Universal Instruction

UNIVERSAL INSTRUCTION

Universal Instruction is rooted in the Instructional Model, the teaching & learning cycle used K-12 across content areas to plan challenging, engaging, meaningful units and lessons. Click on each phase for key practices and strategies.

ENGAGE Plan a specific learning activity at the beginning of a lesson or unit that builds relevance, creates context, sparks curiosity, or connects to students’ prior experiences and strengths.

SET GOALS Set and share student friendly, standards aligned, content and language goals so students know what they are learning, what success looks like, and which differentiated tools are available to support them.

GUIDE NEW LEARNING Teach, differentiate, and scaffold to make content comprehensible. Learning includes standards aligned tasks, structured academic talk, intentional groupings, and complex thinking.

REINFORCE & REFLECT Students apply what they are learning and receive wise, timely, instructive feedback in a supportive environment. Teacher reteaches and extends using formative data.

DEMONSTRATE UNIT LEARNING Students demonstrate attainment of unit goals. Teachers analyze standards mastery cumulatively across the year and supports learning in a new way as needed.

TEACHING NEWCOMER & MULTILINGUAL STUDENTS

Multilingual learners are guaranteed access to scaffolded, sheltered, welcoming learning environments. Start here to learn about high impact strategies that allow our bilingual students, particularly Newcomers, to grow and thrive with their content and language skills.