which help educators establish a clear pathway (of learning) that is clearly aligned to a specific grade-level standard.

Steps 4–5 leverage Universal Design for Learning to help educators identify key learning barriers present in an individual learning pathway. Selecting targeted, instructional strategies then opens up multiple pathways around those barriers so that ALL students can be engaged and successful in making progress toward the standard.

Step 1. Select a Key Learning Standard

Before we embark on a climb, we first need to choose WHICH mountain to climb.

Before setting an instructional goal for a student, it is important to be strategic about which standard the goal will align to. Though this step might initially sound trivial, selecting which standard to focus on in a learning goal is a critical part of the planning process that requires thoughtfulness10.

When selecting a standard for an individual student, it is important to ensure it meets the following criteria:

1. The standard is from the enrolled grade level of the student.
2. The standard is fundamental to the grade level. It is a skill that is used throughout the year and in multiple contexts.
3. The standard addresses an area the student needs additional support.

For the purpose of walking through the 5-Step Process, we’ve selected a key reading standard, CC.ELA-Literacy 3.RI.3 (pictured to the right).

Step 2: Determine the Core Purpose of the Standard

We survey the mountain and select a specific destination at the summit where our pathway will lead.

Before an educator can effectively plan and design instruction around a standard, it is imperative he or she understands the standard itself. Standards like the Common Core are often long, multi-faceted, and use abstract language. This makes it challenging for educators to conceptualize a complex standard and visualize what a student is actually doing when he or she demonstrates mastery of the standard.

Below is a third grade Reading: Informational Text standard from the Common Core:

CC.ELA-Literacy 3.RI.3: Key Ideas and Details

Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.

The standard presents an abstract task (“Describe the relationship…”), incorporates multiple types of texts (“historical … scientific … technical procedures…”), and specifies multiple uses of language (“time, sequence, and cause/effect”).

The complexity present in even the briefest standards is why we recommend that educators first distill a standard down to its Core Purpose, or essential learning element.

Identifying the Core Purpose helps educators demonstrate that they have taken the crucial first step in understanding a standard by identifying its “main idea” and recasting it in their own words.

For example, for the standard, 3.RI.3 above, we can distill the Core Purpose:

Describe the relationship between events in a text in terms of time and cause/effect.

For this standard, we chose to simplify the the language by removing the specifications of different types of informational text (e.g. “technical procedures”). We also chose to consolidate “time” and “sequence” into “time.” Finally, we considered the fact that basic sequencing (e.g. beginning, middle, end) is presented in prior grade levels.

There is no official “right answer” when developing a Core Purpose. At Goalbook, we use the following two guidelines when developing the Core Purpose:

1. The Core Purpose should not be a “watered-down” (i.e. less rigorous) version of the standard.
2. The Core Purpose should be kept to 15 words or less.

Step 3. Develop a Clear Learning Goal Around the Core Purpose

We plan out a clear single pathway up to our specific destination. Our route needs to be clearly mapped out and articulated; otherwise, we may get lost.

Once educators understand a standard and distill it to its Core Purpose, the next step is to develop a learning goal that articulates how the student will demonstrate progress on the Core Purpose. The main challenge in this step is translating an abstract standard into a concrete student learning goal that clearly describes what progress for the Core Purpose actually looks like in the classroom.

Standard 3.RI.3 and its Core Purpose both start with the phrase, “Describe the relationship .…” We call this type of language “abstract” because it does not specify how students will demonstrate progress on the standard. How will students “describe the relationship”? Are they writing? Are they speaking? What are the contents of their description?

At Goalbook, we’ve developed two guiding questions that help create a learning goal that is concrete, specific, and measurable:

1. Can someone else read the goal, close his or her eyes, and visualize the task the student is performing (i.e. observable and measurable)
2. Can someone clearly determine whether the student has met the goal or not (i.e. specific criteria)?

Using these two guiding questions, our completed goal has a grade-level standard at its core, but provides support for the student by integrating Universal Design for Learning.

Below, we’ve categorized different elements of our sample goal into the three UDL Principles of Representation, Action and Expression, and Engagement:

After self-selecting and independently reading a historical grade-level text, students will answer 4 out of 5 short-answer comprehension questions in 2–3 written sentences that require an understanding of how events are connected in time or by cause/effect.

With the goal we’ve developed, it is easy to visualize not only what the student is doing, but how he or she is demonstrating progress toward

the standard: the student is independently reading a historical grade-level text, writing short-answer responses to specific types of comprehension questions using 2–3 sentences, and answering 4 out of 5 questions correctly in order to meet the specific criteria of the goal.

Most instructional design processes end once one articulated pathway has been developed; however, we know that if our instruction only offers one narrow pathway for mastery, then we limit how effectively we will support all students.

The final two steps in the process incorporate Universal Design for Learning to select targeted instructional strategies that reduce barriers and create multiple pathways so that all students can access instruction.

4. Identify Barriers to the Learning Goal

Any clear pathway will present challenges along the way. We need to identify places where the path will be unnavigable for students.

In any individual learning goal, there will be learning barriers that can prevent students from being successful. We can more readily identify the barriers present in a learning goal by decomposing elements of the goal into Representation, Action & Expression, and Engagement:

After self-selecting and independently reading a historical grade-level text, students will answer 4 out of 5 short-answer comprehension questions in 2–3 written sentences that require an understanding of how events are connected in time or by cause/effect.

Once we have broken down the goal into the three Principles, we can use UDL to identify the barriers present in each component. To make the process efficient and implementable, we suggest that educators select the most significant barrier for each UDL Principle based on the knowledge of their students.

Identifying Barriers to Representation

It is almost certain that the complexity of the language in the grade-level historical text will prevent some students from being able to decode the text or read the text fluently enough to support comprehension.

UDL Guideline 2 points to language as a potential barrier to learning: Provide options for language, mathematical expressions, and symbols

Identifying Barriers to Expression

The current goal we’ve drafted asks that students answer questions by writing a multi-sentence response. Even a student who has comprehended the content of the text could face a barrier in expressing his or her understanding in written form.

The most relevant UDL Guideline around the challenges of developing a written response is Expression Guideline 5: Provide options for expression and communication

Identifying Barriers to Engagement

For any given historical text, there will be students who are naturally interested in the historical topic addressed in the text and students who are not. Students who are not initially interested in the topic will likely be disengaged in the reading and may lack the motivation necessary to wrestle with a challenging historical text.

The UDL Guideline which most directly addresses barriers around student interest and motivation is Engagement Guideline 7: Provide options for recruiting interest

5. Identify Strategies That Address the Barriers

We can increase our chances of reaching the summit by bringing additional equipment or taking alternate routes (i.e. multiple pathways) to our destination.

Once we’ve identified barriers present in our original learning goal, we can start identifying multiple strategies that help our students access multiple pathways to the Core Purpose and standard. Let’s revisit our original goal:

After self-selecting and independently reading a historical grade-level text, students will answer 4 out of 5 short-answer comprehension questions in 2–3 written sentences that require an understanding of how events are connected in time or by cause/effect.

UDL helps us identify strategies strategically. We don’t want to include strategies in instruction just for the sake of using them. Instead, we select strategies that directly address the barriers we have identified in the previous step. That way, we ensure that our strategies will support students for the specific goal we want them to reach.

Identifying Strategies for Barriers to Representation

To address the barrier of language complexity in text, UDL recommends UDL Checkpoint 2.3 as the most relevant option for strategies:

Checkpoint 2.3: Support decoding of text, mathematical notation, and symbols

To support the decoding of historical text, we can use the strategy of partner reading with a more fluent reader to scaffold both decoding text and comprehending text auditorily.

Identifying Strategies for Barriers to Expression

To address the barrier of composing written answers, we can consider UDL Checkpoint 5.3: Build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance

Given that the Core Purpose of our goal is around a reading standard rather than a writing standard, we can provide a significant amount of writing support without compromising access to the Core Purpose of our reading standard.

To support the student in writing, it might be helpful to begin by having the student review and select pre-written answers. This not only removes the barrier of having students compose their own, but also allows them to see models of short written answers before they practice composing their own.

Identifying Strategies for Barriers to Engagement

To address the barrier of disinterest in the historical topic of the text, the most relevant UDL Checkpoint is 7.1:

Checkpoint 7.1: Optimize individual choice and autonomy

We can have the student choose between three different texts, each on a different historical topic. Not only will the student end up with a text that is more interesting to him or her, but the exercise of choice gives the student more ownership of the text he or she has chosen.

In Summary

We’ve used the 5-Step Process to design a learning goal focused on a key standard, beginning with identifying the standard’s Core Purpose. This created a single pathway of access for students. Next, we used the UDL framework to identify potential barriers students might face.

UDL Guidelines and Checkpoints then helped select and develop targeted strategies that open up multiple pathways of success for students. For more on our work around Universal Design for Learning and Designing Instruction, visit us at goalbookapp.com.