A Focus on the Six Steps to Inclusive Preschool Curriculum

A Focus on the Six Steps to
Inclusive Preschool Curriculum
Adapted from: Horn, E., Palmer, S., Lieber, J., Butera, G., Kang, J., Classen, A. & Friesen, A.
(October, 2015). Children’s School Success: A framework for inclusive early education.
Presented at the Division of Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exceptional Children
(CEC) 31st Annual International Conference on Young Children with Special Needs and
their Families. Atlanta, GA.
Six Steps to Inclusive Preschool Curriculum
©2015 Brookes Publishing Co.

CSS+ Curriculum Framework
• Children’s School Success Framework: Multi-
tiered instructional model for the purpose of
supporting early childhood educators to deliver
interesting, challenging, but also integrated
curriculum content in inclusive settings.
• In order to develop and implement a coherent
curriculum plan, educators within a program
need a curriculum framework to guide decision-
making for the teaching and learning process
and maximize the likelihood that all children will
achieve desired outcomes.

CSS+ Framework Foundation
• Challenging curriculum addresses the whole child
including social-emotional development,
approaches to learning such as curiosity and
persistence, and language and communication
development, as well as building content knowledge
in literacy, math, and science.
• Decisions about “the what” of learning should view
children’s learning and development as a continuum
of what children can and should learn on their path
to school success.

CSS+ Framework Components
• Based on integrating specific content domains to provide
challenging curriculum content
• Levels of Instructional Support:
– Universal Design for Learning
– Differentiation
– Individualization
• Critical Components
– Progress Monitoring
– Collaborative Teaming
– Family–Professional Partnerships

CSS+ Framework Planning Process
Step 1
• Develop/identify your scope and sequence
Step 2
• Determine strategy for ensuring coherent and integrated format
Step 3
• Develop activity plans addressing UDL principles for supporting all learners
Step 4
• Review activity plans to address differentiation and individualization for children in
classroom
Step 5
• Connect progress monitoring to the scope and sequences
Step 6
• Reflect on implementation for future planning

Step 1: Develop/Identify Scope and
Sequence
• Scope and Sequence: An overview of the
concepts to be covered in a given period of time,
as well as how those concepts build upon one
another
• Tasks to Complete:
– Outline curriculum content significant enough to
teach
– Determine curriculum content that is able to be
accomplished in a given year
– Identify the order in which the material should be
taught

Step 2: Determine Strategy for Ensuring
Coherent and Integrated Format
• Ensure that learning opportunities:
– Address each of the critical domains and subdomains
– Build in complexity across time
– Allow for appropriate repetition without boredom
– Move at a good pace with high expectations but
without creating “weak foundations”
– Develop (modify or tailor to class needs) an
“approximate” calendar that aligns with your
class/program calendar for each subdomain
– Monitoring children’s progress and response to
learning. Adjust calendar as appropriate

Step 3: Develop Activity Plans Addressing
UDL Principles for Supporting All Learners
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL): The
philosophy of designing and creating products
and environments to be accessible to the
greatest extent possible, to the people who
use them without the need for adaptation
– Develop plan for addressing UDL principles of
multiple means of representation, engagement,
and expression

Essential Qualities of UDL
• Ensures instruction, questions, expectations, and learning opportunities
are presented in a variety of formats and different levels of complexity to
address a range of ability levels and sensory processing needs.
Representation
• Ensures that a range of strategies are used to arouse children’s attention,
curiosity, and motivation, thus matching a range of child interests,
preferences, and personal styles.
• Maintained by providing a range of levels of scaffolding, repetition, and
appropriate challenges to support all children’s learning
Engagement
• Ensures that all children have a range of formats for responding,
demonstrating what they know, and to express their ideas and
preferences
• Children have a variety of options in the materials, toys, and resources
that they use such that they reflect their individual practices and abilities
Expression

Step 4: Review Activity Plans to Address
Differentiation and Individualization for
Children in Classroom
• Differentiation: A teaching approach that
acknowledges and responds to the belief that
each child is different and thus requires that
instruction be varied and adapted for his/her
individual approaches with a focus on child
active participation and learning of the
general curriculum content (Hall, 2002)

Components of Differentiation
• The early educator takes curricular goals and
varies the complexity or difficulty by making
adjustments in
– Learning environments (types and levels of
learning support provided to the child)
– Content (information the children need to learn)
– Process (types and format of the activity in which
the children are engaged)

Individualization
• Individualization: Indicates special instruction
to address the unique learning needs of an
individual child
– Identify children in need of additional supports to
enhance learning and develop plan for
differentiation
– Identify children in need of learning opportunities
to meet their goals and develop a plan for
individualization

Use of Embedded Learning Opportunities
and Child-Focused Instructional Strategies
• Embedded learning opportunities: Short, teaching
episodes within ongoing classroom activities and
routines for the child’s individualized learning priorities
• Why?
– Child has individual learning priorities that are not being
fully addressed in the curriculum
• When to Implement?
– Child’s objective is unique
– Child must learn skill or concept to take advantage of
general early childhood curriculum
– Child is making very slow progress despite use of
curriculum modification

Step 5: Connect Progress Monitoring
to the Scope and Sequence
• Progress Monitoring: A continuous measuring
and documenting of change or progress in child
performance to determine children’s progress
toward standards-based learning objectives
– Teachers need to determine
• When they will do the monitoring
• Who will do the monitoring
• What format to use for gathering data, and
• Other details related to this type of assessment

Step 6: Reflect on Implementation for
Future Planning
• Teachers can use progress monitoring to:
– Obtain feedback about what children have and
have not learned
– Create a continuous loop of planning, instruction,
and recurrent monitoring
• Tasks to Complete (Approaches)
– Use progress monitoring data to determine
progress and adjust strategies as needed

Progress Monitoring Loop
Curriculum
Objectives & Child-
Focused Goals
Develop
Instruction/Plan
Lessons
Teach Lessons
Monitor Progress
as Ongoing
Activity
Make Decisions
about Follow-up
Instruction

Summing It Up

Six Steps to Inclusive Preschool
Curriculum: A UDL-Based Framework for
Children’s School Success
Eva M. Horn Ph.D., Susan B. Palmer, Ph.D.,
Gretchen D. Butera Ph.D., & Joan Lieber Ph.D.,
For more information, please visit bit.ly/1lJyGVC

A Focus on the Six Steps to Inclusive Preschool Curriculum

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