When a curriculum guide is clear and easy to use, it can be tempting to assume the lesson itself is simple. But simplicity on the page does not mean simplicity in the design. Often, the opposite is true. The clearest lessons are the result of deliberate decisions about learning outcomes, child development, standards, accessibility, assessment, and classroom implementation.
To explore what’s actually behind a well-designed lesson, we sat down with Dr. Jessica Hammond, Senior Director of Learning and Development at Frog Street. She shared how Frog Street approaches curriculum design with intentionality, building the complexity into the design process so educators can focus on what matters most: teaching, responding to children, and supporting learning.
Key Takeaways
- Frog Street curriculum design starts with developmental and academic outcomes, then works backward to build activities that reach them.
- Every unit is checked for horizontal coherence across domains and vertical coherence across ages, so skills connect, deepen, and build over time.
- Universal Design for Learning shapes lessons from the start, anticipating learner variability and reducing barriers to participation and learning.
- Strong curriculum design is as much about what is intentionally left out as what is included. Activities and resources must contribute meaningful instructional value.
- Lilypad by Frog Street supports a more responsive curriculum model, allowing Frog Street to address evolving standards, educator feedback, and instructional needs while maintaining the integrity of the curriculum’s core design.
The Complexity Hidden in “Simple” Lessons
When a lesson plan is well-designed, you can open it up and begin teaching right away. That ease is usually a sign that someone did the heavy lifting long before the guide reached your hands.
Dr. Hammond describes curriculum design as an iceberg: “When curriculum is designed well, much of the complexity becomes invisible to the educator. What appears simple on the surface is supported by layers of intentional decisions underneath.”
Beneath each lesson are developmental progressions, standards alignment, current research, cognitive demand, assessment opportunities, accessibility considerations, family connections, and supports for effective implementation. Each component must work together without placing unnecessary complexity on the educator.
Curriculum Design Starts with Outcomes, Not Activities
For the Frog Street team, curriculum design begins with a clear understanding of where learning is headed.
“We start with learning outcomes. Before we think about activities, materials, or themes, we consider what children need to know, understand, and be able to do, both developmentally and academically.”
“From there, we look at three things together: current research on early childhood learning, applicable state and national standards, and how the curriculum functions in the classroom.” Dr. Hammond explained. “Then we work backward. What learning experiences will help children build toward those outcomes? What should educators model? Where do children need opportunities to practice, explore, interact with peers, or apply learning through play? And how will we know whether the intended learning is actually occurring?”
Working backward this way helps separate a purpose-built curriculum from a collection of loosely related activities. Rather than starting with a fun theme and filling in content around it, Frog Street anchors every unit in what children need to be able to do, then builds the experiences to get them there. Every activity has a reason to exist, and every week has a clear direction.
Building Coherence Across Domains and Age Levels
A high quality curriculum requires more than strong individual lessons. The experiences within a curriculum must connect to one another so that children encounter ideas, knowledge, and skills in intentional and increasingly complex ways.
At Frog Street, curriculum design brings together four priorities:
- Developmental science
- Academic standards
- Instructional design
- Classroom usability
Bringing all four together is called “coherence,” and it works in two directions:
Horizontal Coherence Across Domains
Horizontal coherence considers how learning experiences across domains intentionally connect within a unit or period of study. Literacy, mathematics, science, language, social and emotional development, and approaches to learning are designed to complement and reinforce one another rather than function as unrelated experiences.
When an educator helps a child build language skills through a science exploration, that’s a repeatable design choice rather than a happy accident.
Vertical Coherence Across Development
Vertical coherence considers how learning develops over time. Rather than treating each age level as a separate starting point, Frog Street examines how knowledge, skills, and developmental competencies progress from infancy through Pre K.
A concept or skill may first emerge through early interactions and exploration, become more intentional during the toddler years, deepen during preschool, and develop greater complexity as children approach kindergarten. Curriculum design should reflect that progression.
This connected continuum gives educators a clearer understanding of what may come before and what comes next in a child’s development. It also helps ensure that learning experiences provide appropriate opportunities to revisit, strengthen, and extend important knowledge and skills over time.
Together, horizontal and vertical coherence help create a curriculum in which learning is connected rather than fragmented. Children experience meaningful relationships across domains while also building along developmental pathways that become increasingly sophisticated over time.
Designing for Learners from Day One With UDL
Within any classroom, you can find a span of readiness levels. Children bring different strengths, experiences, language backgrounds, developmental profiles, interests, and support needs, often wider than a single lesson plan seems designed to accommodate. Rather than treating that variability as an obstacle, Frog Street designs for it from the start.
The framework behind this approach is Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL is a research-based instructional design framework that encourages curriculum designers to anticipate potential barriers to learning and create multiple ways for children to engage, access information, participate, and demonstrate their developing understanding.
In practice, this means considering scaffolds, flexible supports, multiple entry points, varied ways of presenting information, and meaningful opportunities for children to participate within the lesson itself.
As Dr. Hammond explained, “Instead of designing a lesson for one type of learner and then asking how we can adjust it later, we ask how we can design the experience from the beginning so more children can access and participate in the learning.”
Designing with UDL does not eliminate the need for individualized accommodations, specialized instruction, or additional supports. It creates a more accessible starting point. By reducing unnecessary barriers within the curriculum itself, educators can focus their additional planning and support where individual children truly need it.
Deciding What Earns a Place in the Lesson
Much of curriculum design involves deciding what not to include. The common assumption is that more resources mean a better curriculum. Frog Street’s curriculum team takes the opposite approach.
“Strong curriculum design is not about adding more. It is about making thoughtful decisions about what truly supports learning. If something adds complexity without adding meaningful instructional value, it may not need to be there.”
Before an activity makes the final cut, it has to pass through four filters:
- Does it directly advance the learning outcome?
- Is it developmentally appropriate?
- Is it universally designed for all learners?
- Is it practical for an educator to run in a busy classroom?
An activity might be genuinely engaging, but if it adds complexity without instructional payoff — or if it simply can’t survive inside a real classroom setting — it doesn’t belong in the lesson.
Frog Street looks at whether each component gives educators usable information about what a child understands or can do. When an activity doesn’t contribute to that picture, removing it helps keep the curriculum focused on what moves learning forward.
How Frog Street Curriculum Evolves Without Losing Its Core
As state requirements shift, you may wonder whether your curriculum will hold up when new mandates arrive, and how much disruption a standards update will actually create for your program.
Frog Street builds with that challenge in mind. Because the curriculum is grounded in developmental progressions, learning outcomes, research, and instructional design principles, Frog Street can examine new or revised standards against an established foundation rather than approaching every change as a complete redesign.
That process begins with careful review. The team analyzes what has changed, identifies areas of alignment and potential gaps, and determines what adjustments may be needed. Depending on the nature of the change, that could include refining terminology, strengthening existing content, adjusting learning experiences, or developing additional instructional support.
The goal is not simply to respond to a new standard. It is to preserve the integrity and coherence of the curriculum while ensuring that educators have the guidance and experiences they need to address evolving expectations.
Lilypad and the Living Curriculum
Lilypad extends the curriculum beyond the printed guide, creating a digital environment that allows Frog Street to respond more dynamically as standards, instructional needs, and educator feedback evolve.
Rather than relying solely on a traditional print revision cycle, Frog Street can use Lilypad to provide updated resources, additional guidance, and targeted instructional supports while maintaining the coherence of the core curriculum.
“We consistently hear from educators that the children in their classrooms bring tremendous variability in how they engage, communicate, learn, and demonstrate what they know,” Dr. Hammond explained. “Our responsibility is to give educators practical ways to respond to that variability without making instruction unnecessarily complicated.”
One way Frog Street supports that work is by providing clearer instructional guidance around when children may need additional support, when they are demonstrating the intended learning, and when they may be ready for greater challenge. Observable indicators can help educators make those decisions based on what children are actually doing and demonstrating during instruction.
In this way, Lilypad supports a curriculum that can continue to evolve while preserving the developmental progression, instructional intent, and coherence at its core.
Learn more about Lilypad to see how these tools show up in an educator’s daily workflow.
Built by Educators Who’ve Taught, for Educators at Every Level
Frog Street’s Chief Product Officer, Jessica Bobo, has a phrase the design team returns to often: We are unapologetically teacher-centric. That philosophy influences decisions about what belongs in a lesson, how guidance is written, what supports are provided, and how much educators should have to interpret before they can begin teaching.
Dr. Hammond explained that curriculum design must account not only for learner variability, but also for educator variability. Educators bring different levels of experience, preparation, confidence, and familiarity with particular age groups or content areas. Strong curriculum should provide enough clarity and support to help educators understand what they are teaching, why it matters, and how to move learning forward.
A Head Start administrator once shared with Dr. Hammond that she could walk into a classroom, open a Frog Street guide, and quickly understand how to begin the lesson. For Hammond, that feedback reflects an important measure of usability.
“Our goal is to be intentional about what educators need in order to implement the curriculum well. When we reduce unnecessary complexity and provide clear instructional guidance, educators have more capacity to focus on children, learning, and relationships.”
Why Frog Street in Action Shows Real Classrooms, Not Perfect Ones
An effective curriculum has to work in real classrooms. Your actual classrooms probably look nothing like a polished marketing video, and Frog Street’s in-action videos are built around that reality. They feature the classroom educators recognize: the one where a child is wandering out of their seat, and another needs gentle redirection mid-lesson.
Showing what a lesson looks like when things are imperfect, and demonstrating that the curriculum still works, builds more practical credibility than a staged performance of a perfectly executed lesson. These videos are also a direct product of educator feedback. Educators asked for real-world modeling, and Frog Street responded by embedding it into the curriculum itself.
The Measure of Good Curriculum Design
Reflecting on the Frog Street team’s ultimate goal, Dr. Hammond returned to the iceberg analogy for the design challenge she thinks about most: absorbing the complexity of curriculum-building so the educator can focus on the child.
True curriculum design isn’t measured by page count, feature lists, or overflowing resource boxes. It’s measured by whether all that invisible, expert preparation frees educators up to deliver confident, joyful instruction.
When a curriculum absorbs the background complexity, it gives educators what they need most: the space to focus on the children in front of them, no matter how standards, schedules, or staffing realities shift.
See This Thinking Show Up in Your Classroom
The design philosophy Dr. Hammond described is the structure underneath every unit your educators open. Outcomes come first. Skills build across domains and age bands. Access is built in from day one. Complexity is absorbed so educators can focus on children rather than on navigating the curriculum itself.
When those elements work together, you can bring on a new educator mid-year, walk into an unfamiliar classroom, or respond to a standards update, and the curriculum holds. That stability is what Frog Street designs toward, and what the research and review process is built to protect.
If you want to explore what this design approach could look like across your program, connect with the Frog Street team.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does starting curriculum design with outcomes instead of activities make lessons less playful?
Frog Street’s curriculum design begins with developmental and academic outcomes, then works backward to build joyful, play-based experiences that reach those goals. Every activity still needs to feel meaningful and engaging to children in the classroom. Outcomes give the destination; play remains the path educators and children take together.
How does Frog Street choose activities?
Frog Street’s team checks whether an activity supports the learning objective, fits developmental appropriateness, and aligns with Universal Design for Learning. If an activity creates instructional noise without clear purpose, it’s not included, even when it’s fun.
Does Frog Street rewrite its entire curriculum whenever a state changes its standards?
Not usually, since Frog Street designs around durable developmental competencies rather than the exact wording of one state standard. When Louisiana removed social-emotional learning language and required interpersonal skills terminology instead, the team adjusted wording rather than rebuilding the curriculum.
Can educators with different levels of experience and education implement Frog Street effectively?
Yes, that’s an intentional design goal. Frog Street builds lesson plans and educator guides so any educator, from GED to doctorate, can open the material and start teaching with confidence. The team is unapologetically educator-centric, believing that when educators’ needs are met, children and families benefit too.
What is Universal Design for Learning, and how does it change how Frog Street builds lessons?
Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is a framework that encourages designers to anticipate learner variability and reduce unnecessary barriers from the beginning. Frog Street uses this approach to consider multiple ways children can engage, access information, participate, and demonstrate their developing understanding.
UDL does not eliminate the need for individualized accommodations, specialized instruction, or additional supports. Instead, it creates a more accessible starting point so educators can focus additional support where children need it most.
