Universal Learning for Design

The Universal Design for Learning is a framework that can be used by educators alike to help improve and optimize their teaching, and the learning for all students. The framework is based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Using UDL in lesson planning, educators can help to ensure that all learners are accessing and participating in meaningful learning opportunities. Universal Design for Learning is a way to look each student, with all of their strengths, struggles, and challenges and figure out a way to best reach them at their level by differentiating instruction. It is all about choice. The more choice students are given to showcase their strengths the more engagement you will have.  

The UDL framework is split into vertical and horizontal guidelines that are meant to be mixed and matched in order to help educators to foster students who are "resourceful and knowledgeable, strategic and goal-directed, and purposeful and motivated." 

The guidelines include the three principles of UDL which are engagement, representation, action and expression, access, build, and internalize. 

Principle 1: Providing multiple means of engagement is a crucial element to all learning that takes place. All students learn differently and are motivated in a variety of ways. There is no cookie cutter student, so we must provide multiple options of engagement to ensure that all students' needs are being met. 

Principle 2:  Providing multiple means of representation is principle 2. It is based on on the fact that learners differ in the ways that they perceive and comprehend information that is presented to them. Students approach content differently, so multiple representations should be used.

Principle 3: Providing multiple means of action and expression means learners differ in the ways that they can navigate a learning environment and express what they know. Action and expression also require a massive amount of strategy, practice, and organization. 

After reviewing the framework, I realized that I am already using and practicing many of these guidelines on my own in my classroom already because they are considered best practice.

 Some of these best practices that I've already been implementing into my classroom include: 

           

Engagement

 

Checkpoint 7.1: Optimize Individual Choice and Autonomy

         I utilize technology and choice boards often in my classroom. I give students choices on how they want to attack a project or an assignment. I will give them guidelines on what must be in their assignment however what program they want to use and how they want to create their final product is completely up to them. They can choose whatever technology application they would prefer such as Adobe Spark, Padlet, Flipgrid, Piktochart, Screencastomatic, Pixton, Podbean or create a hard copy of a final product such as a pamphlet, poster, book, or a flyer. 

Checkpoint 7.2: Optimize Relevance, Value, and Authenticity

         Each year the students participate in Genius Hour where they pick topics and ideas that they want to learn more about. They focus on how it impacts their community,  how their topic/project change or effect the world. It is relative to their lives and their interests. I also teach the GT class, so they also have a GT project that they work on all year that focuses on their interests and passions in life. 

Checkpoint 7.3: Minimize Threats and Distractions

         Something I strive for each year is creating a safe classroom environment where all students enjoy coming to and feel important every day. We have a routine that we follow daily, so all of the students know what to expect. There are rarely surprises, and if our day may look a little different then the students are notified first thing that morning. In order to ensure that all students participate in discussion I try the popsicle stick method to ensure all students have been called on, and I've even tried the Wheel of Names.

Checkpoint 8.1: Heighten Salience of Goals and Objectives

         When giving lessons, we have the learning objective and success criteria that we discuss daily. As we are discussing the lesson I regularly ask the students to tell me what we are learning, why are we learning it, how will we know that we were successful in learning that skill. Students are also responsible for creating goals each nine week and monitoring their progress each week in their data binders. The goal can be anything that is related to school i.e. behavior, attendance, grades, study time etc. Each week I check in with them, and they do a progress update to hold themselves accountable for their progress with their goal.

Checkpoint 8.2: Vary Demands and Resources to Optimize Challenge

           I create a lot of blended learning experiences where my students are able to work through a unit at their own pace. I give them videos, discussion posts, check ins, assessments, and last but not least a final product of their own choice to create. This allows for differentiation because students move at their own pace and because their responses are open-ended, it really pushes them to strive to be the best. 

Checkpoint 8.3: Foster Collaboration and Community

           In my classroom, students are constantly working with partners and groups. Each week we would have book clubs. I had six different groups reading six different books that were appropriate for their reading level. Each week they would read through a specific number of chapters, complete their job role sheets daily, and then on Fridays they would participate in a book talk. Each person would present their findings for the week, and they would all discuss collectively. They would then use a rubric and checklist to determine how they did as a group and individually for the week. We do a lot with turn and talk partners throughout the day as well as partner or group projects/assignments. 

Representation

Checkpoint 1.1: Offer Ways of Customizing Displays of Information

Checkpoint 1.2: Offer Alternatives for Auditory Information

Checkpoint 1.3: Offer Alternatives for Visual Information

          In my classroom each day I incorporate all three of these checkpoints into my teaching. As I am talking, we are taking notes as a class that include different colors, font styles, and even illustrations/diagrams. Students hear the information as well as visual the information when illustrations, graphs, or charts are created.

Checkpoint 2.5: Illustrate Through Multiple Media

          In my classroom we utilize notetaking, discussion, as well as creating songs and dances for my kinesthetic learners. We go through the notes and discussion first then I teach them the song and movements to go with it. For example, The Writing Process, The Weathering Song, Expository, and we often draw illustrations of the various concept to help the students connect easier.

Checkpoint 3.1: Activate or Supply Background Knowledge

           Each day we start our lesson off with completing a Quick Write. This is 2-3 minutes where I tell students what we are going to be learning about today. Then I ask them what they know about a specific concept. They must write the entire time giving me definitions, drawing pictures, giving examples etc. If they are unsure, they must make an educated guess. This is to gauge what the students know. At the end of the lesson the students participate in a Quick Write Summary where they have 2-3 minutes to tell me everything they now know about that same topic. Throughout the lesson I make cross-curricular connections as well as real-world connections in order for the students to understand better.

Action and Expression

Checkpoint 5.2: Use Multiple Tools for Construction and Composition

           It is imperative each year that my students are able to use a dictionary and a thesaurus correctly. We work with dictionary skills, and the students are encouraged all year to use these resources on a daily basis whenever they are unsure of how to spell a word. Each day when taking notes for the Quick Write and Quick Write Summaries I provide sentence starters for the students to think about and use in their writing. Students are also given math manipulatives to use both in class and at home.

Checkpoint 6.3: Facilitate Managing Information and Resources

           Every day when we take notes in all subject areas the notes are set up the same way. The students know what to expect and are familiar with how to complete note-taking because they have mine as an example to view however the students are used to the structure for note-taking. The students have data binders that they are responsible for keeping up with throughout the year. It has graphs, forms, and trackers for the students to utilize and keep track of their grades and progress throughout the year. Students are also given graphic organizers in their notes such as main idea, the writing process (Kernel Essay) graphic organizer etc. in order to help them stay organized and complete any of the work successfully by utilizing these graphic organizers to solve the problem or answer the question.

Checkpoint 6.4: Enhance Capacity for Monitoring Progress

          We use checklists and rubrics on almost all assignments in the classroom. Students are constantly engaging in peer feedback during the TAG protocol (Tell me three things you like. Ask any questions you may have or get clarification. Give suggestions on how to improve.) The students would use these protocol on any assignments, but especially during the writing process and when assessing someone else's project or work.

Although I do implement these guidelines into my classroom currently, I have definitely not mastered them with all of  their complexity yet. I would like to focus on these checkpoints and master them in my classroom this year. I did notice that my weakest principle is Representation, so this leads me into the right direction of knowing where to start.

Checkpoint 8.4: Increase Mastery-Oriented Feedback

Checkpoint 9.2: Facilitate Personal Coping Skills and Strategies

Checkpoint 2.1: Clarify Vocabulary and Symbols

Checkpoint 2.2: Clarify Syntax and Structure

Checkpoint 2.3: Support Decoding of Text, Mathematical Notation, and Symbols

Checkpoint 3.4: Maximize Transfer and Generalization

Some of these guidelines and checkpoints look great however I do feel as though I will need more guidance and support when implementing them into the classroom because they are things I don't feel as confident with. 

Checkpoint 5.3: Build Fluencies With Graduated Levels of Support for Practice and Performance

         Learners must develop a variety of fluencies (e.g., visual, audio, mathematical, reading, etc.).Curricula should offer alternatives in the degrees of freedom available, with highly scaffolded and supported opportunities provided for some and wide degrees of freedom for others who are ready for independence.I feel like I would need a lot of clarification on what this would look like especially the differentiated scaffolding techniques. What would this look like for each individual student in my classroom? Most of the time curriculum does not offer these specific resources, so I feel like it would be a huge challenge to take on.

Checkpoint 9.2: Facilitate Personal Coping Skills and Strategies

        Providing a model of self-regulatory skills is not sufficient for most learners. They will need sustained apprenticeships that include scaffolding. Reminders, models, checklists, and so forth can assist learners in choosing and trying an adaptive strategy for managing and directing their emotional responses to external events (e.g., strategies for coping with anxiety-producing social settings or for reducing task-irrelevant distracters) or internal events (e.g., strategies for decreasing rumination on depressive or anxiety-producing ideation). I feel as though I have seen BIPs in action and created checklists for my behavior students however I would like to do it better. I need more options and more ideas from the counselor.

I feel like something that I would really like to research further and gain more knowledge about is determining the needs of each student group and how I could best reach each child by providing more differentiated learning opportunities. We always hear the word differentiated instruction, but I feel as though I could use more examples of what this means and what this would look like in a classroom/library setting. How do I ensure that each of my students is being successful and that I am reaching them according to the UDL Standards. I have attached some resources all about differentiation. 

Guido, M. (2020, May 25). 20 Differentiated Instruction Strategies & Examples: Prodigy. Retrieved July 29, 2020, from https://www.prodigygame.com/blog/differentiated-instruction-strategies-examples-download/

Tomlinson, C. A. (August, 2000). Differentiation of Instruction in the Elementary Grades. 

          ERIC Digest.  ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

Miller, A. (2016, January 08). 6 Strategies for Differentiated Instruction in Project-Based Learning. Retrieved July 29, 2020, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-strategies-pbl-andrew-miller

What Is Differentiated Instruction? (n.d.). Retrieved July 29, 2020, from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/what-differentiated-instruction/

What is Differentiated Instruction? Examples and Strategies: Resilient Educator. (2020, July 02). Retrieved July 29, 2020, from https://resilienteducator.com/classroom-resources/examples-of-differentiated-instruction/