Planning and Delivering Specially Designed Instruction
What this domain tests
Domain 3 focuses on specially designed instruction, measurable IEP goals, accommodations versus modifications, explicit instruction, UDL, assistive technology, and data-based progress monitoring.
Core rules and concepts
- SDI adapts content, methodology, or delivery to meet the student’s unique needs and access the general curriculum. It is more than “extra time” or a quiet seat.
- Goals should include condition, observable behavior, and criterion, and align with grade-level standards.
- Accommodations change how a student learns or shows learning; modifications change what is taught or expected.
- UDL builds multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression into planning.
- Explicit instruction includes modeling, guided practice, corrective feedback, and cumulative review. Progress monitoring should be frequent, graphed, and used to adjust instruction.
- Consider assistive technology for every IEP. Paraeducators support, not replace, teacher-delivered SDI.
Worked example
A student’s goal is: “Given a grade-level fourth-grade passage, Jordan will read 90 words correct per minute with 95% accuracy on three consecutive weekly probes.” The teacher uses repeated reading with a model, error correction, and weekly curriculum-based measurement. Providing extra time on the same passage is an accommodation, not SDI; shortening the passage to second-grade text is a modification that may undermine the grade-level goal. The reasoning: SDI teaches the targeted skill, while the goal and progress data keep instruction accountable.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling every support SDI.
- Writing vague goals such as “improve reading.”
- Defaulting to below-grade modifications instead of scaffolding.
- Collecting progress data but never changing instruction.
- Letting a paraeducator deliver core instruction without teacher oversight.