Teachers are encouraged to use what they know about their students’ IEPs, strengths and challenges, and a UDL approach to ensure access. In cases where students may benefit from alternative means of access or support, teachers can draw on ideas from the tables below or visit udlguidelines.cast.org for more information.
Engagement
Students’ attitudes, interests, and values help to determine the ways in which they are most engaged and motivated to learn. Supports that provide students with multiple means of engagement include suggestions that support students’ motivation to engage with content, develop effort and persistence, and internalize self regulation.
Provide Access by Recruiting Interest
Provide choice: invite students to decide which problem to start with, select a subset of problems to complete, which strategy to use, the order they complete a task
Provide access to a variety of tools or materials
Leverage curiosity and students’ existing interests; invite students to name connections to their own lived experiences
Use visible timers and alerts to prepare for transitions
Develop Effort and Persistence
Chunk this task into more manageable parts. Check in with students to provide feedback and encouragement after each chunk
Differentiate the degree of difficulty or complexity by starting with accessible values
Periodically revisit math community norms and provide group feedback that encourages collaboration and community
Internalize Self Regulation
Provide on-going feedback that helps students maintain sustained effort and persistence during a task
Encourage self-reflection and identification of personal goals
Provide access to tools and strategies designed to help students self-motivate and become more independent
Representation
Teachers can reduce barriers and leverage students’ individual strengths by inviting students to engage with the same content in different ways. Supports provide students with multiple means of representation, include suggestions that offer alternatives for the ways information is presented or displayed, develop student understanding and use of mathematical language and symbols, and describe organizational methods and approaches designed to help students internalize learning.
Access for Perception
Present content using multiple modalities: Act it out, think aloud, use gestures, use a picture, show a video, demonstrate with objects or manipulatives
Annotate displays with specific language, different colors, shading, arrows, labels, notes, diagrams, or drawings
Provide appropriate reading accommodations
Develop Language and Symbols
Support use of vocabulary, mathematical notation, and symbols with charts, pictures, diagrams, tables
Highlight connections between representations to make patterns and properties explicit
Present problems or contexts in multiple ways, with diagrams, drawings, pictures, media, tables, graphs, or other mathematical representations
Use translations, descriptions, movement, and images to support unfamiliar words or phrases
Internalize Comprehension
Activate or supply background knowledge to build connections to prior understandings and experiences
Provide access to blank or partially-completed outlines, graphic organizers, or representations, to emphasize key ideas and relationships
Maximize transfer and generalization: name connections to previous examples, invite students to identify important details or features to remember
Action and Expression
Throughout the curriculum, students are invited to share both their understanding and their reasoning about mathematical ideas with others. Supports that provide students with multiple means of action and expression include suggestions that empower students with: access to appropriate tools, templates, and assistive technologies, options for the ways they communicate their learning, and resources that facilitate executive functioning.
Provide Access for Physical Action
Provide independent think time before students engage with others or responses are discussed
Ensure students have enough time to complete tasks, provide extra time if needed
Provide access to pre-cut materials, assistive tools, devices, or software
Develop Expression and Communication
Offer flexibility and choice with the ways students demonstrate and communicate their understanding
Invite students to explain their thinking verbally or nonverbally with manipulatives, drawings, diagrams
Support fluency with graduated levels of support or practice
Apply and gradually release scaffolds to support independent learning
Support discourse with sentence frames or visible language displays
Internalize Executive Functions
Support the development of organizational skills in problem-solving with access to templates, rubrics, and checklists
Post visible goals, objectives, and schedules
Provide opportunities for self-assessment, enable students to monitor their own progress
Activity-specific instructional supports for promoting mathematical language development and access to mathematical content
Look for:
“Supports for English Learners” incorporating Mathematical Language Routines
“Supports for Students with Disabilities”
Here's an example:
You are a Grade 3 teacher, teaching Unit 6, Lesson 4, Activity 2…this is what students see.
In the Teacher Guide, you have Universal Support of Mathematical Language Development…
When planning to support access, teachers should consider the strengths and needs of their particular students.
The following areas of cognitive functioning are integral to learning mathematics (Addressing Accessibility Project, Brodesky et al., 2002).
Conceptual Processing includes perceptual reasoning, problem solving, and metacognition.
Language includes auditory and visual language processing and expression.
Visual-Spatial Processing includes processing visual information and understanding relation in space of visual mathematical representations and geometric concepts.
Organization includes organizational skills, attention, and focus.
Memory includes working memory and short-term memory.
Attention includes paying attention to details, maintaining focus, and filtering out extraneous information.
Social-Emotional Functioning includes interpersonal skills and the cognitive comfort and safety required in order to take risks and make mistakes.
Fine-motor Skills include tasks that require small muscle movement and coordination such as manipulating objects (graphing, cutting with scissors, writing).