Picture the lesson plan taking shape on your screen. Content descriptor pasted in. Learning intention written. Main activity mapped out for the class. Then, right at the end, you add a line: “adjustment for Sarah,” or “extension for the early finishers.”
It feels like good practice. In practice, it’s also the wrong order. To illustrate, you built the lesson for an imagined average student, then patched it for everyone who didn’t fit. The patch usually works, for a while. As a result, you solve the same problem lesson after lesson — instead of solving it once at the planning stage.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) flips that order. Instead of building one pathway and adjusting it afterwards, you plan multiple ways in from the very first decision. Beyond that, it sits neatly alongside the backward design framework we’ve covered before. Same starting point — one extra lens over every choice that follows.
Why “Adjustments Later” Never Quite Works
The trouble with retrofitting isn’t the intent. It’s the timing. Every adjustment gets made under pressure, at the end of a planning session. In practice, that’s when your energy for creative problem-solving is lowest and the deadline is closest. Consequently, the graphic organiser gets left out — or the extension task becomes “read on quietly.”
At the same time, there’s a quieter cost. When adjustments arrive last, they read as exceptions to the “real” lesson. In other words, they’re not part of the plan — just a patch on it. Even so, students notice that framing, whether anyone says it aloud or not.
For example, we’ve covered low-prep differentiation moves elsewhere — the kind you reach for once a task is already built. UDL asks an earlier question instead. What if the task already worked for the widest range of learners, before any adjustment was needed?
What UDL Actually Asks You to Plan For
UDL, developed by CAST, organises planning around three questions rather than one. First, multiple means of engagement. Why would this student care — and does that reason hold for more than one kind of student? Second, multiple means of representation. Is the content available through more than one channel — text, image, spoken explanation? Third, multiple means of action and expression. Can students show what they know in more than one way, while still being judged against the same success criterion?
Put simply, none of those questions ask you to lower the learning intention. Instead, they ask you to widen the road leading to it.
Where UDL Fits Inside Backward Design
If you already plan backwards from the learning intention, UDL doesn’t replace that process. In practice, it sharpens it. At Stage 1, ask whether the intention can be reached — and cared about — through more than one entry point. At Stage 2, ask whether your formative evidence has to look identical for every student. Even so, a spoken explanation can count as evidence too — just as validly as a written one. At Stage 3, build the variety in before you teach the lesson, not after you notice it’s needed.
That’s the shift in one sentence. Instead of asking who will struggle with this activity after it’s built, ask which students the design already leaves out.
A Year 4 Worked Example
For example, here’s what that looks like against a real content descriptor, rather than in the abstract.
- Curriculum anchor: AC9E4LY06 — Plan, create and revise written and multimodal texts, including persuasive texts.
- Learning intention: “We are learning to persuade a reader using reasons and evidence.”
- Engagement: Students choose their topic from a short, locally relevant list — not one topic assigned to everyone.
- Representation: The teacher models the structure through a think-aloud, a labelled example, and a simple graphic organiser.
- Action and expression: Students meet the same success criterion by writing a paragraph, recording a spoken pitch, or building an annotated poster.
In other words, notice what stayed constant — the content descriptor, the learning intention, and the success criterion. Only the entry points changed.
This Isn’t Differentiation Downward
For this reason, it’s worth being explicit here, because the two ideas get confused constantly. Differentiating downward means changing what a student is expected to learn — a simpler text, a lower target, a smaller ask. By contrast, UDL keeps the expectation identical for everyone and changes how students reach it.
Beyond that, this distinction matters for AITSL Standard 1.5 — and for the students in front of you. Planning for variability is not the same as planning for less.
Finally, once a lesson is built this way, a second question follows naturally. How do you adjust support in the moment, as students actually work through the task? That’s where frameworks like the Gradual Release of Responsibility come in — and it’s exactly where this series goes next.
💬 Your Turn! Think about your last unit plan. Where did the “adjustments” get added last — and what would it look like to build them in first instead? Share your experience below.
References
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2023). Australian Curriculum v9.0. https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2018). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Standard 1.5). https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/standards
CAST. (2024). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines (version 2.2). https://udlguidelines.cast.org
Novak, K. (2022). UDL now! A teacher’s guide to applying universal design for learning (2nd ed.). CAST Professional Publishing.
Rose, D. H., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. ASCD.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). ASCD.