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

Six Principles of Effective Curriculum Design

Toward Successful Inclusion of Students with Disabilities: The Architecture of Instruction

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December Events

Find educational resources for every day in December. Fill your December lessons with activities for Hanukkah (Dec. 21 -- Sundown), Winter Solstice (Dec. 21), Christmas (Dec. 25), Kwanzaa (Dec. 26), New Year's Eve (Dec. 31), Universal Human Rights Month (Dec.), World AIDS Month (Dec.).

Rulers & Number Lines

Take a look at our collection of printable rulers and protractors and number lines and place-value charts.

Letter-Writing Activities

Develop students' composition skills with these printables and activities. Students will learn about basic letter formats and practice writing formal, persuasive, and friendly letters.

Walden Forums

Wondering about online education at Walden? Get answers to your questions, meet faculty, and learn what it's like to be a Walden student. Click here to check out our free Walden Forums!

2009 Educators' Calendar

There's something worth celebrating every day! Find fun and educationally relevant holidays, events, and celebrations for each day of the year.

Printable Maps

Enrich your lessons with our collection of printable world maps depicting continents, countries, capitals, political boundaries, lines of longitude and latitude, climate zones, oceans, land forms, and more. Plus, browse our collection of Unites States maps.

Daily Printables

Add a TeacherVision widget to your blog, personalized homepage (such as iGoogle or Pageflakes), or social networking sites (such as Facebook). Our widgets feature a different fifth-grade language arts printable or fourth-grade math printable for each day of the year.