Embedded Files
Coming May 1, 2026!
Building Executive Function Through Learner-Owned Strategies: A Universal Design for Learning Approach
Our book team has put together the supports you need to build learner agency through learner-owned strategies. Let's get this good work rolling in more places for more students! Contact us and ask to be added to the preorder list.
Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades: A Universal Design for Learning Approach
Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades: A Universal Design for Learning Approach
"So much of what middle grade students need to do each day depends on their executive function, or the ability to self-monitor and carry out the steps of a plan effectively," writes Susanne Croasdaile in her first book, Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades: A Universal Design for Learning Approach.
Using real-life examples, Croasdaile shows educators how to integrate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to transform the learning experience for their students. She provides a roadmap for anyone who seeks practical, research-based strategies to help their students survive and thrive to become expert learners in the middle grades.
In an easy-to-follow, 8-step process, Croasdaile offers numerous strategies that will enhance instruction and support student social and emotional competency. By highlighting practices related to students' executive function and sustained effort, this book is a useful addition to the toolkit of every classroom teacher, coach, and administrator.
Learn more by downloading a PDF of the Introduction from the book.
Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades is available in print (144 pages, ISBN: 9781943085002) and accessible EPUB (ISBN: 9781943085019) wherever books are sold or online through Amazon Kindle!
Engage and motivate middle and high school students
Engage and motivate middle and high school students
As you prepare for the school year to start, join the National Writing Project's Write Now Teacher Studio to discuss how planning the First 20 Days of classroom instruction scaffolds working memory, read half of the book Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades: A Universal Design for Learning Approach to dig into the UDL framework as teachers and coaches experience it, and plan the First 20 Days for our middle and high school classrooms in time for the start of school. This is a game changer for starting the year strong and building adolescent student toolkits. https://tinyurl.com/NWPUDL
9th Annual CAST UDL Symposium
9th Annual CAST UDL Symposium
Understand how scaffolding working memory by planning strategy instruction that is implemented in the First 20 Days helps students be motivated to engage in rigorous and challenging curriculum.
Susanne Croasdaile, M.Ed., Ph.D., shares the evidence-based practices and high-leverage practices of her colleagues, as highlighted in the 2023 book Building Executive Function and Motivation in the Middle Grades: A Universal Design for Learning Approach.
AMLE 2023
Executive skills develop until age 25, with rapid growth in the middle years. We must be cautious and intentional in saying, "They already know how to do this!" Using the UDL guidelines, we explore how to scaffold Strategic, Goal-Directed, Purposeful, and Motivated Learners. We provide classroom-level and school-wide evidence-based strategies for teachers, coaches, and administrators to put in place to develop students’ executive skills -- and scaffold the ones that won’t develop until age 25!
The UDL Cautious Corner
Start here...to use the UDL guidelines to think about executive function differently. UDL Guidelines 6, 8, and 9 form a "Cautious Corner" to slow down and ask ourselves whether student behavior is about skill or will.
Are you seeing these barriers?
Students should be organized… but they aren’t.
Students should actively, appropriately participate… but they don’t.
Students should draw from a strategy toolkit…but they don’t.
The UDL lens gives us a handful of structures that will address these and build learner agency and independence!
Start here...teach the TPRY strategy for analyzing and creating models
Using a UDL lens, we reduce barriers by increasing learner agency...which means building a learner-owned strategy toolkit. TPRY is a great cross-curricular strategy for analyzing and building models and visuals.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse