Goals

At the conclusion of this unit, participants will be able to:

1. Identify barriers in the learning environment specific to individual students’ needs. 

2. Using the information we have about a variety of individual learners (case profiles), identify strengths and interests that can be leveraged as well as potential barriers those students may have in accessing instruction. 

3. Given a recent math lesson plan, and considering a current student or case profile, use CAST’s “Designing to Remove Barriers” tool to identify potential barriers, identify an applicable UDL guideline to address the barrier, and use the checkpoints to identify options or strategies to incorporate into the lesson. 

4. Be able to identify elements of high quality tasks and use a variety of resources to support changing tasks or activities to be higher quality.

Big Ideas

• The UDL mindset promotes the idea that disability is not inherent within the student, but is a result of an inflexible environment (e.g. goals, assessments, methods, and materials) in which the student is expected to learn.

• A successful inclusive environment focuses on designing lessons that support all learners by proactively identifying and mitigating potential barriers to student learning and “teaching to the edges”, not to the mythical average learner.

• Designing lessons and “teaching to the edges” requires that we are aware of and understand our students’ needs so that learning barriers can be removed and student strengths can be leveraged. For our students with disabilities, we need to glean valuable information contained in assessments and individualized plans (e.g. 504s IEPs) to expand our learner profiles. Utilizing knowledge regarding the barriers and strengths of our individual learners can allow options to be incorporated that benefit all learners.

• The UDL Guidelines can be used to help structure and focus the design of an optimal learning environment to include many different paths and options which meet the needs of a diverse group of learners.

• The tasks we give students may also prevent access to equitable learning opportunities. In order to develop “expert learners”, we must examine what constitutes high quality curriculum. Strategies such as a heavy emphasis on “sense-making” and providing a low floor entry point and a high ceiling of possibilities within tasks will be explored.