Thinking UDL: Universal Design for Learning

Last January I blogged about my reflections following reading: New Directions in Education: Eliminating Ableism in Policy and Practice by Thomas Hehir. The following thoughts stuck with me and guided my practice over the past year.

• Hehir defines ableism as ” deeply held negative attitudes toward disability that are analogous to racism”.

Then I looked up “racism” according to Merriam-Webster racism is:

• “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”.
  
  YIKES!! if we superimpose ableism onto racism that is frightening!!!!
  

• In his book Hehir encourages educators to carefully consider each student individually rather than as a group of people with similar traits and capacities.

• Hehir recommends that educators to consider all planning for students with disabilities through the lens of: minimizing the impact of the disability while maximizing the child’s ability to participate.

I have moved forward since with Hehir’s thoughts and Universal Design for Learning as a lens. So much has happened over the past year some of which you can read about in the other posts on my blog but one thing that has stuck out for me…

Someone told me that all the things I am currently researching and advocating (Universal Design for Learning, accessibility, inclusion……..) are just another swing of the educational pendulum (you know the one).

This comment always makes me stop to think…

I have come to the conclusion, however, that Universal Design for Learning cannot be a swing of the pendulum … a flash in the pan … Universal Design for learning is to education what Universal Design has been to architecture — the impetus behind constructing buildings that are physically accessible to all. Are we going to suddenly go back on that?

It may be a pendulum swing but it is not one that can swing back. Will we stop constructing sidewalks with curb cuts? Will we no longer provide closed captioning? Once we begin to redesign learning activities to accommodate the need of all students it will not be possible to reverse because it is about human rights.

At the Learning Assistance Teachers Association (LATA) conference in October of 2008 David Rose talked about the “moral imperative” to provide accessibility. Because we have the technology to provide accessibility it is incumbent on us as educators to provide it.

Ableism is about expecting all people to look, act, and be the same. Our strengths are in our diversity. My favorite video illustration of this is Animal School. Here is the you tube version:

(A clearer version of this video can be found at: http://www.raisingsmallsouls.com/)

We all have our strengths - let’s celebrate them!!!

Thanks Diary of a Goldfish for the focus on combating Disablism - I am eager to read all the other bloggers’ posts!!

Today I spoke at the CASE (Council of Administrators of Special Education) conference. I was thrilled to have been asked to be a part of this conference and very much enjoyed sharing the exciting things that have been happening in Coquitlam. I based most of what I said on my previous blog posts ”How UDL has changed my job” post and my “UDL Success” post. The most important messages I wanted to share during this presentation were:

• Our appreciation and thanks to the BC Ministry of Education and to SET BC for their role in bringing the UDL movement to BC. We are very excited to be a part of this shift in paradigm.
• That this project is perfectly timed with a change in the questions educators are asking about technology. In the past educators questioned “why” and “should we” use technology in education. Now educators are asking “what?” and “how?”. Universal Design for Learning provides a framework within which teachers can make informed decisions about the use of technological tools to help students succeed at school
• The amazing progress our students have made in gaining reading skills since we began the project, and what we believe to be the reason for their success.

I uploaded the presentation slides to SlideShare:

Click the like above to view and/or download this presentation on SlideShare.

The blogs / web resources I referred to in my presentation were:

• SET BC’s BCUDL site
• BC UDL Project Wiki
• BC UDL LOR (Learning Objects Repository) - a growing collections of Universally designed lessons
• BC UDL Weblinks - links to a variety of resources including Smartboards
• David Rose - LATA Presentation October 2008 - Marlborough Elem. Burnaby
• Ira Socol’s site: SpeEd Change - His Toolbelt Theory is a must read for all educators
• Paul Hamilton’s Wiki - udl4all - Great collection of freeware and web based tools for classrooms
• Paul Hamilton’s Blog - Free Resources from the Net for (Special) Education
• UDL4All Ning ~ Join the UDL Conversation!!
• Lisa’s Lingo: The Successful Inclusion Program
• “Kate Says” Blog ~ read her post and the replies: “Power of a Word”
• Our Smartboard Forum site

This list includes both people I follow many of whom also follow my twitter updates. It is a great way to keep track of what is going on internationally in your area of interest. I mostly follow people who are interested in UDL, Special Education, Educational Technology, and Accessibility. Twitter is a great way to learn!!

Get your twitter mosaic here.

The process of transforming the way we work with our students is gradual. One of the first things we have been working on is moving away from the ‘resource room’ model where kids who are not reading/writing at grade level miss classroom instruction to be involved in extra instruction to work on their areas of weakness. We continued pulling kids but only in short-term focus groups set up for a specific purpose (this term it was phonemic awareness). Some kids who are on our support list did not need this group so the only support they received was to monitor their progress. Interesting thing - all of the kids who received in-class only support made great progress since their last assessment. Below are my musings about why this may have happened…

I used a series of tests but the most exciting results were in reading. Many of the students have made more progress than would be expected over the time period measured. Some made more than a year’s progress since the last assessment.

This is far more impressive progress than we typically see for this subgroup of students. It really got me thinking about what we have been doing differently as we work towards developing Universally Designed learning activities for our students.

In the past we have determined which students needed support and have pulled them out a few times each week to work on helping them acquire the skills they are missing (we were trying to ‘fix’ them). During the pull-out time I taught various things - reading, phonemic awareness, sight-word practice, writing, etc. etc. etc. This year we are providing support for these students quite differently…

Short-term Pull-out groups with a purpose

When we wrote our students’ IEPs in October we noticed a subgroup of students at the grade 4 and 5 level who lacked phonemic awareness. Being that this is a skill that they would not naturally receive support for within their classrooms, we determined that a pull-out program was necessary. I instructed these students using the Vowel Circle (part of Lindamood-Bell’s LiPS program which has a strong research base). The group meets about 3x per week but is scheduled daily so we can skip so they don’t miss special classroom activities.

Most of the students who have been involved in this group are currently demonstrating an improved understanding of sound-letter relationships. Some of them are spontaneously beginning to apply these skills while others are not yet. In the next term students who need this type of support will be involved in a small group which will learn to apply the Vowel Circle to reading and spelling.

In Class Support

What was most interesting to me about the progress made by our students was that many of the students who made the largest gains received only occasionally pull-out support to monitor their progress. How do we account for the success of these students???

Accessibility

Classroom teachers are working collaboratively (with special ed teachers and other classroom teachers) to build supports into their lessons in order to make the learning experiences are accessible.

Using Technology as a tool

Our teachers and students are experimenting with a variety of software tools (much of it freeware) to ensure that students are able to access the curriculum (see Paul Hamilton’s blog “Free Resources from the Net for Special Education“). For example, if we are working on comprehension within a story, students who are not able to decode at grade level may use a text reader so that they can participate fully in the learning activities.

Visual Information & Background Knowledge

Many of our students’ Psycho-educational testing recommends that they be provided with visual information along with verbal, and/or that they be provided with background information. This has become so much easier to do through the use of technology. The teachers of these students use their Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) strategically to embed the visual information and background information the students require into their lessons.

Joint Attention

I also believe that many students with diverse learning needs benefit from the ‘joint attention’ environment the IWBs create which increase the likelihood that all students are attending to the salient details within the lesson.

Class Size

In our district staffing is allocated to each school based on a funding formula. Schools then determine how much will be used for classroom teachers and how much will be used for student support ‘resource room’ type services. This year we decided to put as much staffing as possible into classroom teacher positions in order to reduce class sizes. This year our grade 4 and 5 classrooms average 23 students (they are usually up around 30). While this greatly reduced the amount of learning assistance / resource support classroom teachers could expect, it provided them with more time to support students within the classroom setting.

Shift in Paradigm (for teachers and students)

I truly believe that the most powerful change we have made is the message we have communicated to our students. In the past we have inadvertently taught our students with diverse learning needs that the instruction they needed to be successful could not be found in the same learning environment or be provided by the same teacher as their peers. What they needed was special instruction provided in an alternate setting.

Our students are now learning that their teachers can teach them, and that they can learn throughout the day in their classroom alongside their peers. They are learning that there are tools they can use to in order to access the curriculum. They are learning that being different and doing things differently is not just acceptable, but that it is encouraged by their teachers. They are learning that they are valued and supported members of their classroom and their school. They are learning that they belong.

The next steps on our UDL Journey…

What about the kids who are not making great progress?

While the data in the graphs of our students’ reading achievement indicate overall success, there are students that have not made much progress. For those students we must continue to experiment in order to find effective tools for them, and effective interventions.

Short-term Pull-out groups

Many of the students now understand phonemic awareness but need assistance to apply their knowledge. A group has been formed that will focus on applying the Vowel Circle to spelling and reading.

Project-Based Learning & Self-Directed Learning

We have focused on and made great progress in providing our learners with Multiple Means of Representation, and Multiple Means of Engagement,  we are now investigating methods for providing Multiple Means of Expression. One of our teachers has been involved in a District learning team investigating Project-Based Learning and she is sharing what she has learned with us. Others are investigating Self-Directed Learning models. It will be exciting to see where this takes us next…

The process is gradual but it is nice to see some success in our first few steps!!

As a staff we decided that one of the first things we would do when we began to design Universally Designed lessons was to ensure that we were clearly stating our Learning Intention to our students at the beginning of each lesson. Some of our teachers now write the learning intention for each of their lessons beside their daily agenda on their board. Teachers who are using Interactive Whiteboards build their first slide as their learning intention slide. I wanted to share two things I have discovered as a result of doing this:

My first discovery is a bit embarrassing but here goes… I always thought (assumed) what I was teaching was obvious. I wasn’t convinced that simply stating the learning intention would make a great deal of difference. One day I was teaching phonemic awareness to a small group but hadn’t planned ahead to discuss the learning intention. On the fly I decided to do this. One problem… I quickly realized that I was unable to articulate it in a way that would make sense to my students. I realized at that moment that the lesson I had planned did not have a clear intention, that I was actually intending to teach my students a whole bunch of things. Being that I work with students with learning disabilities who have not been able to gain phonemic awareness from classroom lessons, I instantly knew this could not go well. This was the turning point for me in my understanding of backward design - beginning with the end in mind. After all - how can we expect to get to our destination if we are not clear about where we are going. 

My second discovery has been about how clearly articulated learning intentions make it easier to make adaptations for students when necessary. One of our students has autism. He is currently on an adapted program (he is working towards the same learning outcomes as his classmates but may need to learn and show his understanding differently). Adaptations have been far easier since his teacher has begun adding the learning intention to the classroom agenda. When I walked in to work with this student the other day the class was working on a math sheet. Because I had missed the lesson, the worksheet the students were using made no sense to me. Being that this student is not currently able to make sense of verbal instructions, the lesson had probably not have made much sense to him either. Luckily the learning intention was to ‘make things balance’. I quickly found a balance scale and some cubes and got him involved in adding cubes into the baskets until the scales balanced. His activity looked quite different from his classmates’ activity, but he was still working towards the same learning intention. Had the learning intention not have been stated I would have had difficulty determining an appropriate adaptation. In an attempt to accommodate this student I may have selected a different aspect of the task to focus on. 

In a perfect UDL world the teacher and I would have met prior to the lesson, discussed the activity, determined the barriers within the lesson for learners including this one, and found ways to remove the barriers. In our world where on-the-fly happens more often than we care to admit, the simple act of articulating the learning intention makes a huge difference for our learners.

This is an excellent tool at: http://bookbuilder.cast.org/ to make your own accessible texts.

This was created (very simply!!) in Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/. This would be a fun project for kids using their name and descriptors about themselves. It was simple and fun to play with.

This is rough - just messing around but it only took me 15 minutes to put together.

Cool!!

I am a student services teacher who programs for students with a variety of special learning needs including learning disabilities, autism, cerebral palsy, etc. UDL has turned how we plan for our students upside down.

In the past I tried to keep up with what the teachers were doing and plan a program for the students I worked with that was somewhat related to what they were doing. Keeping up with such a variety of programs was exhausting and sometime around December (okay November) I lost track of the classroom programs and the students’ programs became less and less related until they stood alone with some token inclusion.

The difference is that in a UDL framework rather than teachers planning lessons aimed at their most average students and then trying to add on bits to make the others fit in, the teachers are planning lessons from the beginning with those students in mind. While this may sound like a subtle difference it is not. The focus has shifted from looking at what the student or the student services teacher needs to do to make the student fit or to fix the student, to looking at the lesson itself - the curriculum - to determine where the barriers are and to find ways to remove them. It is the curriculum that is seen as potentially problematic, not the students.

The classroom teachers have been provided with a variety of technology tools (teacher laptops, Smartboards, projectors, and access to a shared set of student laptops), and they have been involved in ongoing professional development helping them learn about useful software and websites for making their lessons more accessible for their students. While we have amazing teachers at our school who are eager to reach all of their students, prior to having these tools the prospect of differentiation was daunting. Technology has made differentiation more accessible for teachers.

My job is becoming one of continuous collaboration. I support teachers in understanding UDL, pass on web and other resources, ensure access to technology when needed, meet to discuss individual needs etc. I support students when they need assistance with skills that are not naturally provided within the classroom (I have short-term pull out programs for grade 4 and 5 students who are reading well below grade level, and who need to develop phonemic awareness skills). I help students learn the technology they need to help them access the curriculum.

The moment the shift was most obvious for me was during our IEP meetings earlier in the year. In the past I was the one who spoke the most, it was about what I was planning to do to fix the student. This time I set up, chaired the meetings, and took notes but the teachers did most of the talking. They were talking about how they could make their classroom program accessible for their students.

With projectors and/or SMARTBoards it is easy to bring video into your classroom. Here are a few great sources I have found. If you have found any others please post them to share with us.

You Tube (of course)  - Here is a link to my favorite video… http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=LTLARW0-EIA

Another favorite: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=rvTFKpIaQhM

Teacher Tube - They are amassing quite a collection of SMARTBoard instruction videos… http://www.teachertube.com/

Teacher TV - Great educational videos, and professional development videos…  http://www.teachers.tv/

This one is about a student’s life in India: http://www.teachers.tv/video/29290.

At our Last PD day we watched a video about Assessment for Learning: http://www.teachers.tv/search/node/assessment+for+learning

To insert Video files into SMARTBoard’s Notebook Software:

It is nice to insert videos directly into SMARTBoard so they are ready when you need them and because by doing this there are no distractions such as advertisements and links to other videos.

1. Download a video - Many You Tube videos will allow you to do this but not all. It depends on how the poster set up the video.
2. Within SMARTBoard go to: File –> insert Flash Video –> navigate to where you have the video stored on your hard drive (by default they usually go into your “my video” or “video” file).