This book offers guidelines for designing the cognitive supports to instructional materials for students with disabilities in general education classrooms. Chapter 1, an introduction, describes the contexts of change, including the changing demography of learners, which has increased the curricular and instructional complexity that teachers face in general education classrooms. Chapter 2 defines and describes curriculum design as an important and distinctive requirement to provide cognitive access to general education content for students with disabilities. Chapter 3 offers six principles of effective curriculum design in the modification of general education content. These principles stress big ideas, conspicuous strategies, mediated scaffolding, strategic integration, judicious review, and primed background knowledge. Chapter 4 offers a framework for evaluating and adapting general education curriculum materials and applies the six curriculum design principles to a range of general education content, including the areas of beginning reading and writing. (Contains 75 references.) (DB)