Original Objective: Students will study the water cycle by reading the chapter in the text and write a 1 page report in cursive.
Barriers within this objective: Students must be able to read and de-code text on their own. This prohibits those with lower reading levels, visual impairments, and ELL's from accessing the information. The assessment, requires that students must write, and do so in cursive. This restricts those with physical disabilities, or language disabilities from properly displaying their learning.
UDL Objective: Students will learn about the water cycle and present their learning.
UDL Solution to barriers: Simply stating that students will learn about the water cycle allows us to provide them with multiple forms of media to learn it from. they can use text books, digital text books with text to speech options, videos, powerpoints, lecture, etc. This way students can access the information in the form that is easiest and most appropriate for them as individuals. Changing the assessment part to just present their learning will allow students to display what they actually know instead of how well they can convey their learning in writing. Students can now give an oral report, write a report, draw a model, make a video, or use any other form of display that shows their actual knowledge about the water cycle.
This model is not currently used in my field placement, but would be very useful. The class I report to each day is made up of diverse learners. I know that they each have a certain learning style, because I gave them a survey at the beginning of the semester. I also know that our class of 22 students is made up of students with learning disabilities, autism, students who are poor readers, students who are ELL's and students who are gifted and talented. when you have such a variety of learners, it is important that they all get information in a way that is appropriate for their abilities and learning styles. In the upcoming week I will begin planning with my CT to co-teach on Tuesdays. During this planning I am going to discuss with my CT the benefits of using the UDL model and see if she will allow me to implement some of these strategies. I hope that doing this will have a positive affect on the learning in our classroom.