Universal Design for Learning in Practice

Not so long ago, I completed my #QTS journey through the University of Sunderland. Despite almost two decades of teaching experience and holding postgraduate qualifications, the journey served as a valuable reminder to continue leveraging teaching practices that benefit all students.

Throughout the assessment and observation phases, I consistently returned to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as the cornerstone of my planning.

Universal Design for Learning

UDL offers extensive latitude in tapping into students' diverse learning strengths, and, more importantly, it has a significant impact. When provided with multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression, students can better actualize their learning agency.

Multiple Means of Engagement: Offering Choice

We recently began a new unit exploring dystopian literature. Instead of requiring students to read the same book, my colleague and I, with the help of our wonderful librarians, collated the available dystopian titles. Students received short blurbs about each book and completed a survey indicating their top four choices. This sparked astonished reactions, along with the delightful "How is all of this going to work?" side chatter—a sign of their engagement that we appreciate.

Multiple Means of Representation: Diverse Media

We also created a resource bank for students containing podcasts, movies, artwork, music, and current news items with dystopian elements. As students explored these resources, I observed them actively engaging; some made instant connections, while others asked their peers, "Why do you think this news article/artwork is included for this unit?"

To further support visualization of the plot, students also had access to graphic organizers, character webs, and storyboards for their chosen books. Additionally, they can use a bank of self-paced Kahoot games to review unit-specific terminology.

Multiple Means of Action and Expression: Assessment

Today, students were presented with assessment options through a choice board, allowing them to engage more deeply with the content and choose how they demonstrate their understanding. Choices include creating podcasts, digital stories, creative writing pieces, news articles, or artwork. They were also strongly encouraged to pitch other ideas.

The pitches today included debating, a dramatic performance, blogging, a short film, and even a bespoke board game designed around one of the books.

When standardization is prevalent in education, UDL serves as a crucial reminder that we can and should create opportunities for students to make meaningful choices and experience more diversified learning paths. We have the capacity to surprise and be surprised by our students.

"Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners. – John Holt.

北京市鼎石学校

#UDL #UniversalDesign #TeachingStrategies