• 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

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.