Methods to modify lessons to meet diverse learning needs and abilities.
As a Special Education and English Learner teacher at my Washington DC school, I have spent a career working with students who find the act of reading to be an exercise in endurance rather than exploration. In my Digital Literacy Academy, I am the lead teacher for students with significant cognitive disabilities, many of whom … Read more
A complete, interactive Assignment Translator & Scaffold Generator web application. It takes complex grade-level instructions and instantly simplifies them across 4 WIDA Proficiency Levels, generates Formative (2-tier) and Summative (3-tier) assessment rubrics, and includes multilingual self-reflection prompts.
A complete, interactive Lesson Scaffold & Assessment Generator web application. It combines automated lesson scaffolding (vocabulary, sentence frames, visuals, graphic organizers, small-group strategies, and extensions) with a built-in WIDA-aligned Rubric & Self-Reflection Generator.
Special Education isn’t a separate island; it’s the blueprint for effective teaching for every single learner. By using Universal Design for Learning (UDL), we create high-access classrooms where sensory supports and visual scaffolds benefit SPED, ELL, and general education students alike. I remember my first year as a lead teacher in the Digital Literacy Academy. … Read more
The A.C.C.E.S.S. Literacy Framework (Activate, Clarify, Chunk, Engage, Support, Synthesize) is a six-step instructional sequence built for multilingual learners and students with disabilities — and the Human-Centered AI Teaching Continuum is the guardrail that keeps AI in a supporting role instead of a driving one. Used together, they don’t just make lessons “accessible.” They make grade-level rigor reachable, without lowering the bar. Grab the ready-made version at the end if you’d rather skip straight to implementation.
A complete, interactive ELL Rubric Generator system. It includes a ready-to-run web-based generator tool (HTML/JS) you can save and run in any browser, along with pre-designed templates aligned with WIDA Can-Do Descriptors, visual emoji supports, and multilingual self-reflection prompts.
A literacy framework sitting in one classroom helps a handful of kids. The same framework, adapted and tested across different countries and contexts by a community of teachers, has the potential to shift outcomes for multilingual and neurodivergent learners at scale. That’s the vision behind building this out as a global community of practice, not a one-off resource.
Most AI tools are designed around a “typical” learner who doesn’t actually exist in your classroom. If you teach neurodivergent students, you have to get selective — look for tools that support executive functioning, flexible communication, and sensory needs, not just ones that check an accessibility box. A few small choices in what you pick (and how you use it) make a huge difference.
I remember sitting in an initial evaluation meeting early in my career, looking at a young girl who had just moved to the country six months prior. The data showed she was struggling with reading and followed almost no verbal directions. The team was ready to label her with a “Specific Learning Disability.” But something … Read more
As a Special Education and English Learner teacher, I used this lesson with students who struggle with reading comprehension and written expression at my Washington DC school. In my role as the Digital Literacy Academy lead, I often see students who are essentially “information-blind” when they look at a complex page of text. For a … Read more
