Meeting the Needs of All Learners

BetterLesson's Meeting the Needs of All Learners Domain provides a specific and deliberate approach for teachers across content areas to use in order to ensure that they are providing the appropriate supports for all of their students, especially students with disabilities and English Learners, to be successful in their classrooms. Rooted in The Universal Design for Learning Guidelines, the domain serves to provide students with multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. It ensures that students are given choice and autonomy, that the goals and objectives for their tasks are clear, that teachers vary demands and resources to optimize challenge, and that teachers provide targeted feedback and opportunities for students to reflect on their learning. It also ensures that teachers offer alternatives for auditory and visual information, clarify vocabulary and symbols, promote understanding across all languages, activate background knowledge, and guide information processing and visualization. And, it ensures that students use multiple media for communication and composition, use various methods for student response and demonstration, and work with teachers to plan, set personalized learning goals, and reflect on their learning. 

Therefore, this domain supports teachers to be reflective practitioners who can set up their learning environment, instructional tasks, and content to support all students to learn; can provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate and acquire information while acknowledging their previous experiences or background knowledge; and can engage students in the learning by understanding their interests and affording students choice as they persevere through challenging tasks.

Why it's important

Educators are aware that there is not one way to teach all students, but are often these educators are not fully equipped with the strategies and resources necessary to support each of their students to be successful. This challenge is becoming increasingly important as the number of students with diverse needs are increasing across the country. For example, in 2017-18, the number of students who received Special Education services in the United States under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) increased to 7.0 million students or 14 percent of total public school enrollment (source: National Center for Education Statistics). And, 9.6 percent or 4.9 million U.S. students were classified as English Learners in 2016 (source: National Center for Education Statistics).  At BetterLesson, we firmly believe that all teachers need to be equipped with the strategies and tools to teach each of the students in their classrooms, and provide personalized support, modifications, and accommodations to engage diverse learners with complex tasks and texts.

What success looks like

Students' diverse needs should be met in all grade levels and content areas. In classrooms in which all students' needs are met, students are: 

• engaging in learning that is appropriately challenging and motivating for them
• acquiring information in multiple and flexible ways, assisted by their teacher
• demonstrating their comprehension in multiple, flexible ways
• demonstrating their development of language and discipline-specific conceptual understanding at the same time
• aware of their learning accommodations and employing them to access and engage with curricular content
• engaged in a classroom environment in which they can access tasks and content that are appropriate for them

BetterLesson Blog Posts: 

• Tolleson, Amy. Scaffolding Academic Discussions for English Language Learners. October 8, 2019.
• Hawks, Natalee. Tech Supports for Authentic Language Development. March 21, 2019.
• Rice, Lindsay. You Taught It, They Didn't Get It, Now What: 5 Strategies to Use when Re-Teaching. January 29, 2019.
• Savas, Tori. Vocabulary Strategies to Promote Student Growth with English Language Development. December 8, 2019.

External Resources:

• CAST (2018). Universal design for learning guidelines version 2.2 [graphic organizer]. Wakefield, MA.
• Mader, Jackie. How Teacher Training Hinders Special Needs Students. The Atlantic. March 1, 2017.
• Butrymowicz, Sarah and Mader, Jackie. Low academic expectations and poor support for special education students are ‘hurting their future’. Hechinger Report. November 11, 2017.
• Mitchell, Corey. Schools are Falling Short for Many English Learners. EdWeek. March 7. 2017.
• Robertson, Kristina, Sanchez-Lopez, Cristina. And Breiseth, Lydia. Addressing ELL's Language Learning and Special Education Needs: Questions and Considerations. Colorin Colorado.
• The Principles of UDL. Kurzweil Education.