Universal Design for Learning
Classroom Scenarios

Educators who are knowledgeable about Universal Design for learning (UDL) are becoming skilled in reshaping curricula to make it accessible to all students. Making use of powerful computer technologies, they are creating classroom activities that meet a wider range of learning needs so that all students can access curricular content and demonstrate their progress.

Goals

An initial step in applying UDL is to identify and remove barriers in the curriculum. Standards may spell out what students need to learn, but on closer examination, one can often see that measuring “what” is learned can be impeded by unclear goals, which define “how” that goal is to be achieved, thereby excluding certain numbers of learners. Thus it is essential when defining the goal to separate the means for reaching it from the goal itself.

In his high school history class, Mr. Jenkins is asked to implement the following standard: “By the end of this unit, every student will read chapter two in the textbook and will write an essay on the origins of the Civil War.” Yet he knows that students who struggle to read and write will be at a disadvantage from the outset in demonstrating their knowledge. Those whose disabilities make decoding text difficult or make it hard to organize an essay may not even be able to participate.

The UDL framework provides Mr. Jenkins with a means to rethink the unit goal, analyze its true intent, and adjust how the goal is articulated to refocus attention on the content rather than on the methods used to express that knowledge. Is reading a printed text the only way to acquire the information? Is it important that students demonstrate what they know in a particular medium—writing an essay—or are there other ways to communicate their understanding?

Establishing a clear goal helps Mr. Jenkins determine how to develop flexible learning environments that open the door for more students' participation and success. For example, a UDL goal for the Civil War unit may be restated to say that “By the end of the Civil War unit, all students will demonstrate an understanding of the origins of the Civil War.”

Methods and Materials

José, a 5th-grade Spanish-English bilingual student who reads at the third-grade level, is reading the Thinking Reader digital version of “Snake and Eagle,” a Native American legend that is part of his school’s grade-level required curriculum. This universally designed, technology-based approach to reading instruction, combines research-based strategy supports, text-to-speech decoding support, and glossary definitions to provide rich reading comprehension supports for different levels of mastery.

Reading in English is still a challenge for José, so when he encounters an unfamiliar word, he has the text-to-speech feature read the word aloud to him, then clicks on the word to get a definition and an accompanying image. He accesses the computer-agent coach, who can speak in Spanish or English, to get a vocabulary strategy tip that points him to a synonym that he may be more familiar with. Periodically, the text prompts him to stop and think about the story and to use one of the strategies he is learning, such as predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarizing. Summary writing is difficult for José, so he clicks on his computer-agent coach to get some help. He types his summary in the response box and sends it to an online work log that stores his work for his teacher to review. The following week, José and his teacher decide he is ready to move to a less structured level of support—one that will help him move toward more independent use of strategies while he is reading.

Dan is a seven-year-old boy with Down Syndrome. He has very basic reading skills. He knows his alphabet and can decode simple words. But most of his reading instruction has been of the drill-and-practice type and he has never read a story book. Ms. Lindhall, his teacher who has a degree in general education, decides to have Dan try a universally designed Digital Picture Book.

Today, Dan will read Hide and Seek (Brown & Carey) on the computer. Before reading, Dan and Ms. Lindhall watch a video of children playing hide-and-seek—the video is embedded in the Digital Picture Book—so Dan will have a better idea what the game involves. Dan has never played hide and seek. After watching, Dan and Ms. Lindhall talk about what they’ve seen.

Now Dan is ready to read. Ms. Lindhall sets the UDL-based Picture Book to provide greatest amount of support possible. As he reads, he is prompted to make predictions about what might happen next, or to reflect on what he’s read and answer a question about it. Ms. Lindhall sees how this level of support scaffolds Dan’s ability to successfully create his prediction. She begins to think about how she can apply this same strategy to some of the other curriculum in her classroom. Dan will begin using. When Dan needs extra help with unfamiliar words, he knows that if he clicks on a word, the computer will read it aloud. Dan becomes increasingly excited as he realizes that the words and sentences and pages he’s reading are telling a story, and his anticipation of “what comes next” grows. Dan is reading and understanding what he reads. As his teacher monitors his progress with the aid of built-in tools that capture data about Dan’s reading, she gradually decreases the levels of support he receives. Eventually, supports will be withdrawn so that Dan can read the book independently, as many of his peers do.

Assessments

In Ms. Garcia’s 6th-grade classroom, students are asked to become experts on ancient Mesopotamia and share their knowledge with the class. They are given a variety of choices in how to accomplish this. They take this responsibility very seriously and committed to research and present information to the best of their ability. Suddenly ancient Mesopotamia, a potentially dull and unconnected subject for middle-schoolers, elicits immense enthusiasm.

Students work in groups and individually write newspaper articles, write, direct and film television news programs, perform puppet shows and plays, create posters or write research papers, then presented their work to the class. Providing choices in expression gives students more opportunity and incentive to develop expert products, thereby becoming more active as learners.

Prepared by CAST (www.cast.org)
© CAST, 2007