There are many obstacles in today’s classrooms. Having a combination of regular education, gifted and talented, and special education students brings a level of difficulty to planning lessons so all students are taught, motivated, and enriched. This week I have been researching on http://www.cast.org/ how to make a UDL. UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning. . A UDL helps teachers to set goals, materials, and assessments for different types of learners.
The basic premise of a UDL is that each student learns in their best learning style. In other words, there has to be multiple activities for each assignment. In my classroom that would mean that my students would not all be working on the same task. The students would be working on the same skill and would be expected mastery at the end of the lesson but the path traveled to mastery would be different.
Teachers need to focus on all three networks of learning when they are constructing their UDL. The first one is the recognition network which is “the what” of learning. It is here where we identify and categorize what we see, hear, and read. The second one is the strategic network which is “the how” of learning. It is here where a person plans and performs math problems and writes an essay. The third is the affective network which is “the why” of learning. This is where a student would be challenged, excited and interested.
It has been a rough road constructing this UDL. There has to be a lot of planning, materials, and time involved in order to put together a UDL for your classroom. Collaborating with my team members has helped me tremendously not only to understand the steps involved but coming up with ideas to fit into each category.
"CAST." : Center for Applied Special Technology. Center for Applied Special Technology, n.d. Web.
15 Sept. 2013. <http://www.cast.org/>.
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