Revising lessons based on UDL

Video Transcription

Hi. My name is Ashley, and today's lesson is titled Revising Lessons Based on UDL. In today's lesson, we will recap the principles of UDL. Then we will revise an existing lesson incorporating UDL principles.

Let's recall the principles of UDL. Principle one, multiple means of representation. This principle emphasizes that students should be able to see information presented in many different ways. This can be done by providing alternate auditory and visual information and by clearly explaining vocabulary and symbols that may often be confusing to students. We can also give students graphic organizers to maximize transfer and generalizations.

Principal two, multiple means of action and expression. This principle states that students should be able to express themselves in various ways, just like they learn in different ways. They should have the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge in a way that's best for them. Students can perform, draw, create a project in order to demonstrate what they have learned. This principle also emphasizes the importance of movement in the classroom to create stimulation and enhance learning.

Principle three, multiple means of engagement, emphasizes that students should be engaged in multiple ways as well. How do we keep students from getting bored? How do we keep them interested throughout the lesson? We can do this by giving students choice, by allowing them to create their own goals and monitor their progress, and we have to make learning relevant for them. We have to make it so that they can find the use of their learning in other situations.

In previous lessons, we talked about the UDLinks app. Remember, this app can be found on the Apple Store as well as the Play Store, if you have an Android device. We will be using this today to revise an existing lesson.

Let's go ahead and begin revising the existing lesson. In this lesson, the goal is that the student will be able to add fractions with unlike denominators. That doesn't sound very engaging, so let's go ahead and see how we can revise this using the UDL principles. Let's go to Engagement and Provide Options for Recruiting Interest. And we'll take a look at the second one, optimize relevance, value, and authenticity.

How can we make this relevant for students? How can we make this learning meaningful? It says, consider ways to involve learners in meaningful learning experiences. Well, how can students use adding fractions with unlike denominators in their everyday life? How can we show that this is meaningful?

Let's come up with a real-world experience that incorporates adding fractions with unlike denominators. For example, let's say we have a box of donuts. Lucy ate 1/2 of the donuts, and Jacob had 2/3 of the donuts. And we want to figure out how much of the donuts did they have together, did they have combined.

By including this in our goal, now it's meaningful. It involves a real-world experience that could actually happen to students, and it brings relevancy to the topic of having to add fractions with unlike denominators.

So in our existing lesson, the materials that were originally going to be used were just notebooks, pencils, and whiteboard. Basically, just going over notes and writing them in the notebook and presenting problems or presenting information on the whiteboard. But how can we change this? How can we revise this using the UDL principles? Well, let's see if there's another way that we can represent the information that we have here.

So let's go to Representation, and then we want to provide options for comprehension. We want our students to be able to understand what's going on. Let's look at the last one, where it says Guide Information Processing, Visualization, and Manipulation. This here says, provide students with explicit prompts, options for organizing information, and models to guide new learning. And if we look back at the main goal, where it says visualization and manipulation, let's have students manipulate objects.

If we're still considering the idea of using donuts and we're trying to figure out how much did Lucy have and how much did Jacob have total together, then let's use actual little circles so students can manipulate those and actually understand what does 1/2 look like, and what does 2/3 of the donuts look like? And separate them and then put them together. This offers another representation of adding fractions with unlike denominators instead of just seeing numbers on a board.

So if we look at the instructional method in our existing lesson, the teacher will give notes to students and provide practice questions. But now, since we've already revised our goals and revised our materials, that also revises what the teacher's going to do. The teacher is not going to just give notes, but the teacher is going to facilitate the learning and see if students can answer this question on how many donuts did Lucy and Jacob have total. So the teacher is guiding this learning and answering questions as needed, having students work together in pairs to brainstorm how they can successfully answer this question.

Now let's look at the assessment strategies. In our existing lesson, the teacher was going to scan the room to make sure students understand. That was the assessment strategy that was going to be used, just to walk around and see how students were getting along. Also, by providing some questions on the board and having students answer them in their notebook. But now our lesson is totally more exciting than that.

Now we're going to look at what else can we do in order to assess students. Just practice problems and going over them isn't as engaging. And as we learned with the principals of UDL, students should have multiple ways of being able to express what they know. So let's click on Action and Expression.

And we'll choose the link that says Provide Options for Expression and Communication. And then the next one, we'll do multiple media for communication. Here, it says, allow students to compose using text, speech, drawings, and illustrations. Encourage the use of fiscal manipulatives. How awesome is that?

So we've already incorporated the manipulation of our paper donuts. There are a number of ways that students can represent what they have learned through this activity. They may move their objects and explain what they're doing as they're moving the objects around. They can write in their journal what it is that they did and how they solved the problem and the steps they took. They can come up in front of the classroom and explain what they did. They can share it with their partner or another group of students. They can make a drawing.

One thing that I like about giving students tools or objects to manipulate, once they have manipulated it, then they can go to their journal and draw out the objects that they have moved around. And then, underneath their drawing, give information as to what exactly they did to solve their problem.

So what did we do in today's lesson? Well, first, we recapped the UDL principles. Principle one is the multiple means of representation. Principle two is providing multiple means of action and expression. And principle three is multiple means of engagement. Then we revised an existing lesson incorporating UDL.

Our new lesson is more engaging. It allows students to find the relevance in being able to add fractions with unlike denominators. It involves manipulation of our paper donuts instead of just seeing numbers on a board. And students now have different ways they can represent what they know, instead of just answering problems in a math notebook. Now they can show what they have learned through their drawings, a manipulation, talk in front of the classroom, or write it down in their notebook. So our boring lesson has really been turned into something great using the UDL principles.

As we bring the lesson to a close, think about how you can create your own lesson incorporating UDL principles. So now it's your turn to apply what you've learned in this video. The Additional Resources section will be super helpful. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. Each link includes a brief description so you can easily target the resources you want.