Adapt Lessons to Reach All Students

Principle	Criteria/Feature
I. Big Ideas Concepts, or principles that facilitate the most efficient and broad acquisition of knowledge	Focus on essential learning outcomes Capture rich relationships among concepts Enable learners to apply what they learn in varied situations Involve ideas, concepts, principles, and rules central to higher-order learning Form the basis for generalization and expansion
II. Conspicuous Strategies Useful steps for accomplishing a goal or task	Planned Purposeful Explicit Of medium-level application Most important in initial teaching of concept
III. Mediated Scaffolding Instructional guidance provided by teachers, peers, materials, or tasks	Varied according to learner needs or experiences Based on task (not more than learner needs) Provided in the form of tasks, content, and materials Removed gradually according to learner proficiency
IV. Strategic Integration Integrating knowledge as a means of promoting higher-level cognition	Combines cognitive components of information Results in a new and more complex knowledge structure Aligns naturally with information (i.e, is not "forced") Involves meaningful relationships among concepts Links essential big ideas across lessons within a curriculum
V. Judicious Review Structured opportunities to recall or apply previously taught information	Sufficient Distributed over time Cumulative Varied Judicious, not haphazard
VI. Primed Background Knowledge Preexisting information that affects new learning	Aligns with learner knowledge and expertise Considers strategic and proximal preskills Readies learner for successful performance

For a summary of the Six Principles of Effective Curriculum Design.

*Excerpted from Toward Successful Inclusion of Students with Disabilities: The Architecture of Instruction by Edward J. Kameenui, and Deborah Simmons(1999).

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