Building Decoding the Code fast and right — a structured-literacy PD minicourse for Grades 6–12 content-area teachers.
Rapid Instructional Design (RID) is the fast lane version of the design work I already do. It keeps the bones of ADDIE — analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation — but stops treating them as five doors you walk through one at a time. The phases overlap. You read the problem and the audience quickly, design and build at the same time, lean hard on templates and material you already have, and put a rough working version in front of learners early so you can fix it while it runs (Piskurich, 2015).
Speed changes the goal. The win is a usable course in learners' hands quickly, not a flawless one much later.
Existing material becomes an asset. A designer's back catalog of lessons and tools is fuel, not a starting-over problem.
Feedback moves to the front. Evaluation stops being the last step and becomes a running conversation with learners.
Quality has to hold while moving fast. Rapid does not mean careless — it means disciplined shortcuts, templates, and clear priorities so speed never costs accuracy.
It shifts risk earlier. You find out fast what does not work, which is cheaper than discovering it after a full build.
Six activities that close the learning gap and support the course learning outcomes. Each is tagged to the CLO it carries.
Short explainer segments introduce the six components of structured literacy — phonology, sound–symbol association, syllable instruction, morphology, syntax, and semantics — and the tell that gives each one away. Teachers then enter a timed escape room where six locks each hold a piece of real student evidence; naming the component behind the breakdown is what opens the lock. Mastery gates and guided hints mean a wrong call earns coaching, not a score. This builds the shared vocabulary every later activity depends on.
CLO 1Teachers work through de-identified samples of adolescent reading and writing and decide whether the breakdown is decoding, fluency, or comprehension. Each choice opens a short feedback branch that explains what the evidence shows. Teachers are enabled to spot where a reader is actually stuck instead of guessing.
CLO 2Each teacher pulls five to eight academic terms from their own content area and breaks them into roots, prefixes, and suffixes. They then draft a short word-study routine they could run in their own class next week. The activity turns morphology from a reading-teacher idea into a content-area vocabulary tool.
CLO 3Working from a template and a worked example, teachers design one lesson component that carries explicit, multisensory literacy support without lowering the rigor of the content. This is the course's culminating artifact — proof a teacher can build the thing, not just name it.
CLO 4 · draws on CLO 1, 3Teachers move through three student profiles and match assistive technologies and accommodations — text-to-speech, decodable digital text, specialized fonts, audio scaffolds — to each learner's specific need. A case-based decision path gives feedback at each fork, keeping tool choice tied to a real student rather than a generic checklist.
CLO 5Teachers use a structured-literacy self-audit checklist to look honestly at their own instruction, then set one measurable classroom goal. It connects to the three tracks — Marcus sets a foundation goal, Rosa a framework goal, David an intervention goal — closing the course on the teacher's own next step.
CLO 6 · draws on CLO 2CAST. (2018). Universal design for learning guidelines version 2.2. https://udlguidelines.cast.org
Knowles, M. S. (1980). The modern practice of adult education: From pedagogy to andragogy (2nd ed.). Cambridge Books.
Piskurich, G. M. (2015). Rapid instructional design: Learning ID fast and right (3rd ed.). Wiley.
Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). ASCD.