Lesson Overview

Enter a title, grade level range, and subject for your lesson plan. Any of these items can be added or edited later. Enter a lesson description in the text box provided. Your description could be a short summary, a bulleted list of key features, or a detailed synopsis.

Unit Description

If there is more than one lesson, write a unit description. You might want to include number of lessons andan overview of what students will learn in the unit.

Lesson Description for Day

You might want to include a brief description of what students will learn,approximate duration of the lesson and if it’s a component of a unit.

State Standards

Enter the state standards for your lesson in the text box. Click on the link to access state standards

or Google the following phrase with your state name, “state educational standardsSTATE NAME”

  • Align your lesson to state and/or local standards, but remember standards do not encompass all that you want to teach and all that you want students to learn.
  • Standards are used as a guide for developing and teaching your lesson and setting high expectations and new learning opportunities for all students.
  • Standards reflect the scope and big picture of what you teach and want you want students to learn.
  • Standards across different content areas may be identified to help define what all students are expected to know and be able to do relative to your lesson plans.
  • Local district content standards are typically posted on the district website and state standards are published on your state's Department of Education web site.
  • Read more about UDL and standards.

Goals

Enter goals and objectives for your lesson in the text box.

  • Identify clear goals/objectives that are separate from the means of achieving lesson goals so that all students are successful.
  • A clear goal/objective focuses on what you want students to know and understand, not the means of knowing and understanding.
  • For example, a clearly stated goal/objective might be, "all students need to know the location of places, geographic features, and patterns of an environment."
  • A goal/objective that is confused by adding the means of achieving the goal to it might be, "all students write about the location of places, geographic features, and patterns of the environment." Using the word "write" limits achievement of the goal by all students since some students may not be able to demonstrate understanding by writing.
  • Goals/objectives guide methods, assessments, and materials used in a lesson and goals/objectives are measurable and achievable by all students.
  • It's important to make sure your students understand the goals and objectives of a lesson.
  • Refer to "Using UDL to Set Goals" to learn more about developing goals that support all learners.

Methods

Use a repertoire of varied teaching methods to accommodate the diverse needs, preferences, abilities, and backgrounds of your students. Refer to Using UDL to Individualize Teaching Methods to learn more about specific methods that support the Principles of Universal Design for Learning i.e. "the what," "the how," and "the why" of learning.

Anticipatory Set

Enter notes on how you will leverage students' prior knowledge for success in this lesson (examples: ask students to respond to questions about their current knowledge on the topic).

  • There are two parts to a lesson introduction: the "hook" and accessing/tying-in to prior knowledge.
  • The "hook"
  • Initially, you need to identify varied activities that will engage or hook students into learning goals.
  • It is important to note that no one method of engagement works for all your students; therefore, you need to identify several ways to engage students' attention.
  • Accessing/tying-in prior knowledge
  • Once students are engaged in a lesson, access students' prior knowledge, make connections between the lesson and what they have learned in the past, concepts they already understand, and contexts they are familiar with.
  • Seek to provide your students with flexible activities and presentations that incorporate their past learning.
  • Look for ways to tap into your students' unique outlooks and cultural and familial backgrounds.
  • Students learn better when something new is connected to something they already know; the more connections made, the stronger and more lasting a learning experience becomes.
  • Accessing students' prior knowledge also increases engagement, interest in and curiosity about your lesson.
  • Read "Using UDL to Support Every Student's Learning" to learn about using teaching methods for developing lessons that address the diverse needs of all learners.

Introduce and Model New Knowledge

Enter notes on how you will introduce and model this lesson's new information to your class.

  • Introducing new knowledge gives your students a clear, logical start to a lesson and provides grounding in new subject matter. Initially, you want to identify varied activities, materials, techniques, and resources that will guide your students through the introduction of new concepts, information, and knowledge.
  • To address the diversity of your students, you need to differentiate instruction; for example, you need to highlight critical features, provide multiple examples and non-examples of the new information, and support background knowledge.
  • You also need to define techniques for modeling new knowledge for your students by demonstration and guidance (for example, you may want to follow the steps of an activity first, in front of your students, to show them how to complete it).
  • Modeling enables your students to grasp what is expected of them more easily and allows them to focus on learning rather than procedure.
  • Read "Using UDL to Support Every Student's Learning" to learn about using teaching methods for developing lessons that address the diverse needs of all learners.

Provide Guided Practice

Enter guided practice notes for use with your class.

  • Define the methods that you will use to provide your students with an opportunity for guided practice, i.e., giving your students a chance to try out new understanding with a helping hand from you as needed.
  • Seek to offer your students the level of guidance that suits their needs (examples: a student may ask you to read material aloud, you might do so and then ask the student to read to you in turn; a student may lag behind in beginning an assignment, yet enjoy one-on-one attention from you to get started, you would then guide the student to continue the assignment independently).
  • Guided practice at a variety of levels ensures that all of your students will learn from your lesson and remain interested and engaged.
  • Giving students just as much assistance as they need, but no more or less, allows a lesson to challenge students at the right level for them.
  • Read "Using UDL to Support Every Student's Learning" to learn about using teaching methods for developing lessons that address the diverse needs of all learners.

Provide Independent Practice

Enter information on opportunities you will provide for your students for independent practice with new skills and knowledge.

  • Choose varied independent practice activities (both in-class and for homework) that give your students the opportunity to experiment with, test, and strengthen new skills and conceptual understanding.
  • Seek to provide students with a variety of methods/choices for investigating new ideas and alternative means of completing activities and assignments.
  • Students perform better, and enjoy learning more, when they have choices.
  • Students remember information and concepts longer, and understand them more thoroughly, when they have had personal involvement in and hands-on experience with their learning.
  • Personal investment is a major component of engagement; encourage your students to take pride in having responsibility for the quality of their own work.
  • Read "Using UDL to Support Every Student's Learning" to learn about using teaching methods for developing lessons that address the diverse needs of all learners.

Wrap-Up

Enter information on how you will conclude your lesson.

  • Choose wrap-up activities that provide you and your students with varied opportunities to summarize and solidify what was learned in a lesson.
  • Seek to reinforce new learning and review key concepts.
  • You may also want to use your lesson wrap-up as an opportunity to explain any lesson assessment(s).
  • Your wrap-up should provide your students with a straightforward conclusion to your lesson and help them to remember what they learned.
  • Read "Using UDL to Support Every Student's Learning" to learn about using teaching methods for developing lessons that address the diverse needs of all learners.

Assessment

Enter the assessment(s) you will use in your lesson in the text box. Your assessment component may be a list of key concepts, text of questions and answers, a description of a portfolio or visual assessment option, reminder notes for ongoing in-class evaluation, or a combination of several of these.

Formative/Ongoing Assessment

Enter notes on formative assessment(s) you will use in this lesson

  • Identify the formative/ongoing assessment that takes place during the course of a lesson or project.
  • Use varied methods of flexible, on-going assessment to inform instruction and student progress and to resolve misconceptions (examples: periodic evaluations of student work during a medium- or long-term project, rotating through and participating in small-group discussions in turn).
  • Provide your students with relevant feedback as a lesson progresses (ask questions, ask for demonstrations, point out key features, re-direct off-task tangents) and help your students reflect on their progress relative to lesson goals.
  • Read more about "Using UDL to Accurately Assess Student Progress" to accurately and fairly assess students' understanding.

Summative/End of Lesson Assessment

Enter a short description of the summative/end-of-lesson assessment that takes place at the end of a lesson, unit, or term relevant to intended goals.

  • Use a variety of summative assessment formats with your students (e.g., oral reports, portfolio assessments, paper-and-pencil tests, oral and/or written exams, student presentation of completed assignments computer-based multimedia projects) to ensure that assessment accurately evaluates students and addresses the inherent diversity of your classroom.
  • Seek flexibility in how you test and evaluate performance and the acquisition of new skills and knowledge.
  • Recognize that any test will be a limited means of assessing a student's body of knowledge and their individual learning styles and abilities are factors in the assessment.
  • Students perform better when assessment methods are matched to their strengths and abilities; this enables a student to focus on what they have learned rather than how it is being asked.
  • Read more about "Using UDL to Accurately Assess Student Progress" to accurately and fairly assess students' understanding.

Materials

Enter materials you will use in your lesson in the text box.

  • Identify a variety of instructional materials, including text, audio, images, video, and other digital media that you will use for teaching and your students will use for learning.
  • When selecting lesson materials, think about potential barriers in the materials that affect all students' access to learning. For example, providing information to be learned only in a print format will present barriers to students who have decoding problems or students for whom English is a second language.
  • A variety of formats (for example, providing a reading assignment on paper, CD, audio tape, or with a text-to-speech reader; assigning a project as an interview, a library research project, or an Internet project) helps ensure access to learning for all students in your classroom.
  • As you select materials, ask yourself if they are flexible and adaptable, if there are alternative formats to offer, if they may be supplemented, and if they will increase access to learning for all students.
  • Read more about how the Universal Design for Learning framework provides guidance in selecting materials here.

My Resources

Enter resources that you find helpful in creating your lessons. Include web sites, books and articles, videos and audio resources, art and music resources, and other. This page also includes a link to UDL Lesson Builder resources that will help with the development of your lessons.