Implementing UDL
When teachers design lessons using the UDL principles, they "need to consider how to effectively teach content or skills to a classroom of learners with different abilities and learning preferences. This requires teachers to be flexible in the way they present and teach information and to offer their students options in the learning environment" (IRIS Center, Retrieved 5 May 2015).
There are different resources, programs, tools, and materials that can be used as you begin to implement UDL in your teaching. These resources can help you to be flexible in meeting the needs of your learners.
Below, we present resources to support you in two areas: curricular design and assessment methods.
Below, we present resources to support you in two areas: curricular design and assessment methods.
Curriculum
Within the UDL framework, curriculum is understood as the relationship between four components: goals, methods, materials, and assessments. Read the article below to learn more about these four components.
Follow this link to the IRIS Center's Module on UDL. On the page, you can access a short recording from David Rose, as he talks about the four components of the curriculum and how they are related.
You may also find this document, taken from the Access Project at Colorado State University, helpful in understanding how UDL shapes the four different components of the curriculum. This UDL Quick Tips guide provides practical and useful tips for designing and selecting your objectives and benchmarks, instructional materials, teaching methods, and assessment methods to support UDL principles in the classroom.
Using the UDL Educator's Checklist will help you plan the curriculum responding to the UDL principles while developing activities for each lesson. Use this link to access the document in an interactive form, which allows you to explore the checklist in greater detail and access more information about each principle, guideline, and checkpoint. Especially helpful are the concrete strategies and suggestions you can find by clicking on any of the checkpoints on the checklist.
In addition, the document below allows you to have access and print the checklist to use it as a guide to help you incorporate all the guidelines and benefit all students through the best instructional practices.
In addition, the document below allows you to have access and print the checklist to use it as a guide to help you incorporate all the guidelines and benefit all students through the best instructional practices.
udl-guidelines-educator-checklist.pdf | |
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Finally, when planning your curriculum, be sure to consider the three brain networks and how the lesson can flexibly adapt to the diverse needs in a classroom.
Assessments
Using different options of resources and tools for instruction calls for the need of different assessment methods. Here are some links to help you understand the importance of creating differentiated evaluation resources that respond to each student's needs.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework based on research in the learning sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, that guides the development of flexible learning environments that can accommodate individual learning differences.
Recognizing that the way individuals learn can be unique, the UDL framework, first defined by David H. Rose, Ed.D. of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Center for Applied Special Technology(CAST) in the 1990s, calls for creating curriculum from the outset that provides:
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