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The objective of the Open Access website is to facilitate the Learning and Participation for ALL students by eliminating barriers to learning.

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We take each college and career readiness standard and create specific and measurable learning goals aligned to the standard. We presume competence and write the first goal at a grade level expectation.

Breadth of Content

We take each state and Common Core standard, identify its "Essential" - or "Core Purpose" - and create IEP goals, resources, and strategies. Our repository includes content for Pre-K to Grade 12 in Reading, Writing, Math, and Speech, in addition to Behavior, Social and Emotional Learning, Autism, Occupational Therapy, Alternate Academic and Life Skills, and Transition.

Multiple Levels of Support

We use strategies and supports aligned to the UDL framework to develop scaffolded instruction at mild, moderate and intense levels of support. Every standard has adapted goals so that teachers can start at the most appropriate level for students.

Instructional Strategies

Aligned instructional strategies and resources aid teachers as they plan instruction. We place strategies at the fingertips of teachers to maximize access to the standards for every student.

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We take each college and career readiness standard and create specific and measurable learning goals aligned to the standard. We presume competence and write the first goal at a grade level expectation. We take each state and Common Core standard, identify its "Essential" - or "Core Purpose" - and create IEP goals, resources, and strategies.

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Kelly Whiting

kelly.whiting@miu4.org

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If you're like many teachers, then summer break never feels long enough. The first day of school comes around too soon, and you're back to the hustle before you've fully rested. And teachers are more stressed than ever, with over 90% of teachers reporting that burnout is a serious problem in the profession.

Make sure to use your time intentionally to rest, recharge, and take care of your mental health.

How can teachers make sure to recharge?

It's important to use your time in an intentional way. It's so easy to get sucked into activities for others' sake - your kids, your spouse, and so on. But what about you? What is it that you need this year? How can you use this time to rest and reset your mental health?

Here are some self-care activities to put on your to-do list:

Rest in any way you can

One of the most important ways you can use this time is to simply rest. Many teachers feel pressured to be productive, whether it's because of financial concerns or simply an internal drive to achieve. But resting is one of the best things you can do for your overall work performance and productivity. It's also one of the best things you can do for your students.

Rest can mean different things for different people. Some people may simply need to make sure they're getting enough literal rest at night - 7 to 9 hours of restful sleep. But resting could also mean resting mentally; allowing your mind to rest from constantly worrying about your students. Rest could mean enjoying activities that make you feel at ease.

Whatever rest means to you, get plenty of it!

Keep strong boundaries

Another thing you can do to recharge your mind is to build and keep strong boundaries between your work and the rest of your life. Of course, teaching is different from most other professions in that it may be challenging to "leave work at work" all the time. It's natural to think and worry about your students even when you aren't with them.

But, as much as possible, create boundaries. Allow your work cell to run out of battery. Remember who you are outside of being a teacher.

Get outside

Spend time outdoors. Research shows that spending time in nature can help ward off effects of stress, depression, and anxiety. If you're going on a trip, consider incorporating some nature time - like a weekend camping.

Even if you live in a big city, you probably have some green space within city limits. You don't need to go on a camping trip to reap the benefits of nature (although, if you can, that's wonderful!). Even having a picnic under the trees at the local park will do.

If it's possible, try combining your nature time with physical exercise - you could go for a hike, play with your kids outside, or take your dog on a walk in the woods. Exercise is another evidence-based way to care for your physical and mental health.

Set up a regular mindfulness practice

Lastly, mindfulness is a science-backed way to reduce stress and anxiety, become more aware of your emotions, improve your relationships, and more. And you don't need to go to a retreat or meditate for hours a day to benefit from mindfulness. You can practice mindfulness any time, anywhere - it's just about learning how to be present in each moment. There are many easy ways to incorporate mindfulness into your day.

Best of all, mindfulness is like any skill. When you practice it, it becomes easier and more natural over time. By starting a regular mindfulness practice, you will have stronger skills during the school year to handle the curveballs that you encounter in your classroom.

Calm Classroom isn't just for students - many teachers use our activities at home, as well. And well over 80% of our teachers report feeling more relaxed and less stressed after using our program.

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Teachers: Here's How to Recharge Your Mental Health

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The beginning of the school year can be tough on educators. Learn how to use your time intentionally to rest, recharge, and take care of your mental health.

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The Smithsonian Learning Lab is a Free, interactive platform for discovering millions of digital resources, creating content with online tools, and sharing in the Smithsonian’s expansive community of knowledge and learning.

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The Smithsonian Learning Lab is a Free, interactive platform for discovering millions of digital resources, creating content with online tools, and sharing in the Smithsonian’s expansive community of knowledge and learning.

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Smithsonian Learning Lab: Discover, Create, Share

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Strategies to Strengthen Executive Functioning 

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Strategies to Strengthen Executive Functioning 

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Building a Stronger Brain: Strategies to Strengthen Executive Functioning | Popup Practices Season 2

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Structured Breaks | Popup Practices Season 2

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Link to recording of The Teacher SKIT https://app.screencastify.com/v3/watch/xnNnElKiy5rDPfTNf918  

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Link to recording of The Teacher SKIT https://app.screencastify.com/v3/watch/xnNnElKiy5rDPfTNf918  

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Happy Tuesday, #TeamInclusion! I have a guest post today that co-teachers and UDL advocates will want to read and share. It's by Dr. Deborah Taub, a UDL/inclusive ed expert and the Director of Research and Programs at Keystone Assessment. Through some short but powerful vignettes, she shows us what's possible when co-teachers embrace UDL principles while planning instruction for students with special needs.

After you read this, tell us your experience: Does instructional planning in your school sound more like the first or second example? What are your barriers, if any, to adopting the planning approach Mrs. Summers and Mr. Harris took? What resources can we develop to help you? Read on, and then share your thoughts in the comments below!

***

There are often two questions about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that I hear when training:

1. Why would I do this? It is no different from differentiated instruction, and

2. How in the world would I do this? It is huge!

Two quick vignettes of teachers planning for instruction illustrate the answer to both questions.

Ms. Jacobs and Mr. Snyder are planning instruction for Dawn, a student with complex instructional needs who is included in Ms. Jacobs' English class.

Ms. Jacobs: We are reading The Giver for the next couple of weeks. The students will be creating a timeline of a historical event and examining how it connects to their lives as a part of the social studies curriculum.

Mr. Snyder: Dawn can't read, so I don't think The Giver is going to be possible for her. And the subject matter doesn't really connect to her daily life so maybe I'll give her an adapted copy of Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge instead. It also deals with the importance of memories and forgetting and it is written at a second grade reading level so it should be easier to understand than The Giver.

Ms. Jacobs: Oh, that is a great idea. And maybe her timeline could be sequencing from her daily schedule instead of from history?

Now compare these teachers to Mrs. Summers and Mr. Harris, who are also planning for a student with complex instructional needs included in Mrs. Summers' English class.

Mrs. Summers: We are working on the themes and ideas in The Giver. The students will be creating a timeline of a historical event and examining how it connects to their lives as a part of the social studies curriculum.

Mr. Harris: I love that book-but it can be a bit of a barrier for some of our students unless we pair it with some accessibility supports. We can easily get some adapted versions of The Giver and maybe offer students the opportunity to partner read or use their online text readers.

Mrs. Summers: Yes, that makes sense. We may want to highlight key words or pictures to summarize the main points for some of our students who will still need additional help. And while we are at it, let's think about how to make it a bit more engaging for some of our students...maybe we can start with timelines related to their own lives and then move from there to historical events that shaped their world instead of from a historical event to themselves. It can go both ways.

Mr. Harris: Plus we could use some online timeline creation tools, pictures, or text-based timelines to provide students with lots of ways to engage with the timeline and get interested in the task.

The difference between these two conversations is subtle, but it illustrates one of the key ways differentiated instruction and UDL differ-as well as one of the biggest leaps teachers need to make if they are going to move to UDL-designed curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The biggest difference (and the most vital change teachers need to make to move to UDL-designed curriculum, instruction, materials, and assessment) is moving from the idea that the student is what creates barriers to learning to the idea that the curriculum, instruction, materials, and assessment create the barriers. And, while the conversations above may seem only minutely different, the belief that the student has the potential to access and make progress toward any goal significantly changes the way teachers approach planning, instruction, and assessment.

Consider the classic study by Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) that examined how student performance and teacher expectations were tied together. They found that "when we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur" (Rosenthal and Babad, 1985). Our instructional decisions are based on our expectations, even if we are not necessarily consciously aware of them.

When we work from the premise that the barrier is within the student, then our job as educators is to fix the student so he can access instruction and materials. This belief sets up limits for all the things a school system can't change about a student: missing limbs, intellectual disabilities, an impoverished home, language and cultural differences, etc. When we work from the premise that barriers are within the instruction and materials, then our job as educators is to change instruction and materials to remove and reduce those barriers. We, as educators and school systems have control over those things.

This doesn't mean it isn't difficult. Looking at creating a UDL classroom may seem absolutely overwhelming. Consider the CAST website for their curriculum self-check: it is HUGE. There are so many things to think about. And then, on top of that, for students with complex learning needs you are still probably going to need to add some individualized supports on top of the universally designed curriculum, like Mrs. Summers and Mr. Harris did when they added summarized text or pictures to represent key concepts and ideas from the full text. Conceptualizing the barrier as being within the curriculum, instruction and materials rather than the student may seem overwhelming for what initially seems like a tiny difference in how these two sets of teachers plan and teach. In my experience though, it is that single key difference that helps create a UDL classroom. It is that single key difference that improves students' opportunities to learn and sets up systems that improve student performance. In addition, it is that key difference that sets the stage for inclusive practices. So, if you want to build an inclusive classroom, the biggest step you can take is to change how you think about barriers.

Want to hear more from Deborah Taub? Be sure to check out this podcast she did on alternate assessment over at Think Inclusive, and this post on leaving behind the notion of inclusion as a place.

More on presuming the competence of all learners: "Presuming Competence: What It Is, What It Looks Like"

Deborah Taub is Director of Research and Programs at Keystone Assessment, where she provides research and professional development assistance for states, territories, and other entities working to develop and sustain best practice. She has assisted states in building and evaluating systemic programs, especially around issues of inclusive practice for students with complex instructional needs, such as those with low incidence disabilities or who are dually identified as having a disability and ELL. Dr. Taub has designed, implemented, and evaluated alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities, developed UDL and standards-based curricula and instruction, and conducted validity and alignment evaluations. She's an advisory member of National Center for Universal Design for Learning's UDL Taskforce, and a member of the TASH Inclusive Education Committee and the Council for Exceptional Children's CCSS Advisory Group.

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Your first step toward a UDL-designed classroom: Change how you think about barriers (Guest post) - Brookes Blog

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Happy Tuesday, #TeamInclusion! I have a guest post today that co-teachers and UDL advocates will want to read and share. It's by Dr. Deborah Taub, a UDL/inclusive ed expert and the Director of Research and Programs at Keystone Assessment. Through some short but powerful vignettes, she shows us what's possible when co-teachers embrace UDL principles [...]

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10 UDL Observations in the Classroom_Novak Education

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karen.chambers@miu4.org

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linda.delvaux@miu4.org

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leah.winans@miu4.org

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THINK PAIR SHARE: This is a teaching/learning strategy. Students will think to themselves about a statement/question given by the teacher/facilitator and then share their thoughts and ideas with a partner. After a few minutes, the teacher/facilitator will ask for pairs to share their responses. POST IT PILE IT: This is a teaching/learning strategy. Put students into small groups of 4-5 and provide each student in the group with a small pack of post-it notes or small pieces of scrap paper. Tell students that you are going to ask a question and students will work independently to record all their ideas/responses on their post-it notes. They will write only one idea per post-it note, but will write as many different ideas as they can. Once students have recorded all their responses, tell the small groups to number themselves from 1 to 4 or 5. Within the small groups, students will share their ideas in the following manner. Person #1 will read one idea off of one of their post-its, and then will post the idea by placing the post-it in the centre of the group (on a desk/table). Anyone else in the group who has that same idea in their own pile of post-it notes then will place their post-it on top of that same idea. Then, person #2 will read a new idea and post it BESIDE the first idea that was posted in the middle. Anyone who has that same idea will place their post-it on top of this new posting, and then it will be person #3's turn. Students will continue in this manner, going around the group, taking turns and posting on top of ideas, until everyone in the group has shared every idea. Once all the students have all their ideas in the middle, instruct them to review the piles of ideas. Tell them to choose three main ideas a spokesperson will share with the rest of the class.

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Think Pair Share/Post It-Pile It Student Training

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THINK PAIR SHARE: This is a teaching/learning strategy. Students will think to themselves about a statement/question given by the teacher/facilitator and then share their thoughts and ideas with a partner. After a few minutes, the teacher/facilitator will ask for pairs to share their responses. POST IT PILE IT: This is

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Kids, like adults, cycle through periods of attention and inattention-though the duration of the interval changes with age and is variable across individuals. By high school, according to neurologist and classroom teacher Judy Willis, concentrated study of "20 to 30 minutes for middle and high school students calls for a three-to-five-minute break."

Regardless of attention spans, brain breaks can prevent older students from feeling overwhelmed and provide space for reflection, joy, and connection during a packed school day. They're also a crucial part of the learning process.

"According to one popular school of thought, it's the active, repeated manipulation of material that lays the neural foundations for skill development," writes Youki Terada, Edutopia's research editor. But breaks are often misconstrued as a pause in the active learning process, instead of "the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced," neuroscientist Leonardo Cohen and his team explain in a June 2021 study. In fact, Cohen continues, incorporating breaks into learning "plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill."

Brain "breaks" can take many different forms inside of the classroom, depending on the aim. To boost students' mood, Willis suggests activities that increase restorative neurotransmitters like dopamine: anything that involves "laughing, moving, listening to music, and interacting with peers." Likewise, brain breaks that incorporate physical activity not only provide a moment of stress relief for students but also increase the blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain-stimulating brain activity and helping students regain focus in the face of fatigue.

1. Thinking Outside the Box: On the board, provide students with the start of a doodle that they'll have to creatively transform into something unexpected. This can be anything from two lines to a squiggle or a half circle. To add in some student voice and choice, have volunteers suggest what the initial drawing prompt should look like. Sourced from Tina Centineo via X (formerly Twitter).

2. "Train Your Brain": A fun activity thatstarts by having students touch the tip of their nose with their right index finger and then touch their ear with their left hand index finger. Then have them switch the position of their hands, touching the tip of their nose with their left hand index finger and moving their right index finger to touch their ear. Kids should keep doing this until they can get it right, which may take only a few tries for some and much longer for others. To add an element of competition, see which student can do this activity for the longest without messing up. Sourced from PE teacher Matt Head via TikTok.

3. Would You Rather: Pair students up and have them discuss fun "would you rather" questions. Here are some examples of prompts:

Would you rather live in a world with no technology or a world with no nature?

Would you rather have the ability to speak with animals or the ability to speak all human languages fluently?

Would you rather have your favorite movie character as your best friend or your favorite book character as your sibling?

To add an element of movement, do this activity together as a class. Announce the prompt out loud, and have students go to one side of the room or the other to show which option they'd rather choose. A select couple of volunteers can raise their hands to explain their reasoning. Sourced from Education World.

9. What Is That?: Find a picture of something your class may never encounter in your subject area and display it for students to see. "I showed a physics class a murmuration of starlings but did not tell them what it was," explains former principal Peter Embleton. "No phones or computers, they had to figure out what was happening and why." This not only ignites student curiosity but may introduce your class to something they didn't previously know existed. Sourced from Peter Embleton via X.

11. 1, 2, 3, Math!: Similarly to rock, paper, scissors, students play against each other in pairs. After the players say "1, 2, 3, Math," each displays one, two, three, or four fingers in the palm of their hand. The first of the pair to correctly call out the sum of both players' fingers wins that round and a point. The first person to win three rounds is the champ. Sourced from: Lori Desautels.

13. Classwide Wordle: The word game that swept the nation is sure to keep your students on their toes. According to the game's website, you'll have six tries to guess the five-letter word of the day. The tile color changes depending on how close the guess is: A green tile means the letter "is in the word and in the correct spot," a yellow tile means the letter "is in the word but in the wrong spot," and a gray tile means the letter is not in the word at all. Try playing together as a class, and have students shout out their suggestions, voting on which ideas they like best. Sourced from Kim West via X.

14. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1: To keep kids alert during a long lesson, have them spend a couple of minutes stretching and moving around the room. Consider creating a short sequence of exercises that students can all do together to get their blood flowing-such as five high knees, four jumping jacks, three push-ups, two deep breaths, and one squat. Offering students the option to stand and do the sequence or alternatively sit and stretch in whatever way they choose ensures that this activity is inclusive and considers everyone in your classroom. Sourced from We Are Teachers.

15. Odd One Out: This Google Arts & Culture game challenges you to "guess the AI-generated imposter" among the artworks. You'll be presented with four images and have to guess which of the options was created by AI before time runs out. Compete all together as a class, or have students play together in small groups. This could inspire an interesting conversation around student perceptions and misconceptions of AI. Sourced from Tony Vincent via X.

17. Invisible Pictures: In groups of two, have one student "draw a picture in the air while their partner guesses what it is," writes assistant professor Lori Desautels. To give students a starting point, provide them with categories like foods, animals, or places, and then allow their creative minds to lead the way. For a bit of extra help, allow the guessing partner to ask one or two yes or no questions that will provide them with crucial context. Sourced from Lori Desautels.

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17 Brain Breaks Tailored for High Schoolers

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As high school students navigate more rigorous academic tasks and denser curricular material, the occasional 3-to-5-minute break delivers a wide range of benefits.

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Have you ever played a game where someone begins a story then the next person adds to it, the next adds a little more and so on?

Add and pass is a fun collaborative writing activity. Students must take what their classmates created and add something to it. It's almost like improv, where actors must depend on each other to create.

Looking for something to spark student creativity?

Want to get your students working - and creating - together?

This may be the answer. And the best part - it's easy to set up! You can do this activity in Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Drawings and even Flipgrid!
(Are you a Microsoft school? You can use Word or PowerPoint online to do the same activities.)
Add and pass with Google Docs
1. Begin with an image at the top of a blank document (perhaps a picture of a spooky house, a historical figure, a scene from a story or anything you want!).
You can either make a copy of one of the "Add and Pass" activities in this Google Drive folder. Or create your own by downloading a picture that will prompt a story. You can find royalty free images on Pixabay.com, Unsplash.com, or Photosforclass.com. Create a blank document (go to docs.new) and paste the image at the top. Be sure to change the share settings to "anyone with link can edit".

And have students add some text then pass it on!
2. Assign to your class through Google Classroom or a shortened url (try bit.ly or TinyURL).
Share the document with groups of about 4-6 students. You can share the same prompt with each group or give each group the same prompt and have them compare their stories when finished.
3. Have students complete the activity.
Number students off. Student 1 writes the first part of the story. Student 2 begins where they left off adding to the story but giving it their own spin. This continues until you have a completed story. You can give students a certain number of words or sentences they need to add or just let them go. Note: younger students can use the voice typing feature in docs to add to the story.

Add and pass with Google Slides

1. Create a single slide presentation with enough slides for each student. Share the slide presentation with the class with the "anyone can edit" option. Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to do that.

2. Each student claims a slide. (Have students write their names in the slide title or the speaker notes.)

3. Students begin writing - or creating an image - on their slide. Give them a number of minutes or sentences to write.

4. When they're done writing, students jump down to the next slide below theirs. They read what the previous student created and add something to it.

5. Students continue until time has run out or you're done having them turns.

6. Students go back to their original slide and see what has been created by the class!

Optional add-on exercises:

Students look at the stories and highlight their favorite passages, adding comments to explain why they liked them.

Each student goes back to his/her own slide and writes a separate prompt about how he/she would have finished the story.

Add and pass with Google Drawings

Get the whole class working together in this activity.
1. Assign a blank Google Drawings to each student.
You can assign a blank drawing through Google Classroom making a copy for each student or have them create their own drawing by going to drawings.google.com/create.
2. Have each student work on their own drawing for a couple of minutes.
They can be free to create anything they like or you can specify which tools or colors or design elements they may use. You can even ask them to create something specific like a story scene or type of art.
3. Rotate!
Have students rotate to a different desk and work on someone else's activity. After a few minutes rotate, then rotate again and rotate again.

Eventually, the activities get completed. It's fun to see what the rest of the class did with what you started off with!

BONUS: Add and pass with Flipgrid!

Collaborative storytelling takes on a new dynamic when you add video to the mix!

Flipgrid ( flipgrid.com) is a video response tool. Students respond to a prompt with short video clips. (If you'd like to learn how to use Flipgrid, this ebook created by Sean Fahey, Karly Moura and Jen Saarinen will help!)

To have students create video stories - and put their storytelling skills to work - make these adjustments:

1. Create a grid for this activity. (A grid is where all the topics students respond to live.)

2. Create as many topics in that grid as you have students. Number them. If you have 25 students, number them 1-25.

3. Create small numbered papers (in this example, 1-25) and give each student a paper with a number.

4. Share the Flipgrid grid with your students. Have them go to the topic that correlates with their number.

5. Students record a video to the story. When they're done, they pass their paper to someone else (the person to their right, to the front, a random person, etc.)

NOTE: Flipgrid topics are sorted with the most recent video at the top, so to watch the story start to finish, work your way backward.

Looking for more "ready to use" activities like this? Check out our 10 Digital bell-ringer activities you can use tomorrow! FREE ebook. Each activity comes with step-by-step instructions, a template, and ideas to take the activities even further.
Click here to download that ebook - for FREE!

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Add and pass: A fun activity to get them moving AND creating

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Have you ever played a game where someone begins a story then the next person adds to it, the next adds a little more and so on? Add and pass is a fun collaborative writing activity. Students must take what their classmates created and add something to it.

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Updated 2 weeks ago by Carla Sese

Signing up for a Padlet account is easy! An account lets you sign in on any device at padlet.com or with our iOS/Android mobile app to create beautiful boards and take part in padlets that require an account for access. Follow the steps for your platform below:

Web

1. Visit padlet.com

2. Click the Sign up for free button.

The next screen will prompt you to enter an email address and create a password. You can also register using Google, Microsoft, or Apple ID.

1. Choose a plan the works for you. You can start with a free plan for now and upgrade later.

2. That's it! Click Let's go and start building your first padlet. Check out this article to get you started.

Password must contain at least 8 characters but please, don't use 12345678.

Download the Android or iOS app. You can visit your app store and search for Padlet. Just look for the crane!

1. Create an account with the steps above by providing an email and creating a password.

2. Finally, select the plan you'd like to start on. It's absolutely fine to choose Basic (free). You can always upgrade later when you realize just how cool it is!

3. Voila! Padlet account is all set! Check out this page to learn more about creating padlets.

If you sign up with an email address (and not through Google or Microsoft), you will need to verify your email. You should receive an email with a 6-digit verification code, which you will need to input before you can sign up.

Mobile App

FAQs

What if Padlet says my email is taken?

This means that the email address you entered is already registered with a Padlet account. Choose a different email address to create a new account.

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I’m looking forward to using brain breaks and choice boards.

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I will use Notice and Wonder during Social Skills instruction to support student understanding of facials and body language

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Jennifer

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I will use "Notice and Wonder" with my ELA classes.

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I am going to utilize choice boards for different writing tasks in hopes to give the students more a choice and a voice in showing their learning.

*Sorry for the repeat...I did not include my name before. : )

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I will use "Would You Rather" as a writing prompt/activity.

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National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

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A digital library containing Java applets and activities for K-12 mathematics

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How does it feel for you to decipher written medical information? Auto-repair guidance? Directions in a challenging pastry recipe? If you don't have experience in these areas, it can take a lot more effort to make sense of what you read, even if you're easily able to decode all the words-but any background knowledge you have will definitely help you out. Building kids' background knowledge and helping them use it in reading is a crucial aspect of putting the science of reading to work for kids. Alongside phonics decoding skills, research shows that background knowledge plays a key role in kids' reading success.

What is background knowledge?

Background knowledge is any preexisting understanding of concepts, situations, ideas, and vocabulary that one can call upon when reading. Lots of knowledge is topic-specific, like knowing about desert habitats or the history of slavery in the United States. Everyone also has a fund of general knowledge that spans across domains. Family, community, culture, and life experiences all contribute to a student's general knowledge.

Why is background knowledge important for reading?

Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System-and How To Fix it, says knowledge is like Velcro. "The more knowledge a child starts with, the more likely she is to acquire yet more knowledge. She'll read more and understand and retain information better, because knowledge, like Velcro, sticks best to other related knowledge." A rich fund of background knowledge can help kids understand what they read-and learn more from it. (We suggest you immediately add the Knowledge Matters podcast, hosted by Wexler, to your listening queue. It dives into why knowledge-building is so crucial for kids, and how school districts can adapt their curricula to do it better. Plenty of educators talk about their real-life teaching wins.)

A must-know research study that links background knowledge and reading comprehension is "The Baseball Experiment." Researchers divided middle schoolers into four groups based on their reading comprehension scores on a standardized test and their knowledge (or lack of knowledge) about baseball. When reading and answering questions related to a passage about baseball, strong knowledge of baseball helped kids succeed even if they had poor reading comprehension skills. This study is even a great one to talk about with kids, to raise their awareness of the value of knowledge.

How does building background knowledge help readers?

Readers use their background knowledge to make inferences, combining evidence in the text with their own experience to figure out what an author implies but doesn't directly state. Background knowledge is what lets readers make sense of idioms and expressions, like "once in a blue moon" or "under the weather." Readers also use their knowledge base to choose the correct interpretation of a multiple-meaning word, like knowing a character headed to the "riverbank" is not on their way to withdraw some cash.

Building background knowledge intentionally at school can help level the playing field for all readers. School-based knowledge-building can fill holes for kids who have had varying experiences and opportunities outside of school. Building background knowledge is especially important for supporting multilingual learners.

How to build background knowledge

We've all had instances when kids' lack of contextual knowledge caused a reading experience to totally tank, so it's easy to accept the importance of building background knowledge to help comprehension. But how do you build knowledge in a way that makes a difference? These six principles are important to keep in mind:

1. Remember to activate prior knowledge

Remember the Velcro! Helping kids reflect on their prior knowledge before reading helps them be ready to use it and gets them ready for any new knowledge to "stick." Try a quick concept map or sticky-note brainstorm. For younger kids, show them photos from previous experiences, like when you went on a field trip to a farm or observed a butterfly.

2. Explicitly teach new knowledge

There's a big push for teachers to focus on higher-order thinking, but think back to Bloom's Taxonomy. It's the "remembering" and "understanding" at the bottom of the pyramid that support-and make possible-the more complex thinking at the top. Don't skip those parts, and don't make assumptions about what kids already know.

3. Connect vocabulary

In Scarborough's Rope, a helpful conceptual model for reading acquisition, "Background Knowledge" is entwined with the "Language Comprehension" strands. Help kids connect vocabulary words by making concept or category-oriented lists, starting with words kids are likely to know and adding new, more varied words they can learn.

4. Focus on content before skills and strategies

Many curricula encourage explicit teaching and practice of comprehension skills and strategies, like finding the main idea or making inferences. Instead of modeling or practicing a skill using texts on many different subjects, consider first diving deeply into a topic, and then practicing skills in that shared context. In Episode 1 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast, Wexler talks about how a knowledge-building curriculum puts "content in the foreground and brings in whatever skills and strategies are most likely to help students think about it."

5. Emphasize concepts

Knowledge-building is not about memorizing facts. It's important to help kids learn about key concepts and talk about how those concepts could relate to other topics over time. A recent study led by James Kim at Harvard looked at the power of building up kids' "mental framework" for science concepts related to animals' survival. After two years, they saw positive effects on students' reading comprehension of passages that included both taught concepts and other related content.

6. Plan to build kids' background knowledge over time

Learning about the world takes a while! Plan time for deep study of a few topics across the school year rather than superficially touching on many. Kids need repeated exposure to vocabulary and concepts for learning to stick. Coordinate the content of different units across the year and across grade levels so that learning can build on itself.

More knowledge-building ideas

Your school days are jam-packed. It's helpful to have lots of strategies for building kids' background knowledge on hand so you can grab any available opportunity.

7. Read widely on a topic

Multiple texts on the same topic build vocabulary and background knowledge. A variety of genres and formats, including picture books, poems, articles, and graphic novels, offers many entry points. For whole-class books or popular independent-reading titles, keep an ongoing file of background-boosting images and short texts. Don't limit kids to text they can read themselves. Read aloud to expose them to more complex ideas.

8. Use picture books for all ages

No matter how old your kids are, picture books are engaging and effective ways to build students' knowledge about the world.

9. Don't skip the back matter

So many picture books have amazing author's notes, maps, recipes, activity directions, and timelines. Try sharing them ahead of time or share them and then reread the book with the additional information in mind.

10. Tap into kid-lit educator guides

Many publishers and author websites offer extensive free teacher guides for their titles, which generally include resources for building background knowledge of the book topic. Check out guides for hundreds of titles from diverse publisher Lee & Low Books.

11. Build in knowledge-boosting stopping points during reading

Rather than front-loading information about everything a student might need to know to understand a text, how about involving them in the knowledge-building process throughout the lesson? The Iowa Reading Research Center suggests providing "just enough" background information at designated stopping points during reading.

12. Provide sensory experiences

To fully appreciate James's journey to the center of the giant peach in Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, you really have to have touched, smelled, and tasted a regular-sized peach yourself. Add a quick sensory experience to your morning meeting a few times a week. Play different music, breathe in new smells, touch an object from nature, or view a cultural artifact or piece of art. Students' knowledge will add up over time.

13. A little video goes a long way

Classroom time is precious, but for a student who's never seen the seashore or snow, a video clip creates a memorable impression to draw upon when reading. We've got video suggestions on tons of topics for you!

14. Connect with experts

Give students memorable information to draw upon when reading. Invite a local guest to your class or use Skype a Scientist to chat with an expert in the field or lab anywhere in the world.

15. Take virtual field trips

Help the settings of students' reading come alive. No plane ticket required! Our lists of virtual field trips and tours have so many options.

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16. Push for real-life special presentations and trips

Yes, there are so many barriers, like cost, time, and administrative pressure, to keep up with curriculum pacing. Really, though, what's going to help kids appreciate the majesty of Jane Yolen's Owl Moon more than a naturalist visiting with a real owl? If field trips and special guests are a hard sell in your district, perhaps you can lobby for how they'll improve students' comprehension of grade-level texts!

17. Help students learn by mentoring

Kids begin growing their cache of knowledge about the world long before they need to draw on it for their own reading comprehension. You can't go back in time to replace missed experiences, but you can have older students pay it forward. Try having peer mentors lead a science investigation, act out key concepts, or create pretend-play materials for younger kids. They'll build their own background knowledge as they work!

18. Build knowledge about feelings

Sometimes the background knowledge required to understand a book isn't specific to a topic but related to characters' emotional experiences. Students in classrooms that intentionally cultivate empathy will be better equipped to make sense of stories on a deeper level. These 50 books for learning about social skills and emotions are a good place to start.

19. Pool staff knowledge to share with students

Get to know your colleagues' interests and agree to serve as resident experts for one another's students. Mrs. X down the hall, state record holder in the 400m, probably has tons more information to share with students reading Jason Reynolds' Track series than you do.

20. Have students teach one another

Speaking of resident experts, you have a class full of them on everything from skateboarding to playing the violin to dealing with annoying siblings. Tie peer teaching to procedural writing or create a collection of videos.

21. Go straight to the source with interview assignments

First-person stories are so memorable. Tap into the knowledge of your community by having students conduct written or video interviews with family members or local experts on topics relevant to classroom studies.

How do you help students build background knowledge? Come discuss your ideas in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

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21 Ways To Build Background Knowledge To Help Kids Read

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Building kids' background knowledge is key to helping their reading comprehension. The good news is there are tons of ways to do it!

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Nearpod: Foster a love of learning in every student

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Create active learning experiences students can’t wait to be a part of.

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Important — Popplet.com service is ending July 1, 2026. Please read the official announcement here,and visit our new site Superstructures.io.

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I will use "Notice and Wonder" with my ELA classes.

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I am going to utilize choice boards for different writing tasks in hopes to give the students more a choice and a voice in showing their learning.

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I am going to utilize choice boards for different writing tasks in hopes to give the students more a choice and a voice in showing their learning.

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I will be implementing Brain Breaks (Would You Rather/Spot the Difference).

I am also interested in trying the Building UDL Habit Graphic Organizer.

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Notice and wonder

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I will use choice boards to let students customize workouts.

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I will use Notice and Wonder with the illustrations as a before reading strategy.

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Would you rather activities

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Jesse

Choice Boards

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Angie

I am going to start brainbreak choice boards.

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Karen

fidgets

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Matt:
Hello SEL education community, my name is Matt Pearsall. I am the community manager here in the SEL and education community and I am really excited to be able to share with you today at the beginning the inauguration of our of our new speaker series when we start- we're having a regular series of community members and other people coming in and talking to us giving brief talks around various different topics on social emotional learning and I am not only excited to be kicking off this event but also really excited to be able to kick off at this event featuring somebody who had a chance to meet here before A long time SEL champion in the SEL education community, Lynn Thomas. And so we're gonna be talking about supporting learner variability and without further ado I wanto kind of introduce you all to Lynn Lynn can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself before we jump in?

Lynn:
Hi I'm Lynn Thomas I'd love to Matt. I'm really happy to be here. Really excited about speaking to everybody I'm an ed secondary school english teacher from dunville ontario and I'm also an HP Teaching Fellow and I really advocate for mental health support and mental wellness and social emotional learning. I'm really excited to be here today.

Great! And so this topic of supporting learner variability one of the things on it that I really appreciated when I heard that you wanted to talk about this was that this is something that we all, we, every educator deals with every single day and so kind of hearing how you this connection you found in a little bit you were telling me about it before we started got me really excited. So can you tell us a little bit more about about this this this tool that you've been using and and why it's so exciting?

Well yes definitely. I'm really excited to share it with you so um it's a tool that was introduced to me through being an HP Teaching Fellow and it's something that has been created by Digital Promise who are a non-profit organization who research and try and fill the digital learning gap. And the wonderful thing about it is like learner variability as we all know our kids come to school with all kinds of stuff in their backpack and everybody learns different and we try to adjust and do everything in our programs to try and support all those students and that's a real feat how do you do it for you know 30 odd kids in a room and that kind of thing and a lot of times it can be overwhelming when we try and think about well but how do I account for trauma? How do I account for social emotional learning? how do I account for any cognitive issues? How do I account for background knowledge? You know English language learner, there's so many things that it can feel overwhelming.

And how do you put all that together so the really cool thing about it - and it's called the Learner Variability Navigator - is that it does put all those things together and I love the fact that a lot of times we often think about when we want to do a social emotional learning activity it's very explicit and what I love about this is it offers strategies that are based on research to support any of the different variables or factors that affect learning. And it gives you teaching strategies and methodologies that support those things so you can build it as a thread throughout your program, like every single day and every single lesson without feeling like you're adding more. You know it's switching to how you teach something as opposed to teaching one more thing. And I think that sometimes can really you know it's it's a hard thing to figure out how to do. And you know what are those things it supports so well.

Matt: I think we got you got muted there Lynn there we go you're back

Lynn: okay so I'm having trouble picking which screen I want. That's the one. I got it. Okay sharing. Okay is it right can you see the Learner Variability Navigator? Yep okay.

So this is the Digital Promise's Learner Variability Project. As I said, Digital Promise is an independent nonprofit and their mission is to accelerate innovation and improve opportunities for learning. So basically, what they've done is they've taken research and put it at our fingertips. This is open source and free for all educators. So, you can see as we move down through their research, they've defined basically four pillars that are the main areas that they look at.

So you know here we have social emotional learning, and but we also have content cognition and student background. And then what they did is created looked at those pillars and looked at them in these different models. So they've broken it down basically into kind of numeracy and literacy, which basically they can hit on every single subject. Right, so for ease and because it's the one I'm most familiar with. So you know we'll have a look at the grade 7-12 model and explore the factors. So the first time I saw this, I was blown away by this part so here you can see the four pillars divided in the columns and you can see the factors that they discovered affected learning the most what's really marvelous is when I hover over any one of these factors you can see how some fade out and highlight and it shows automatically right there visually how they're interconnected. And I thought that was just brilliant because sometimes we would forget like you know I wouldn't have thought reading fluency would be affected that much by social emotional learning right and it really emphasized the importance of integrating everything together to support the whole child. And you know you can see like hearing is a factor you know it. I thought it was marvelous, but it gets better.

So on any one of these I can click on and it will take me to a summary page. And then basically outlines what the factor is here it can go it goes into a little more deeper explanation about those connections you know critical literacy so it talks about why is emotion why does critical literacy get affected by emotion you know why does competition get affected so those it really helps. It's, it's like the best teacher PDA out there, I think also.

And again explains all the main ideas so in emotion and if you continue down the page it gives you lots of opportunities to learn more. And I like this - the view measures and references. And it's a little different on for each of the factors, but what's wonderful is one you could dig into the references if you wanted to, but it also gives you measures. So sometimes, these are specific sorts of assessments that you could use in the classroom sometimes they're more specialized where it might be your school psychologist or something like that would deliver and interpret these sorts of assessments but there's a lot of them that the classroom teacher could utilize to then give themselves a better base of understanding so then if we go back and as I said sometimes there's a couple of different measures in there and and then you can see it goes into what are the strategies for this factor and before we get into there I will go back up to the top and you'll notice here we have strategies. So I'll show you that and again here we can see all the different areas down the left hand side and on the right hand side we see all the various strategies again that have been extensively researched and you can see just by the color coding what ones support each of the different factors and for example we can look at annotating. And again like before when I click on annotating I'm taken to a summary page that gives me an overview of what is this strategy and what is it like. But it's really awesome because it then gives me a perfect like a lovely example of it in action in a classroom. It also on the right hand side gives me an example of a technology tool that does a really good job in supporting this specific factor, so you know if you want to need to want to etcetera integrate technology you can find out what ones are really good at supporting that factor.

And as before you there's a ton of examples so you can really learn how are people using this strategy in their classroom and find something that really works for you and learn about it better and even dig into more research if you want to go down rabbit hole, which I have you know so and you can really find out different strategies and what they look like and how successful they can be and work in the classroom.

And finally up here in explorers what's really cool is you can create your own workspace and I'm just gonna show you directly the workspace that I created and what it does. Basically, it's you can go and select five or six factors that maybe you want to focus in on. You know, your class needs etc and that's what I did with this where I was given a new course to start this year our whole board is shifting our grade english courses to indigenous literature and so looking at that coming into coming back to school this year obviously I had a lot of things that I had to think about so I selected specific factors that I thought were going to be really important. So background knowledge because it's kind of lacking critical literacy always important in the english classroom but I also looked at given the emotions and adverse experiences and it's great because this workspace you can give annotation notes so you know I thought okay there's a lot of things that might be triggering just because of the subject matter this year emotions are probably going to be a big factor because of coming out of you know isolation etc and you can share the workspace so you could collaborate with colleagues wow you can just share it straight as a view viewing piece and the strategies that it came up with now it gives me a really great panorama I guess strategies that I can use and build on in my classroom so I know I'm supporting those different factors throughout what I'm teaching, no matter what the content material is.

This is really cool. This is, it's amazing yeah - the depth and breadth has just been phenomenal and the learning possibilities like as a teacher to see how those things are connected and learn the strategies that can support so many different things at the same time is just phenomenal. Yeah I think I mean one of the most powerful things I think from this is I hear a lot, I hear people saying "Well how do we move social motion learning into the classroom?" and I think there's a lot of real there's a lot of high level ways that we talk about that a lot but this really makes it very concrete it's like here's this teaching strategy that that probably most educators will recognize They'll say "oh I already do that, yeah like a gallery walk." How many of us do gallery walks all the time? Well now it's like, "Oh look at that, it supports emotion and it supports motivation. Wow, I wouldn't have thought that." Yeah right - or a guided inquiry. Like, "oh it didn't occur to me that that could be a social emotional learning tool."

Lynn: Yeah and and when when when when we kind of are aware of that then we can be a lot more intentional about how we're approaching it and saying that I'm not just doing this as an academic exercise I'm doing it as a social emotional learning exercise at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah, and I thought it was really cool you know obviously we still need those explicit times where you know maybe we're looking at the vocabulary and the social emotional word wheel or you know and that check-in and that kind of thing but to then carry it throughout the day in the various ways that you teach I think is just phenomenal. Yeah, wow. I really appreciate you you sharing this with us. I think I'd like to ask just one one question here at the end before we before we wrap up and say that that for people approaching this for the first time, what's the what's the where should they start? What's the what's the what's the first place they should go to, you know, What I - just again - it's pretty straightforward how they have it set up is just go to the Learner Variability Project, and I believe you put that n the chat for people to grab and I also gave you a link to a slideshow. Oh yeah let me put that I I made surrounding the learner Navigator Yeah sorry the Learner Variability Navigator and there's a ton of links in there and one specific link at the end resources is basically kind of a one-pager of how to get started and how to create your own workspace. And it's like a one-pager and there's a ton more examples of workspaces that are really really helpful to see how people have utilized it like one teacher used it and sent the link home of her workspace because it explained to the parents all the different strategies and factors

That is a really cool yeah really neat idea because I feel like that's that's something that that's often a real that's a it's a gap in communication between families and educators about about why are we doing things what are the what are the reasons what are the reasons that we do this why does education look different than it used to that sort of those sort of conversations though yeah exactly exactly. So you know there's a wide array of ways that you can use it you know for for your own learning to improve your own practice but also to reach out and make connections with your parents and community

Matt: Well thank you so much for sharing this Lynn, I know the thing I'm going to dig into in this as soon as we get off of here is I'm going to go look at the assessment tools that are laid out in there because that is something that I come that comes up all the time about what are some different ways that we can assess things that are that are they can be done alongside academics. This would be is going to be really useful to a lot of people. That's where I'm headed, yeah for sure.

Lynn: And like I said you could get lost going down the rabbit hole in this Navigator, but it's well worth it.

Matt: Cool! Well again Lynn, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us, and for those of you watching at home, I just wanna remind everyone that this is the this is the first of our of our social emotional learning kind of speaker series we're having in the SEL and education community you can continue the conversation right here you see the link to our group. We'd love to see you there. We'll be doing more of these. We've got another one coming up a week from from today with JV Johnson talking about emotional motion management. So, without further ado thank you very much, and we will see you all next week take care everybody. Thank you, Lynn.

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Learner Variability Navigator | Learner Variability Project

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Matt: Hello SEL education community, my name is Matt Pearsall.

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Write your name and 1 engagement strategy you are going to implement in your classroom

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School Leaders

School Leadership

When something is universal, it applies to everyone. So, when hearing the term universal design for learning(or UDL), it makes sense to imagine it as a blanket format that covers all students.

But is that really what UDL is all about?

In this guide, you're going to learn that universal design for learning is focused on flexibility and adaptability to different types of students.

But that's not all.

By the end of this article, you'll be completely equipped to use UDL in your school, for the benefit of teachers and students' learning outcomes.

What is Universal Design for Learning?

To start, let's define universal design for learning.

While the word 'universal' may make this seem like a one-size-fits-all program, that is actually the opposite of what UDL stands for.

In everyday life, we constantly run into examples of universal design. This includes things like closed-captions, text-to-speech features on your smartphone, or other things that we normally label 'accessibility features'.

In principle, universal design for learning is the same: it is an adaptive learning program that allows equal opportunity for all students.

But, this raises a question:

Is Universal Design for Learning only applicable to students with learning and attention issues?
First, let me ask you this: have you ever used an automatic door?

Let's face it: if you have two legs and two arms that work, you're not the person that door was designed for. However, if your hands are full of groceries, or you're at the end of an exhausting day of work, an automatic door is quite useful.

The same idea applies in the classroom.

While universal design for learning (UDL) does greatly benefit students with learning and attention issues, it is also beneficial for the average student.

Each student has their own specific strengths and weaknesses. This can have absolutely nothing to do with attention disorders or learning disabilities: it is simply how their unique brain takes in and processes information most easily.

By applying universal design for learning in the classroom, all students are allowed to take in, digest, and express information in the way that is easiest for them. This improves the learning experience for everyone, and helps each individual student to expand his or her knowledge of the subject without the constraints of the traditional classroom.

Ultimately, UDL can be defined as a teaching method that aims to make learning accessible to every student's individual needs, regardless of the challenges and barriers they may face.

Basic principles of UDL

According to CAST, there are 3 key principles of UDL:

1. Engagement: The why of learning

Everything starts with how students engage with the class and the subject.

This principle encompasses the ideas of motivation, building on the interests of the students. The area of engagement also helps students to see the reasons why they should learn what they're learning, and makes it relevant to their life.

This also includes helping students become self-motivated by guiding them through rubrics that allow for self-reflection and personal goals.

The goal of engagement in UDL: To give students purpose and motivation to learn.

2. Representation: The what of learning

Allowing students to choose the methods by which they take in information allows for all types of students to thrive as they interact with subject materials.

Customization is key here. This involves providing multiple ways to assimilate subject material, such as textbooks, audio files, digital books, or images and graphs. It also implies customization and flexibility within those formats.

With this kind of flexibility, students have access to the material that best suits their needs. This is useful for children with disabilities such as dyslexia, as well as for average students who simply perform better when listening to instruction than when reading, for example.

The goal of representation in UDL: To allow students to be more resourceful and knowledgeable.

3. Action and expression: The How of learning

Once students have taken in the information, it's time for them to express and show what they've learned.

This principle of universal design for learning takes into account the differences of students' manner of expression. Flexibility is provided in the way that students show their knowledge of the subject, meaning they can choose not to perform a test and instead opt for a more adaptive expression that fits their strengths.

Action and expression also touches on the idea of goal-setting for students. Here, teachers help students set goals for learning, and guide students through monitoring their own progress.

The goal of action and expression in UDL: To help students to become more strategic and goal-directed.

Universal Design for Learning examples and guidelines

Are you ready to see what universal design for learning looks like in the classroom?

Here are 13 different guidelines for how to use universal design for learning, along with examples that show what it looks like in practice. Follow these guidelines to make universal design for learning a part of your school.

Examples of engagement in UDL

Let's first look at examples of UDL through the principle of engagement:

1. Know the strengths and weaknesses of students

In order to correctly apply universal design for learning in the classroom, it's important for teachers to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each student.

This can be as easy as asking each student how they want to learn that day's lesson, and offering different choices for the content used, the reward applied, the tools used for gathering information or producing results, or the order of tasks to be completed.

It also may be helpful for teachers to take note of which students excel when using certain formats, or even to involve parents in helping find their children's strengths and weaknesses in learning.

2. Give students specific learning goals

Teachers have one very obvious goal: to help students to learn. In fact, within the lesson plan they may already have goals in mind for specific information that children should know by a certain point in the school year.

To help motivate and engage students, why not include them in the goal process?

A great example of this is posting lesson goals for all the students to see in the classroom. To do this, teachers must have one clear goal for each lesson. Then, they can discuss this goal with the class at the beginning of the lesson and write it out in a visible place for the whole class to see.

That way, students know exactly what to expect from the lesson, and will feel more motivated to pay attention to complete the lesson goal.

3. Create and follow classroom routines

Helping students to feel safe in their learning environment is essential to a productive and motivated classroom. One great example of universal design for learning is creating classroom routines that help students feel secure.

While this helps adapt to students with disabilities such as autism, it's good for all students to get used to classroom routines. This means structuring class time so that each student knows what they should be doing and when.

This can still allow for flexibility in the order or time spent on subtasks, but helps students to know exactly where they are in the lesson.

4. Provide prompts that let students know it's time to ask for help

It's true that some students will have more trouble with certain aspects of a lesson than others. But, instead of simply getting frustrated and giving up, students need to know when to ask for help.

Unfortunately, not all students will recognize when it's time to ask for help.

That's where providing prompts comes in. For example, a math teacher could set a specific amount time that each student should spend on a problem. If they can't solve the problem in 2 minutes, for example, they should ask the teacher or a peer for help in understanding the problem.

This helps students to avoid unnecessary frustration and continue learning effectively.

5. Group learners with common interests or learning strengths and weaknesses

By now, teachers should be aware of which students learn better through audio descriptions, which students have specific interests or which students require a particular learning process.

When there are several students who share the same learning style or who have common interests, these can be grouped together for specific activities in the classroom.

For example, students who prefer to create a video instead of completing a written essay can be grouped together to create a video project together.

Group work can help students to reinforce skills by teaching others, it can also improve their collaborative and social-emotional learning skills too.

6. Provide flexible classrooms

Flexibility in the classroom also involves the physical space where students are learning. Try flexible seating by switching up the furniture arrangements to make students feel more comfortable (which, in turn, makes them more productive).

This could mean getting some bean-bag chairs or exercise balls, or even standing desks, mats for the floor, or stools with high-top tables. Flexible seating helps students who have trouble sitting in one place, and gives all students the ability to choose their best workspace.

Examples of representation in UDL

7. Display Information in a Flexible Format

Following the information above, teachers should now be aware of how their students learn best.

So, it's time to provide flexible ways of learning.

This could involve a number of different formats, including:

Traditional paper books

Digital books

Text-to-speech

Images or charts

Learning games

Videos

Music

Ideally, students should also have some flexibility within these different formats. For example, using a digital textbook allows students to adjust the size of the font or the color of the background. With a video, students should be able to adjust the speed and volume.

You ultimately want to foster an inclusive learning environment where the content can be delivered to suit every student's learning needs.

8. Adapt information for multilingual students

Schools nowadays are becoming more and more international. When viewed in a positive light, this international flair can boost the atmosphere of a classroom and make it more inclusive.

However, adaptive representation of information is essential in this aspect of universal design for learning.

How can teachers apply this principle in a multilingual classroom?

Whenever possible, students should be able to access information in both the dominant language of the school and in their own native language.

Teachers can also provide visual aids to help clarify vocabulary that is unfamiliar to students, or provide multilingual students with dictionaries either in paper or digital format. ESL students can be disadvantaged in assessments due to language barriers, even if they have a strong command of the topic.

Adaptability in this area also applies to deaf and hearing-impaired students. Teachers should ensure that there is a visual-only option for these students in all aspects of the classroom, such as assistive captions under videos, automated speech-to-text software, or at best a sign language version of the information.

9. Prompt students to identify key ideas and relationships

In all aspects of life, students must learn to separate critical information from information that isn't as important.

This aspect of universal design for learning can be used in the classroom when teachers prompt students to highlight important phrases from their textbooks, or summarize the important aspects of a video lesson in one sentence.

Teachers should also guide students to build relationships between information they've already learned and what they're currently learning.

For example, a math teacher could help students see the relationship between addition and multiplication, prompting them to draw on past experience to help them learn new concepts.

Examples of action and expression in UDL

10. Create multiple options for expression and assignment completion

Once students have taken in the information, it's time for them to demonstrate their understanding. While a test is the traditional choice for expression, giving students a choice of how they'll complete assignments allows each student to demonstrate his knowledge in a way that is relevant to him or her.

Some options could include:

Creating a video essay

Drawing a comic strip

Completing a test in digital format, or with audio questions

Putting on a group demonstration

Building a physical model

For example, a history teacher may want students to show an understanding of the events that led to World War 2. He could give his students the option to complete a written test, to create a video 'reporting' on the events, or to draw a comic strip that shows which main events led to the start of the war.

That way, each student gets to complete the assignment in the way that is best for them, while all students demonstrate a reasonable understanding of the topic.

See how one teacher utilizes this concept in their learning below:

11. Give access to learning software

Software in the classroom is a great way to be adaptable to different students. For example, language teachers can use language-learning apps and games to help students learn while tracking their progress step-by-step.

Math teachers also love learning software, like Prodigy, because it helps students get involved in the problems and work through the information in a way that is engaging and productive.

12. Provide multiple means for navigation and control

Being adaptable means allowing for adaptive software and hardware for students that have limitations.

For example, with digital content on the computer, students can be allowed to control with voice, joystick, or an adaptive keyboard when necessary.

Alternatives should also be available for students when it comes to the range of motor action required to interact with the materials used in the classroom.

13. Give regular feedback that helps students develop goals and strategies to reach them

Learners need to have a clear picture in their mind of the progress that they are making in class. With regular, personal feedback for students, they're able to see where they are, what progress they've made, and what they still need to accomplish.

While grades are important in this discussion, they are not the only aspect of the student's feedback. Teachers should also include goal planning and achievement when giving feedback.

Teachers should also help students through their own self-evaluation. For example, during feedback sessions they can ask questions as:

Do you feel like you reached the lesson goal for today?

How close do you think you got to reaching your goal?

What do you think you could've done differently to reach that goal?

What skills have you learned this week that you didn't know last week?

How do you plan on reaching our lesson goal for tomorrow?

This helps students to learn how to reflect on their own activities and make plans that help them reach their own learning goals.

Put Universal Design for Learning into Practice!

Universal design for learning is an incredible tool in the classroom. As we've seen, using this method in your school will help all students to learn in the way that works best for them, improving their knowledge of the subjects they're learning.

UDL also helps teachers focus their efforts on the students that need it most, while allowing all students to thrive in an equalized classroom. In a classroom using universal design for learning, there are no students with limitations, only students who accomplish the same tasks and learn the same information with different methods.

Put universal design for learning into practice in your school this year, and your students will grow beyond your expectations.

Are you a math teacher? Prodigy Math is a game-based learning platform that makes it easy to tailor learning to every students in just a few clicks.

But that's not all.

But, this raises a question:

Some options could include:

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Universal Design for Learning: Principles and Examples for 2023

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In this guide, you're going to learn that universal design for learning is focused on flexibility and adaptability to different types of students, and more!

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A flipped class (view image) is one that inverts the typical cycle of content acquisition and application so that:

students gain necessary knowledge before class, and

instructors guide students to actively and interactively clarify and apply that knowledge during class.

Like the best classes have always done, this approach supports instructors playing their most important role of guiding their students to deeper thinking and higher levels of application. A flipped class keeps student learning at the center of teaching.

Why are instructors flipping their class?

Students learn more deeply.

As a result of students taking responsibility, interacting meaningfully and often with their instructor and peers, and getting and giving frequent feedback, they acquire a deeper understanding of the content and how to use it.
Students are more active participants in learning.
The student role shifts from passive recipient to active constructor of knowledge, giving them opportunities to practice using the intellectual tools of the discipline.
Interaction increases and students learn from one another.
Students work together applying course concepts with guidance from the instructor. This increased interaction helps to create a learning community that encourages them to build knowledge together inside and outside the classroom.
Instructors and students get more feedback.
With more opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and therefore demonstrate their ability to use it, gaps in their understanding become visible to both themselves and the instructor.

How do I flip my class?

This guide is designed to walk you through the steps of flipping a single class; the process is scalable for flipping portions of each unit or an entire course. One of the major factors in course redesign is the time it takes to do it well. We recommend pilot testing the the flipped model with a single class before engaging in a complete redesign. Learn More

The featured videos about the flipped classroom may also be viewed Vimeo.

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Flipped Classroom | Center for Teaching & Learning

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A flipped class (view image) is one that inverts the typical cycle of content acquisition and application so that:

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Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence: Mood-Congruent Learning with the Mood Meter

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Integrating UDL into Practice - Building a UDL Habit.docx

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Here is where you'll find every single on of our how to draw lessons! It's a massive drawing library! You'll find lessons for kids of all ages.

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10 Brain Breaks to Share With Your Class

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10 Brain Breaks to Share With Your Class

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I don't know about you, but when I sit through a faculty meeting or professional development session of any sort, I start getting antsy by the 30-minute mark. If you can relate, just imagine how your students must feel when they've been sitting for too long. Educational brain breaks are the perfect way to help your students redirect their energy and focus when they start to fade.

I find it super-beneficial to incorporate quick mindful, physical, and mental check-ins with my students as a regular part of my classroom routine. These breaks include all types of movement, yoga and breathing exercises, as well as jokes, quick videos, and more. The activities I use have helped me throughout my lifetime, so I love sharing them with my students. Here are my favorite educational brain breaks that are sure to increase productivity and give your kids a much-needed way to unwind before the next lesson.

Mindful Educational Brain Breaks

1. Use transition times for mental check-ins

Transitions are a big part of the elementary school day. When I first started teaching 19 years ago, I was surprised by just how much time it takes to get ready for specials or to bring students back from centers. It's hard not to feel like that's lost time. That's why using transition time for mental health check-ins is such a game changer. Mental health check-ins can help students get in touch with their emotions, refresh and recharge, acknowledge and cope with negative thoughts and overwhelming feelings, and be more focused throughout the day.

2. Pretend to breathe like an animal

Source: Stephanie Sanders

This video shows students how to pretend to breath like some of their favorite animals. The snake breath involves hissing while slithering from side to side, while the whale breath has students pretend to breathe out through a blowhole! Tap into creativity by picking other interesting animals and acting them out through breath.

3. Do a 10-minute guided meditation

These guided meditations are educational and are perfect to use as brain breaks whenever you and your students just need to breathe. Catch your breath with any of these 20 guided video meditations.

4. Practice "focus ball" breathing

Walk your kids through the following exercise: Stand or sit with legs and feet together. Bring your palms together in front of your chest. Keep your fingertips touching as you pull your palms apart, forming a ball with your fingers. Press your fingertips together until you feel the muscles in your hands and arms activating. See if you feel your core tighten too. Now close your eyes and as you breathe in, inflate your ball, and as you breathe out, flatten the ball by pushing your palms together. (Repeat these instructions for 60 seconds).

Learn more: Mindful.org

5. Try the old ear-nose switcheroo

This is a quick and easy challenge to reset the brain. Instruct kids to touch their left ear with their right hand and at the same time touch their nose with their left hand. Then have them switch their hands and touch their right ear with their left hand and their nose with their right hand. Switch back and forth a few times. Then have them close their eyes, take a deep breath, and blow it all out.

Learn more: YouTube: Ear-Nose Switch

6. Take a yoga break

Source: The Pyjama Foundation

Inspire kids to move, stretch, and practice mindfulness with yoga. These printable yoga cards make it easy to incorporate yoga into your educational brain breaks. Each page includes a picture and description of the pose, and each page includes poses of increasing difficulty from level 1 to level 5. And don't worry, it's not a huge time commitment. The sequence on each card is designed to take only a few minutes.

7. Stretch it out

It's never a good idea to spend too much time sitting in one position. Allow kids to take a break and bring some flexibility back into their spines. Have them stand with their feet shoulder-distance apart. Put their left hand on their hip and raise their right hand overhead. Lean to the left and stretch their arm as far as they can to the left. Repeat on the right side. Then stand tall and slowly roll down one vertebra at a time until their hands reach the floor (or at least their shins). Have them take a deep breath then slowly roll back up. Repeat as necessary.

Learn more: Mom Junction

8. Focus on sound

Have kids sit quietly with their eyes closed. Ring a chime or gong. Have them listen carefully to the chime, feeling the vibration in their body as the sound reverberates and then slowly fades. Tell them to breathe slowly and deeply as they focus on the sound.

9. Do a quick mindfulness activity

Mindfulness activity cards provide great educational brain breaks. Stash a pack in your desk and pull them out whenever you need them. Each card will give a prompt for kids to try that will let them refocus and recharge. Perfect for moments when you need to bring down the energy in the room.

Buy it: Mindfulness Cards for Kids at Amazon

10. Chill out with this cross-body exercise

Have kids stand tall and cross one leg in front of the other while pressing the outsides of their feet together. Now have them cross their arms over each other at the wrists. Clasp their hands and curl their arms into their chest. Take a few breaths, and uncross and cross the opposite way for a few more breaths.

11. Float with jellyfish

When you really need to take the energy in your room down a notch, turn off the lights, set a timer, and put on a calming video. For example, Cat Trumpet put together a jellyfish aquarium video where kids will find themselves under the brilliant blue sea in the middle of a swarm of jellyfish. They'll be mesmerized by the slow, fluid motions and lulled into calmness by the soothing music.

12. Break out the hot hands

This is a good break when you sense a weariness in the air. Have kids rub their hands together vigorously until they warm up. Tell them to close their eyes and place their hands over their eyes. Instruct them to breathe deeply as they clear their minds and refocus.

13. Try cat and cow poses

Source: Flow and Grow Kids Yoga

Have kids start on all fours and then give them the following instructions to complete the cat and cow yoga poses: Place your shoulders over your wrists and hips over your knees. Arch your back to the sky and tuck in the tailbone (cat pose). Let your head fall between your arms. From there, sink the belly towards the ground, and lift the chest and chin (cow pose). Gently alternate between the two poses while breathing deeply.

14. Do nothing for two minutes

Never underestimate the power of stillness. When the energy gets a little ramped up, and it's time for the entire class to take a pause, have them drop everything and glue their eyes to the screen as you show this countdown. The gentle lulling of the waves and the sight of the sun sparkling off the water will reset their nervous system in a jiffy.

Learn More: Calm

15. Spread your wings (in slow motion)

Walk your kids through this winged movement: Sit cross-legged on the floor. Stretch your arms down by your sides with your palms facing inward toward your body. Slowly raise both arms while rotating hands forward. When your arms reach shoulder level, your hands should be facing forward. Continue raising arms, slowly rotating palms so that by the time hands are overhead, palms are facing each other. Slowly lower arms, repeating the rotation (palms facing each other, palms facing forward, palms facing sides) until they are once again resting at your sides. As you raise and lower your arms, stretch them as long as you can, as if you are scraping the sides of the room and the ceiling. Repeat slowly three times, breathing deeply.

Physical Education Brain Breaks

16. Play Silent Ball when you have downtime

You can play a quick game of Silent Ball anytime, anywhere. Play a quick three-minute game right before dismissal or before transitioning to a new activity. All you need is a small squishy ball. The rules are simple: 1) stay quiet and 2) don't drop the ball when passing it around. This activity is one of those educational brain breaks that builds a positive classroom community, fosters friendly competition, and boosts nonverbal communication. Enjoy the silence.

17. Line up in unique ways

Kids are very social and curious beings. Most of them love to chat with one another at any chance they can get. Lining up to leave the room for anything is the perfect chance for them to mix and mingle. Make a more productive use of this time by having students line up in special ways. Some fun ideas include lining up in alphabetical order by name, by birth date, or by height order.

18. Just jump!

Sometimes kids just need to bounce their energy out. Have them pretend they are bouncing on a mini-trampoline (this will keep their movement on a vertical plane instead of all over the room), and give them a couple of minutes to let loose!

19. Take a cue from the stadium

Here's one for a group of kids-start the wave! Beginning at one end of the room, kids stand up and throw their arms overhead, bringing them back down as they return to their seats. Each row follows until you reach the other end of the room. Amp it up by encouraging your kids to tap their feet or tap their hands on their legs so that they are in constant motion. This activity works great on Zoom too!

20. Stir the pot

Have kids visualize they are standing in front of an enormous cauldron. Inside the cauldron is an ooey-gooey pot of caramel. Take hold of a large stirrer and plunge it to the bottom of the pot. Slowly begin to stir in a clockwise direction. Have them use their whole body to help get a full range of motion in their wrists and shoulders. Instruct them to throw their hips into the action. After a minute or two, reverse the direction.

21. Make it rain

Conjure up a rainstorm! Sitting or standing at a desk or table, have kids tap one finger on the desk, then two, then three, then four, then their whole hand until you all feel like you're in the middle of a deluge. Work your way backward from five down to one as the storm ebbs away.

22. Energize with these

First, instruct kids to touch their left elbow to their right knee, then touch their right elbow to their left knee. Switch back and forth, going slowly at first, building speed until they are going at a vigorous pace. Next, do some windmills by standing tall with their feet shoulder-width apart and their arms stretched out. Bend at the waist and touch their right hand to their left toes, then their left hand to their right toes. Switch back and forth.

23. Make X's and O's

Walk kids through the following exercise: Sitting in a chair with your feet on the ground and legs together, curl your body into your lap, folding yourself into a tiny O shape. Next, open your arms and legs wide, forming an X shape with your body. Pull back into an O shape, then back out to an X shape. Repeat three times.

24. Energize in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Get hearts pumping with a quick sequence of exercises. Call out five actions for your students to do as quickly as they can. For instance, five jumping jacks, four push-ups, three sit-ups, two squat jumps, and one tree pose.

25. Take a cruise on an imaginary skateboard

Have your kids line up next to a wall and place one hand on the wall. Tell them to plant the foot closest to the wall and swing the other leg, as if pushing off the ground on a skateboard. Start slowly, with tiny swings, moving up to power pushes. Repeat on the other side.

26. Take a break to groove

Music is a great way to reset the mood in a room and raise the energy level. Put on a fun song and have a 30-second freestyle dance party. Here's a big list of school-appropriate songs for kids.

27. Or take it to the next level

Teach your kids the steps to popular dances such as the Cha-Cha Slide, the Macarena, or the Kidz Bop Shuffle.

28. Ramp up with a round of cherry pickers

This easy activity will get your students' hearts pumping and give their brains a boost. Have them jump up off the ground, then down to the floor into a push-up position. From there, instruct them to hop their feet up into a frog position, then pop up to a standing position.

29. Clap on, clap off

When you say "clap on," kids clap their hands vigorously together. When you say "clap off," they stop as quickly as they can and freeze. Or follow along with this a fun video.

30. Skip it out

When the energy is fading and kids need to get their blood flowing, put on a peppy song and pull out the imaginary jump ropes. Have kids skip or jump rope in place until the song ends.

31. Make like a blender

Tell kids it's time to make fruit smoothies. Ask them to pretend they are in a blender and they are strawberries (or blueberries or bananas, etc.). Dramatically pour orange juice or yogurt into the air in front of you. Tell kids when you flip the switch that they need to wiggle and jiggle (separately, not together) until they are each individually blended up. Start with a slow speed, moving up to medium speed, fast speed, and finally turbo speed. And then reverse it! Start at turbo speed and go back to slow speed.

32. Celebrate with a silent cheer

This activity is perfect for the end of an activity or a sustained amount of work time-especially for kids who are learning remotely. Let kids stand up and silently cheer and gesture in celebration. How animated can they get?!

33. Do a full-body workout

This kid-friendly exercise video is great for your body and brain! Kids can follow along through a set of workout moves that will get their blood pumping.

34. Play popcorn

Students will all be sitting in their chairs, and at any time, a student can jump up and say, "Pop!" Once they do, that student remains standing. If two students pop up at the same time, everyone takes their seats, and the game starts over. How quickly can the entire class pop without having to start over?

35. Hit the wall

Pushing against a solid object is a good way to displace extra energy from your body. Have kids stand facing a wall with their arms stretched out in front of them, palms on the surface of the wall. Push the wall away with all their strength for a count of ten. Relax for five seconds, then push again. Other activities they can do at the wall include calf stretches and wall push-ups.

36. 3, 2, 1 blastoff!

Instruct kids to stand and then squat down with their hands on the ground in front of them. All together, count down 3, 2, 1. When you get to zero, they should push up like a rocket, jumping as high as they can-letting all of their energy burst from their center.

37. Quick as a snap, wink

This is a quick and easy refocusing activity. Tell kids to snap their left fingers while they wink their right eye. Switch to snapping their right fingers while winking their left eye. This activity is particularly effective for younger learners who may find both activities challenging.

38. Balance break

A great way to get kids out of their chairs is to practice balance. Have them hop on one foot. Then up the ante by having them stand on one foot and bend their other knee out in front of them.

39. Tabletop push-ups

Kids can use their desk, a chair, the side of their couch-anything really. Have them place their hands on the table and focus their eyes in the center, moving down slowly and pushing back up.

40. Try some facial gymnastics

Have kids get their silly on for 30 seconds. Tell them to wiggle their eyebrows up and down as fast as they can. Then try to raise one eyebrow at a time.

Mental Brain Breaks That Are Educational

41. Take a comedy break

Comedy is a great release when the atmosphere is feeling a little intense. Show a funny video clip or have kids volunteer to tell a joke or pose a few silly riddles. We have compiled a number of jokes by theme on WeAreTeachers for kids of all ages for guaranteed laughs. For example, your students will love one of our most recent additions, 34 Cat Jokes for Kids. From there, you can find dog jokes, seasonal jokes, food jokes, and much more.

42. Share fun facts

In addition to joke compilations, we have plenty of fun fact lists on our site with themes that will thrill your students. Plus they're an educational way to teach your students new information during brain breaks. Get started with these fun feline facts to accompany the jokes above. Meow!

43. Practice another language

Source: startasl.com

Teach your kids the alphabet in sign language. Use brain breaks to practice by singing the ABCs while signing the letters. Then practice vocabulary words by spelling them out loud while signing the letters.

44. Find out how it's made

Remember that classic Sesame Street video about how crayons are made? We watched in awe as crayons rolled off the assembly line, wrapped in paper, and then slipped into those familiar cardboard boxes. Kids today are just as fascinated by how things are made! Here are our favorite videos about how things are made-from fireworks to LEGO.

45. Take a doodle break

According to researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, downtime is essential for brain health. Kids need time for their growing brains to integrate and process the vast amount of information they receive each day. In other words, it is actually beneficial to give our kids time to allow their minds to wander. Try this: Set a timer for three to five minutes and let kids silently doodle with pencil and paper or a dry-erase board and marker while soft, calming music plays in the background.

Learn more: Sage Journals

46. Try a directed-drawing activity

Directed drawing activities walk your students through the process step-by-step so anyone can create their very own masterpiece. Teachers can lead the session by drawing on the whiteboard or chart paper while students follow along. Even better, there are plenty of videos on YouTube that lead the lesson, giving you a little break too. We have done the work and gathered some our favorite free directed-drawing activities for kids. Grab your favorite art supplies and get creative!

47. Gather your favorite GIFs

Make a slideshow of your favorite GIFs and have your kids act them out. Funny animals are a good place to start!

48. Find the object

Kids don't even have to get out of their seats for this one, but they can! Have one student start by finding an object and saying, "I see something beginning with the letter [fill in the blank]." The first person to guess the item correctly gets to choose the next object. This can be a fun one to play on Zoom too! You can have kids add in additional clues to help.

49. Clap for a little call-and-response

Pep things up with a little call-and-response clapping. It's simple to do and is often used in the classroom to get students' attention. Simply clap out a pattern that your kids will repeat back to you. Switch out the pattern a few times until everyone is focused and engaged. Alternatively, try a vocal call-and-response. Sing out a few riffs and have kids echo the tune back to you.

50. Color yourself mellow

Even grown-ups have picked up on the coloring craze as an excellent way to calm down and zone out. Put on some nice mellow background music, set a timer, and pass out some of these free mandala coloring pages.

51. Try a brain-break spinner

One way to make sure educational brain breaks are effective is to change up activities. Check out these online movement spinners for Wheel of Fortune-type games that help you add variety to brain breaks!

53. Would You Rather?

Students of all ages love participating in Would You Rather? videos, which can be found all over YouTube these days. Each video is approximately 8 minutes long, and students are given two scenarios where they choose which one they would rather participate in. Topics range from food items to activity choices to places to visit and more. As students choose the scenario, they move to either the right or left side of the room. Students then perform 30-second rounds of a specified exercise before repeating the process with another choice. Some of our favorite Would You Rather? channels include PE with Mr. G, Phonics Man, and Fix and Play. Students love when their teacher participates with them in the fun!

Learn more: PE With Mr. G

52. Write it out

Don't underestimate the power of journaling or creative writing. Give your kids a 5- or 10-minute break to open up a page of their notebook and write about anything they'd like. They don't have to share it with the class or do anything else with it; just use the quiet time to focus on something they love and want to write about.

Educational Video Brain Breaks by Grade Level

54. Brain-break compilations by grade level

If you are looking for a sample of brain breaks suitable for your students by grade level, look no further. We have created separate links of 25 videos each for individual grades at the elementary level. Go down the list and find your favorite!
Kindergarten Brain Breaks First Grade Brain Breaks Second Grade Brain Breaks Third Grade Brain Breaks Fourth Grade Brain Breaks Fifth Grade Brain Breaks
What educational brain breaks do you love? Share them in the comments!

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Quick, easy educational brain breaks that will help students re-energize, refocus, and give their brains a much-needed boost.

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PZ’s Thinking Routines Toolbox | Project Zero

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Engaging techniques for effective teaching

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Article why you need to use figet tools in the classroom 

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Article why you need to use figet tools in the classroom 

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Fidget tools: Why you need them & where to find them

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Learn more about fidget tools and how they can be used to support students wtih anxiety, ADHD, or sensory issues in your classroom. Information on how to get started and which items might be best for

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Student Goal Setting: Planning Reflection Form 

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Student Goal Setting: Planning Reflection Form 

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This technique stimulates student learning through movement and discussion, and it can also be used as a formative assessment. Students are presented with a controversial statement or are asked a question. In each of the four corners of the classroom, an opinion or response is posted.

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Using one simple material, students build the tallest tower possible.

The famous Index Card tower has become a STEM favorite.

One of the first STEM challenges we ever tried was tower building. The kids loved it so much that I started planning more tower-building events. We have tried towers with many different materials - like spaghetti, toothpicks, and even penny-toting buckets!

One of our all-time favorite towers is the Index Card Tower.

" In this post, for your convenience, you may find Amazon Affiliate links to resources. This means that Amazon will pass on small percentages to me with your purchase of items. This will not create extra costs for you at all! It will help me keep this blog running! "

You will love the Index Card Tower because of 5 simple things!

It uses only one material.

Preparation is super easy.

It works for all ages.

It's highly engaging because it's so competitive.

Clean-up is ridiculously simple.

Let's talk about each of these! Tips and ideas are included.

One Material and Easy Prep

We first used this a few years back with 4th and 5th graders and they quickly showed me how inventively they could fold, bend, and roll the cards. And when I say cards, I mean index cards.

Why index cards? Why not playing cards?

Well, here's the scoop about that! I really thought about using playing cards until I priced them. Even buying them at the dollar store meant 7 boxes per class and with 5 classes per grade level that was too much.

The only way it would work might be if students were told they could not bend the cards or roll them. Take a look at the photos below and you will see index cards in several configurations and that is part of the task. How can you use the cards inventively to make the tower work unless you can fold them?

The Index Card works with all ages!

The tallest towers for the older students were 100+ cm. The very tallest was 120 cm. Incredible! The competition to have the tallest was fierce and the groans from these groups were just as loud as the little kids whenever a tower fell.

A little bit about clean-up and recycling!

When it's time to clean up with this task, I put out about four large dish pans labeled: Unused, Rolled, Bent vertically, Bent horizontally. Kids bring their cards and throw them in the labeled bins.

When the next class comes in I give them a smaller stack of brand-new cards and they retrieve what they need from the already bent and rolled cards as they need them. We completely just keep reusing them! Later I throw all the bent and rolled cards into a large plastic bin, pop a top on it, and save it for the next index card project!

This challenge is surprisingly versatile!

Halloween-small stuffed pumpkin

Thanksgiving- a stuffed turkey

This amazing, versatile STEM Challenge is a student favorite and you will love the easy prep!
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