Universal Design for Learning (UDL) focuses on increasing accessibility to the general education curriculum for all students.  Within this, our goal is to have students with disabilities make progress in the general education curriculum by scaffolding their learning process.

Last year,  Rebecca Tetlie or myself had the opportunity to briefly talk with you about our interest in identifying the differentiated resources that the district purchased with each textbook and sharing this information in an easy to read / accessible format. We wanted to augment what had already been done by the Center.

Our experience is that many teachers (both Gen Educ & Spec Educ) are not aware of the differentiated textbook resources, do not know where they are located in their schools, and / or do not have the time to "jump through each publisher's hoops" to figure out he maze of how to access online resources. (For example, one teacher in a co-taught class spent over an hour on the phone this Fall  trying to get the right code to log onto a textbook website. He finally just hung up.)

This summer, SE allocated staff time to develop grids of the differentiated resources for the core secondary textbooks. The grids include:  
(1) information about the adopted core text as well as any supplementary text (lower reading level),
(2) the core and supplementary resources that were purchased by the district with each textbook;
(3) when available, a photo of each resource and its description to make it easier to locate it in the schools;
(4) the number of copies of each item that were purchased for a class or school;
(5) the electronic resources for teachers, students, and parents that align with each text as well as how to access these resources; and
(6) identification of resources with a "UDL star" if they present content in multiple formats.

The grids are posted at http://www.udl.spps.org/SPPS_Curriculum.html along with links to The Center's district standards and course description details

To date, we have completed grids for:
•    Science 7: Life Science
•    Science 8: Earth Science
•    Science 9: Physical Science
•    Science 10: Biology
•    Social Studies 7: American History
•    Social Studies 8: World Geography
•    Social Studies 9: World History
•    English Language Arts 7
•    English Language Arts 8
•    English Language Arts 9
•    English Language Arts 10
•    Math 7: Pre- Algebra
•    Math 8: Algebra
•    Math 9-10: Geometry
•    Math 10-11: Algebra 2

In the near future, we will be posting grids for:
•    Health
•    English Language Arts 11
•    English Language Arts 12,
•    Chemistry

This is a work in progress. We would appreciate any feedback about  the site, the grids, how we can add to them, and how we can better link them with your curriculum work.
It would also be great to meet this Fall to discuss embedding greater instructional differentiation and differentiated resources into courses to increase student achievement.