So I was sitting with a coworker prepping a set of slides on UDL that we have co-present together and she crushed me in the best way. She told me that as is, the UDL guidelines are hard for her to access. She also went on to tell me (the UDL guy) that this representation should be more universally designed. HA! And she was right! I dusted off my ego and her and I went to work creating a more meaningful template for folks to use to get a basic understanding of the UDL guidelines. Here is what we came up with so far. This fun little handout gives the goal for each of the UDL core principals. Use this as a support when you are designing your lessons. Remember engagement is the most important facet of your instruction so it is the largest block of our graphic. Representation is what we as teachers do to represent concepts so that students can understanding them, hence the large person icon. Action and Expression is what our students provide us in showing what they learned or which strategy they used in their path to a solution, hence the small person icon. Remember for a deep dive into the guidelines visit the UDL guidelines website. UDL continues to build traction across Sanger Unified. Thanks everyone as you continue to take risks and try new things for the betterment of kids!
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It has been a big few months! Our UDL pilots are in full swing and preparing for their end of the year share out in the spring, more and more non-UDL pilots are experimenting with Universal Design for Learning, and we even had a Universally Designed Science Fair project show up at this year's science fair! #SAC4throcks As early as it may seem to start thinking about next year, we have been asking our pilots many probing questions about the future of our UDL rollout. Here is what we know so far:
What's up folks! Hopefully you all have moved past any food induced comas from the Thanksgiving and are ready to be back in action! Today our blog focuses on creating assessments that measure your goal. If you need a refresher on goal setting view our previous blog below.
need to be challenged. Think about providing options that incorporate technology. Think about choices that vary response options (voice, typing, handwriting, creative expression). Keep in mind that there is no set number of options for students in how they can express their understanding. For some goals the options maybe fairly limited and for some goals the options may be endless. Consider also giving your students an open ended option where they can hear the non-negotiables of a goal and brainstorm their own ideas for how they can show their understanding.
The action & expression guidelines and checkpoints are your friend here. Have fun and be prepared to be surprised by what your students show you about themselves as you give them more autonomy. Check out this awesome video from John Wash 2nd grade! The goal was for students to properly use adverbs. The teachers gave them the options to write or speak sentences that contained adverbs. The sentence had to have an adverb and have it in the proper place in the sentence. #rememberthegoal The foundations of Universal Design for Learning have almost been taught to every teacher in Sanger Unified School District. Now comes the hard part, the application of those foundations into the day to day of school instruction. The sense we are getting is that teachers are eager to "see" UDL, but do not always know exactly where to start. So lets talk about it and see if we can find some practical examples of places to start! Over the next few weeks the blog will focus on those specific practices, trying to drill down to practical levels as we "show" UDL in the plan clothes of instruction. This week we are focusing on goal setting. Goal Setting
Sanger Unified is committed to the vision that “All students will have the options to demonstrate what they learn and the opportunities to be successful and achieve their dreams!” Universal Design for learning is a framework and lens that supports our vision. Bringing UDL to a place in which teachers are creating the buzz and drive behind implementation has been a powerful result of thoughtful and intentional design. The intention behind our efforts of scaling out UDL was not to create a top down new initiative that teachers and leaders would implement out of compliance and only while monitored, it was to create and foster a mindset of accessibility~“that what is necessary for a few is really great for all!”
The roll-out was a two-prong approach. One prong was designed to engage teachers in learning while doing, playing and creating, and following the process and lead of the teachers and their students. We created this by opening up the opportunity for grade level PLCs throughout the district that were interested in playing with the UDL Principles and guidelines. Working with these initial 8 pilots, we met throughout the year as a PLC team. Between PLC meetings, we would meet with individual PLCs to support and answer questions specific to their needs. During this time PLCs were encourage to select a Principal they were interested in exploring and guidelines they wanted to work at implementing. The process and implementation were non-evaluative PLC teams were encouraged to take risks, learn from failure or mis-steps, and share transparently the successes and pitfalls of working within the UDL lens or frame works. We were intentional in creating an atmosphere and culture of trust within the Pilot PLC so learning was free to occur. The second prong was to engage the site leadership in the process. This involved front loading information and an understanding of UDL through District Principal PLC’s, Administrative Retreats, and other informal opportunities to discuss UDL and status of the pilots, as well as training side-by-side with their Pilot PLCs. This allowed Principals to share in the learning process yet also to share a collective understanding of UDL and how it was being implemented through across the district. Sanger’s UDL roll-out has been thoughtful and intentional by design. UDL is being introduced through Curriculum and Instruction to emphasise it’s a best practice and is for ALL students. The selection of a small pilot group was designed to allow for nurturing of the implementation practice and support for the pilots, as well as, create a safe PLC in which participants would share the ups and challenges of designing and implementing UDL. Our success in creating a mindshift is indicated by the number of new PLCs wanting to become pilots and the interest other staff members are having in learning more about UDL!
We've all got problems. Some big and some little. Some appropriate for our UDL News blog and some probably not appropriate. Universal Design for Learning is a helpful way to design solutions to problems. This year our pilot teams will be using the design lens of UDL to solve everyday problems team members experience when teaching concepts and when students are in educational environments. We need to reshape our thinking when we experience educational problems. Rather then avoiding difficulty (hard concepts, new ideas, failed prototypes, challenging students, and challenging situations), we need to see those experiences as opportunities to learn and grow. Educators are some of the greatest problem solvers of all, working to solve the problems of ignorance, misinformation, and lost opportunities for students to achieve. UDL pilot teams this year will select one academic problem and one environmental problem to use Universal Design for Learning to solve. These problems are meant to be real lift situations and experiences. We really want these to be problems that team members were going to have to find solutions for whether they were in the UDL pilot or not. One reason for UDL"s propelling instructional designer's to success in solving challenging problems is UDL starts with a user focus. Because we have to start with the belief that all humans have an affective filter that assigns meaning to events and situations they experience, Universal Designers have to start with thinking of solutions that are relevant to their end users. We start with lessons that put our selves in the shoes of our students. We think about their experiences, cares, interests, and fears. And when brainstorming instructional ideas as possible avenues to student success, we then are continually going back to our student perspective to design whether that idea will work and to what degree it will work. Universal Design for Learning also makes for a safe place to come up with new ideas and solution. We do not have to be weighed down by the fear of having the very best representation or the best assessment because we are assuming there are no perfect "one size fits all" solutions to our students learning, environmental, and/or behavioral needs. We are starting with the belief that there will be multiple pathways to a solution. This year in Sanger we will be solving so many problems. Our students will be supported in so many fantastic ways. Universal Design for Learning will help us shape our conversations and get us focused on the real "stories" our students are living, but it isn't where the solutions will come from, those come from us, our teams, and our kiddos. I can't wait! |
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