Last summer I attended a very informative seminar about UDL at Harvard. It would be a great opportunity for someone from your UDL teams to learn a lot more about UDL and bring back new ideas to everyone else. It is July 7 – 11, 2008, in Boston.
Check it out at (scroll way down the page): http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/k12/index.html
Tina
Please tell us about some of the students in the class(es) where you will be teaching the standard you evaluated last week. Consider how you think these students will perform using the methods you are planning to use to teach the standard. Tell us about the specific barriers they will face and how you plan to help them overcome those barriers. Remember that you can get help with analyzing the curriculum for barriers at the CAST web site’s Curriculum Barriers Finder (http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/curriculumbarriers.cfm).
Please consider as you are planning alternative teaching methods that they should be available for all of the students, not just the ones you decide need them. You may find some students who previously faced barriers to the curriculum are now able to complete assignments without any additional supports, while some may need additional supports. And, some students who are doing average, passing work begin to really shine when they are given some choices for completing assignments. Sometimes we don’t realize barriers exist for a student until we give them a choice in how to do things and see them succeed by doing things a bit differently.
If you have questions you would like to ask our group for ideas to overcome the barriers, please ask them. I think we will all be amazed at the wonderful ideas other people can come up with when we feel like we are completely out of answers.
Tina
Beginning with this chapter, we will be starting to focus more specifically on how we will begin to use the UDL principles as we work with our students. It may seem a bit overwhelming, but if we start with small steps, I’m expecting that it will become more manageable.
As a team, choose one Indiana state standard that you want to focus on. Then, decide what the standard’s true purpose is (recognition goals, strategic goals or affective goals) and decide if the standard focuses on learning to learn through the UDL processes. If not, how could it be modified to be more in line with UDL? (Don’t forget to check out CAST’s web site for help setting goals at http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/udlgoalsetter.cfm.)
I’d like to see some feedback on:
I am putting a link to the Indiana state standards in the Blogroll to the right. They can be found at http://www.indianastandardsresources.org/
NOTE: This chapter mentions a program from CAST called eTrekker on pages 100-104. This was a pilot software program several years ago and is no longer available from CAST. There is a similar program available, called netTrekker (http://www.nettrekker.com/), that offers subscriptions for schools.
Tina
