So we have tried something new! At each grade level day we have asked teachers to tell us what barriers they have to achieving our PD learning goal for the day. You all have then been amazingly honest with us about potential roadblocks or nagging questions you have about the topics we are about to cover. After reflection both Katie (DIS extraordinaire and co-presenter) and I came to the conclusion that this section has been the most helpful portion of our PD day. 

No matter what we are leading and teaching because of human variability there will always be barriers to us meeting our teaching goals. We have found such fruit from engaging you all in the process in barrier discovery and strategy development how to remove our newly identified barriers. 

Universal Design for Learning can be a daunting design process without areas of focus. Identifying barriers keeping students from learning content and determining which category they fall in (whether representation, engagement, action & expression) help keep the design process focused to the areas of highest leverage in our instructional design. Also asking your students what they see as the barriers to their achieving an instructional goal is often under tapped area of metacognition and provides both the teacher and student with valuable information on areas of focus as they relate to a topic. 

UDL is all about removing the barriers that get in the way of students achieving competency in rigorous standards and learning objectives. Spend time in PLC teams and with your students identifying where those barriers exist so that you can design ways to bring them down.