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The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework teachers can use to improve and optimize teaching and learning based on how the brain learns. This framework offers strategies to differentiate learning across three categories. By using this framework, teachers can make learning accessible to all students despite their diverse backgrounds.

The UDL framework offers:

Multiple means of engagement

Multiple means of representation

Multiple means of expression.

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Reenvisioning the UDL Guidelines

Because the UDL Guidelines are meant to be informed by feedback from the field as well as new research, they have been updated several times in the past. We are in the process of updating the Guidelines once again in our UDL Rising to Equity initiative.

This update will focus specifically on addressing systemic barriers that result in inequitable learning opportunities and outcomes. CAST aims to develop a transparent, inclusive, and community-driven process. If you are interested in collaborating and staying updated on our progress, we invite you to complete a brief survey.

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

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Newsela is an online platform that provides teachers and students with research-based and engaging reading, social studies, and STEM-based literacy instruction and materials. This platform allows for all reading materials to be differentiated to different reading levels. This allows all students to engage with the same content, but is modified so they can access the text at their instructional level. This can be used to provide differentiated texts to students in all subject areas so all students can be successful.

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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Khan Academy is an online resource that is free for teachers to use. It provides additional instruction, lessons, and activities that can be leveled below, at, or above the level of students. The lesson are self-guided which allows for the students to work at their own pace. This can be used in addition to the curriculum provided allowing students extended practice or an introduction to skills they may learn in the future.

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Breakout EDU is a game-based learning platform that transforms classroom content into escape-room style learning activities. These activities are designed to reinforce academic content while encouraging collaboration, teamwork, and most importantly, critical thinking. This can be used to supplement the content matter being learned within the curriculum to enrich students with real-world problem solving skills and gamify learning to increase engagement.

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Breakout EDU - Educational Games for the Classroom

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Breakout EDU gamifies learning to create an engaging and empowering experience for students of all grade levels.

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Cornell University's Center for Teaching Innovation offers a variety of collaborative learning resources. These recommendations were created from educational research, instructor experiences, and observations. It offers suggestions for group work, peer discussions, and team projects. This resource can be used by teachers to provide ideas and guidance for how collaborative learning can used within their curriculum.

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Collaborative learning can occur peer-to-peer or in larger groups. Peer learning, or peer instruction, is a type of collaborative learning that involves students working in pairs or small groups to discuss concepts or find solutions to problems. Similar to the idea that two or three heads are better than one, educational researchers have found that through peer instruction, students teach each other by addressing misunderstandings and clarifying misconceptions.

Why use collaborative learning?

Research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and student-owned lead to deeper learning. The benefits of collaborative learning include:

Development of higher-level thinking, oral communication, self-management, and leadership skills.

Promotion of student-faculty interaction.

Increase in student retention, self-esteem, and responsibility.

Exposure to and an increase in understanding of diverse perspectives.

Preparation for real life social and employment situations.

Considerations for using collaborative learning

Introduce group or peer work early in the semester to set clear student expectations.

Establish ground rules  for participation and contributions.

Plan for each stage of group work.

Carefully explain to your students how groups or peer discussion will operate and how students will be graded.

Help students develop the skills they need to succeed, such as using team-building exercises or introducing self-reflection techniques.

Consider using written contracts.

Incorporate  self -assessment and  peer  assessment for group members to evaluate their own and others' contributions.

Getting started with collaborative learning

Shorter in-class collaborative learning activities generally involve a three-step process. This process can be as short as five minutes, but can be longer, depending on the task at hand.

Introduce the task. This can be as simple as instructing students to turn to their neighbor to discuss or debate a topic.

Provide students with enough time to engage with the task. Walk around and address any questions as needed.

Debrief. Call on a few students to share a summary of their conclusions. Address any misconceptions or clarify any confusing points. Open the floor for questions.

For larger group work projects, here are some strategies to help ensure productive group dynamics:

Provide opportunities for students to develop rapport and group cohesion through  icebreakers, team-building, and reflection exercises.

Give students time to create a group work plan allowing them to plan for deadlines and divide up their responsibilities.

Have students  establish ground rules. Students can create a contract for each member to sign. This contract can include agreed-upon penalties for those who fail to fulfill obligations.

Assign roles to members of each group and change the roles periodically. For example, one student can be the coordinator, another the note-taker, another the summarizer, and another the planner of next steps.

Allow students to rate each other's quality and quantity of contributions. Use these evaluations when giving individual grades, but do not let it weigh heavily on a student's final grade. Communicate clearly how peer assessment will influence grades.

Check in with groups intermittently but encourage students to handle their own issues before coming to you for assistance.

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Collaborative learning can occur peer-to-peer or in larger groups. Peer learning, or peer instruction, is a type of collaborative learning that involves students working in pairs or small groups to discuss concepts or find solutions to problems. Similar to the idea that two or three heads are better than one, educational researchers have found that through peer instruction, students teach each other by addressing misunderstandings and clarifying misconceptions.

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Brown University holds a collection of materials created by their Education Alliance. This website offers 94 different materials that are intended to enhance learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students. These materials include action research projects, publications, articles, and more to help teachers work more effectively and equitably with diverse learners. It offers practical teaching strategies, ideas to engage ELLs, and tips for communicating with families. This resource can be used by educators to receive strategies and ideas they can use to promote cultural diversity within their curriculum and how to meet the needs of diverse students.

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This collection holds materials from the Education Alliance at Brown University. The Education Alliance was a reform support organization committed to advancing equitable educational opportunities that prepare all student populations to succeed in the 21st century. From 1975-2021, the Alliance partnered with schools, districts and state departments of education to apply research findings in developing solutions to educational challenges. Its mission was to enhance learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students and focused on district and school improvement with special attention to underperformance and issues of equity and diversity. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26300/7eez-dz04

The Education Alliance archived website can be found here

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Brown Digital Repository | Collection | The Education ...

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This collection holds materials from the Education Alliance at Brown University. The Education Alliance was a reform support organization committed to advancing equitable educational opportunities that prepare all student populations to succeed in the 21st century. From 1975-2021, the Alliance partnered with schools, districts and state departments of education to apply research findings in developing solutions to educational challenges.

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The EdChange Multicultural Pavilion is a collection of resources for educators to help them incorporate and celebrate diversity in the classroom. It includes lessons, activities, books, articles, websites, and more designed to provide teacher's with practical application strategies. For example, they include a list of "Awareness Activities" that offer teachers engaging ideas and activities to introduce diversity at the start of the school year. Teachers can use this resource to supplement and modify their current curriculum to support diversity as well as learn more ways they can support diverse learners. They can also find information on workshops and seminars to engage in professional learning on this topic.

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Workshops & Training
Teacher Resources
Awareness Activities
Equity Case Studies
Equity & Diversity Quizzes
Printable Handouts
Equity Curriculum
Research Room
Social Justice Speeches
Social Justice Songs
Social Justice Quotations
Equity Web Links
Join Our Email List
Contact Us
Receive Email Updates
Awards & Recognition
About Paul C. Gorski Also Visit:

"Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel." -Bella Abzug

[Full Quotation Collection]

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Multicultural Education Pavilion - Diversity, Equity, & Social Justice Education Resources

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Multicultural education, diversity, equity, and social justice education resources.

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Deeper Learning: Why Cross-Curricular Teaching is Essential

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Deeper Learning: Why Cross-Curricular Teaching is Essential

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Edutopia offers an article on the process behind cross-curricular teaching. This article not only explains the benefits of cross-curricular learning and how it supports the deeper learning of students, but it also provides the three modes of collaboration teachers need to be successful with this concept. Cross-curricular teams must be

Aligned

Cooperative

Conceptual

Teachers can use this article to give them the components of a successful cross-curricular team to help them begin planning within their curriculum. This article serves as a starting point in the creation or modification of curricular education in their school/district.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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This ThoughtCo article provides readers with a definition of cross-curricular instruction, examples of cross-curricular teaching, and strategies for implementing this skill into instruction. This article offers various integration strategies which can be used based on the needs of the team, school, or district. Teachers can use this article to identify what style of integration would suit the needs of their students best as well as research behind the important of cross-curricular education. This article can serve as the foundation of what strategies must be implemented to be successful in this kind of planning with their curriculum.

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Curriculum connections make learning more meaningful for students. When students see the connections between individual subject areas, the material becomes more relevant. When these kinds of connections are part of planned instruction for a lesson or a unit, they are called cross-curricular, or interdisciplinary, instruction.

Cross-Curricular Instruction Definition

Cross-curricular instructionis defined as:

"...a conscious effort to apply knowledge, principles, and/or values to more than one academic discipline simultaneously. The disciplines may be related through a central theme, issue, problem, process, topic, or experience." (Jacobs, 1989).

The design of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English Language Arts (ELA) at the secondary level is organized to allow for cross-curricular instruction. The literacy standards for the DLA discipline are similar to the literacy standards for the disciplines of history/social studies and science/ technical subject areas that begin in grade six.

In conjunction with the literacy standards for other disciplines, the CCSS suggest that students, starting in sixth grade, read more nonfiction than fiction. By grade eight, the ratio of literary fiction to informational texts (nonfiction) is 45 to 55. By grade 12, the ratio of literary fiction to informational texts drops to 30 to 70.

The rationale for lowering the percent of literary fiction is explained in the Key Design Considerations page of the CCCS, which refers to:

"...the need for college and career ready students to be proficient in reading complex informational text independently in a variety of content areas."

Therefore, the CCSS advocates that students in grades eight through 12 must increase reading practice skills across all disciplines. Centering student reading in a cross-curricular curriculum around a particular topic (content area-informational) or theme (literary) can help make materials more meaningful or relevant.

Examples of Cross-Curricular Teaching

Examples of cross-curricular or interdisciplinary teaching can be found in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) learning and the more recently coined STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) learning. The organization of these subject areas under one collective effort represents a recent trend toward cross-curricular integration in education.

The cross-curricular investigations and assignments that include both humanities (such as ELA, social studies, and arts) and STEM subjects highlight how educators recognize the importance of creativity and collaboration, both skills that are increasingly necessary for modern employment.

Planning Cross-Curricular Instruction

As with all curriculum, planning is critical to cross-curricular instruction. Curriculum writers must first consider the objectives of each content area or discipline:

Selecting benchmarks or standards from the subject areas to be integrated;

Identifying cross-curricular questions that can be asked about the benchmarks that have been selected;

Identifying a product or performance assessment that incorporates the benchmarks.

In addition, teachers need to create day-to-day lesson plans that meet the needs of the subject areas being taught, ensuring accurate information.

There are four ways that cross-curriculum units can be designed: parallel integration, infusion integration, multidisciplinary integration, and transdisciplinaryintegration. A description of each cross-curricular approach with examples is listed below.

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Ways to Make Cross-Curricular Connections in Instruction

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Curriculum connections make learning more meaningful for students. When students see the connections between individual subject areas, the material becomes more relevant. When these kinds of connections are part of planned instruction for a lesson or a unit, they are called cross-curricular, or interdisciplinary, instruction.

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Panorama offers a variety of resources that teachers can use to teach SEL skills in their classroom as well as how they can use student data to promote and enhance social-emotional learning in their classroom. Panorama offers a student self-assessment survey that can identify students feelings and emotional regulation skills. This survey data can be used to guide decision making as well as identify areas of need. Panorama also offers SEL lessons as well as tools and resources to promote these skills in the classroom. This can be used by teachers to help incorporate social-emotional learning within their curriculum as well as helping students develop the necessary skills to be successful within their learning.

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Panorama Education | Supporting Student Success

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Panorama Education helps educators act on data to improve student outcomes in social-emotional learning, school climate, family engagement, MTSS & more.

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RethinkEd is an online platform that provides teachers and students with multi-tiered social-emotional learning lessons and activities. These activities are based on developmentally appropriate skills and can be used for whole group, small group, or one on one instruction. RethinkEd can be used by teachers to add explicit instruction of social-emotional skills within their curriculum as well as a tiered intervention support based on student need.

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Our website uses cookies. You can accept or decline our cookies by clicking on the ACCEPT or DECLINE button. If you decline, we will place only "strictly necessary" cookies on your device. These are cookies that are essential for the website to function.

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Innovative Solutions for Healthier Schools | RethinkEd

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Combining technology and research to deliver industry leading solutions in SEL, mental health, professional development, and special education.

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Lumio is an online learning tool that was created to help transform lessons into collaborative and engaging learning experiences. The software allows for existing content to be modified to include interactive elements such as text, video, audio, and games. It also allows for students to join lessons from their personal devices to interact with the lesson individually or within a group. Lumio allows for modes to be switched between teacher-paced and student-paced based on what they are trying to teach and accomplish. This tool can be used to take their existing lessons from their curriculum and transfrom them into more engaging and interactive expiriences.

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Black Friday deal - 50% OFF using code BLACKFRIDAY50

Lumio is the digital learning tool for transforming lessons into active, collaborative learning experiences that engage students on their own devices.

Here's how Lumio works

More powerful than ever for anywhere learning

Welcome to Lumio, the digital learning tool for today's changing teaching environments. Intuitive web-based software that helps you create engaging lessons students can interact within class, remotely, or on their own time all on their own devices.

Import the lessons you already use, combine existing resources and enhance them with customizable components including games, collaborative workspaces and much more. Then deliver them to student devices quickly and easily, all from a browser or Google Drive ™.

See how it works

Empower students to take ownership of their learning independently and as a group as they easily transition between classroom and distance learning. Hold attention and keep kids showing up, motivated and actively learning through interactive content on their own devices.

See how it works

Make learning visible to you and your class with a dashboard master view of each student's work. Guide each learner individually in real time as they progress. While customized activities and games provide automatic feedback to keep learning on track.

"Lumio rocks! My students love using the activities. They love the music, the monsters, and their independence (by using their devices). I like that I can make something, or change something to fit my content in just a few minutes."

Gretchen M
Teacher
Pennsylvania, US

Start using lesson delivery, assessments, collaborative workspaces, game-based activities and more. Add unlimited storage for a low monthly fee or get a group subscription for additional savings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Lumio is the multi-tool of digital learning tools, with the flexibility and adaptability for today's dynamic teaching environments. An intuitive web-based software tool, Lumio helps create engaging lessons that students can interact with in class, remotely, or on their own time on their own devices.

Lumio lets teachers import the lessons they already use combine existing resources and enhance them with customizable components including games, collaborative workspaces and much more.

Lumio empowers students to take ownership of their learning independently and as a group as they easily transition between in and out of classroom learning. Game-based activities manipulatives and group workspaces hold attention and keep kids showing up, motivated and actively learning through interactive content on their own devices.

Professional Learning

From "getting started" tutorials and curriculum integration to in-person training, free and flexible training options are always available to get you up to speed.

Anytime Support

Our support team is always here to answer all your questions and provide the support you need when you need it.

Be there for your students, anywhere - with Lumio!

More and more educators are using Lumio to enhance the learning experience of their students, and you can too.

If you have any questions about Lumio we're here to help. Feel free to reach out today.

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Lumio: Collaborative Learning Tool Made For Student Engagement

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Award-Winning Digital Learning Tool For K-12. Designed To Engage Students On Their Own Devices, With Gamification, Interactive Lessons, Collaborative Workspaces & Formative Assessments.