Some Woodward teachers were noticing; 

Our classrooms present a healthy array of interests and back ground knowledge.  The skills, interests and abilities of the students are diverse, and the need for diverse supports to help them grow as learners is essential.  Allowing students voice in what they learn and how they learn it has shown to be a success in the past.  It is important to recognize that supporting students uncover their passions and challenge their thinking is difficult and challenging to navigate at times.  

So they posed the following inquiry question:

How do we design for the needs of all learners and create universal supports that allow them various access points to their learning?

Because, 

Our school focus on SEL has allowed us to take a deeper dive into understanding the social, emotional and academic needs of our students.  Building student voice, collaboration and developing community is vital to student success.  By uncovering what students can use to support themselves in their interactions with each other, and their learning, will go a long way in helping them become advocates for their own learning needs and ultimately support the community as a whole.

Students indicated where they need support:

• Students are showing that they want to focus more on numeracy and literacy.  Students can see the prevalence and need for these skills in society.  ​
• ​Focusing the next few weeks on story writing and daily quick writes will be a good diagnostic to uncover what specific supports they need in their writing.​
• ​Our school will be spending our January Pro-D uncovering our school story in relation to literacy; diagnostics, assessment and supports at all grade levels.