Differentiation
True or False: Differentiation means lowering the standards for struggling students.
What is False?
The educational framework that guides the design of flexible learning environments to accommodate individual learning differences.
What is Universal Design for Learning?
This mindset shift reframes disability not as a lack, but as a valuable neurodiverse way of learning.
What is a strengths‑based, neurodiverse mindset?
The mental skills that help us manage time, stay organized, and regulate emotions and behavior.
What is executive functioning?
Adjustments in format, timing, setting, or response that do not change what’s being measured by an assessment.
What are accommodations?
This federal law guarantees a "Free Appropriate Public Education" in the "Least Restrictive Environment" tailored to the unique needs of children with disabilities.
What is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)?
This developmental disability significantly affects verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three.
What is Autism?
The legally defined process of adapting content, methodology, or delivery based on a student’s disability to ensure access to the general curriculum.
What is Specially Designed Instruction?
Black students are 2–3 times more likely to be identified with these two subjective, behavior-related disability categories than White students.
What is Emotional Disturbance (ED) and Intellectual Disability (ID)?
This educator and author is widely credited for developing the modern framework for differentiated instruction.
Who is Carol Ann Tomlinson?
These are the three main UDL principles.
What are Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression?
These combined forms of prejudice result in students of color being disproportionately referred to special education, disciplined, and placed in restrictive settings.
What is racialized ableism?
This part of the brain is most responsible for executive functioning skills.
What is the prefrontal cortex?
A legally required written plan developed annually for each eligible student, detailing goals and services.
What is an IEP?
This civil right ensures special education and related services are provided at public expense, tailored to individual needs.
What is FAPE?
This term describes a combination of hearing and visual impairments causing severe communication and developmental needs that cannot be accommodated in programs solely for children with deafness or blindness.
What is Deaf-Blindness?
This professional is primarily responsible for delivering specially designed instruction.
Who is the special education teacher?
Hispanic students are disproportionately identified with these two disability categories related to learning and language skills.
What is Specific Learning Disability (SLD) and Speech or Language Impairment (SLI)?
The three main areas teachers can differentiate are content, product, and this.
What is process?
The organization that developed the UDL framework.
What is CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology)?
In this inclusive pedagogical approach, educators offer students culturally responsive choices in representation, engagement, and expression.
What is the anti‑racist UDL framework?
True or False: Executive functioning skills are fully developed by age 10.
What is False?
The educational setting that allows students with disabilities to be educated with nondisabled peers to the maximum appropriate extent.
What is LRE?
Parents have the right to this written document that includes consent for evaluation, prior written notice, and dispute resolution options.
What are Procedural Safeguards?
This condition is characterized by an inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors, and includes inappropriate behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.
What is Emotional Disturbance?
This document is required by law and includes SDI as a service to help a student access and make progress in the general curriculum.
What is an Individualized Education Program (IEP)?
Both Black and Hispanic students are less likely than White students to be identified with this developmental disability and to be placed in this advanced program category.
What are Autism and gifted programs?
A method where assignments are adjusted in complexity based on students' readiness levels.
Question: What are tiered assignments?
What are tiered assignments?
This UDL principle focuses on how to motivate and sustain students' interest in learning.
Question: What is Engagement?
What is Engagement?
According to Andratesha Fritzgerald, UDL coupled with this creates classrooms grounded in honor and justice—not merely access.
What is anti‑racism?
A student struggling with this skill may lose materials, forget homework, or misplace assignments.
What is organization?
The skills related to daily living and social responsibility appropriate for a person’s age and cultural group.
What is adaptive behavior?
Under IDEA, schools must evaluate a referred student within this timeframe after receiving parental consent.
What is 45 days?
This impairment involves significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior, and manifested during the developmental period.
What is Intellectual Disability?
True or False: SDI is only provided in special education classrooms.
What is False?
These recurring student identification patterns of over- and underrepresentation highlight the influence of systemic bias in special education.
What is disproportionality?
In this grouping strategy, students work together temporarily based on interests or learning profiles.
What is flexible grouping?
This principle ensures that information is presented in different ways to accommodate various learners.
Question: What is Representation?
What is Representation?
This term describes the intentional use of UDL to honor learner identity and dismantle systemic inequities like school‑to‑prison pipelines and racial bias.
What is dismantling racism through anti‑racist UDL?
Graphic organizers and checklists support students with this executive function.
What is planning and prioritizing?
Plan under federal law designed to protect students with disabilities by ensuring that there is access to accommodations. This plan is covered under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation
What is 504 Plan?
IEP teams must conduct this kind of evaluation at least every three years or more if requested by parents or changes in needs are suspected to determine continued eligibility for special education.
What is a triennial or re-evaluation?
This category includes impairments caused by congenital anomalies, and conditions like cerebral palsy, that adversely affect a child's educational performance.
What is Orthopedic Impairment?
These are statements in the IEP that guide SDI by identifying what the student is expected to learn.
Question: What are annual goals?
Experts recommend this kind of evaluation approach characterized by being culturally responsive and evidence-based to counteract identification disparities.
What are culturally responsive, evidence-based evaluations?
Adjusting this allows students to learn the same objective using different materials or formats.
What is content?
Providing text with audio, videos, visuals, or diagrams with labels supports this.
What is providing multiple entry points to learning?
“UDL is not just about access—it’s about justice.”
Who is Andratesha Fritzgerald?
A student who underestimates how long a task will take is likely struggling with this executive function What is time management?
What is time management?
Devices or services like speech-to-text or audiology that support functional capabilities for students with disabilities.
What is assistive technology?
Under IDEA, public schools have this ongoing obligation to locate, identify, and evaluate children with suspected disabilities from birth through age 21.
What is the Child Find?
This refers to a communication disorder such as stuttering, impaired articulation, or a language or voice impairment that adversely affects a child's educational performance.
What is Speech or Language Impairment?
Examples of this include breaking tasks into smaller steps, providing explicit instruction on comprehension strategies, or repeated modeling.
What are SDI strategies or instructional methods?
This type of assessment guides differentiation by showing what students already know and need to learn.
What is a formative assessment (or pre-assessment)?
This UDL principle focuses on how students show what they know.
What is Action & Expression?
A student who melts down when plans change is likely struggling with this executive function.
What is cognitive flexibility?
A tiered early intervention strategy to help struggling students before special education referral
What is RTI?
IDEA requires this IEP meeting to occur at least once every 12 months to assess progress toward goals and update the plan as needed.
What is the annual IEP review?
This category encompasses chronic or acute health problems like asthma, ADHD, or diabetes that result in limited strength, vitality, or alertness, affecting educational performance.
What is Other Health Impairment?
This type of data collection helps determine if SDI is effectively helping the student meet their goals.
What is progress monitoring?
This theory by Howard Gardner supports differentiation by recognizing diverse ways students are smart.
What is Multiple Intelligences Theory?
These are common barriers to learning that UDL aims to eliminate.
What are one-size-fits-all materials or instructional methods?
This executive function allows students to reflect on their learning ,thinking and assess their performance.
What is metacognition?
Process used to assess whether a behavior or misconduct is related to a student’s disability or the IEP team’s failure to implement the IEP.
What is a manifestation determination?
A disorder impacting one or more psychological processes (e.g. reading, writing, math) not due to other disabilities or disadvantages.
What is a specific learning disability?