Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

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

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

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”