Putting It All Into Practice

A large part of understanding UDL is being able to reflect upon your work as an educator and apply what you have learned in order to improve your practice. Using the UDL Guidelines Educator Checklist provided by CAST, I evaluated a lesson that I had previously created to see how many UDL guidelines I had included. Unfortunately, I found that I had not been incorporating nearly enough UDL guidelines into my lessons! 

Therefore, I took what I have learned about UDL and used it to revamp my lesson. Here is one example of the types of changes I made to my lesson: 

Pre Lesson

d. Individually, students will be asked to write at least four sentences in their writing journals retelling The Three Little Pigs. Students will not be able to use their story maps as a reference. Teacher will collect writing journals. 

Post Lesson

d. Individually, students will be asked to write at least four sentences and provide an illustration in their writing journals retelling The Three Little Pigs.  Students who have difficulty responding by writing will be able to utlize speech-to-text software, dictate their sentences to Teacher, create four sequential illustrations to retell the story, or will be given four pictures from The Three Little Pigs and will put the events in order. Students will be able to use their story maps as a reference. Teacher will collect writing journals.

As an educator, it is extremely important for me to reflect upon my practice and continually strive for improvements. Using the UDL Guidelines Educator Checklist opened my eyes to my strengths and weaknesses in terms of UDL and showed me ways that I could improve my lessons.