Class 9 Blog - Universal Design for Learning and UDL Frog Life Cycle Unit
We began tonight's exciting class with a quick review of the writing task analysis chart but on this chart, the AT links were added.  This chart will be valuable to me in planning AT support for my students because it is a quick reference that links the stage of writing that is challenging for the student with potential AT that would help address needs.  I am thinking how useful this will be at site based meetings!  Here is the chart:




Next, we had a short lecture about Universal Design for Learning.  In a nutshell, UDL is simply presenting information so that all students can access it.  This makes so much sense and I can't imagine why we have not been doing this all along (as a collective I mean).  In designing UDL lessons, it is important to think about and plan for : multiple means of representation, multiple means of action and expression, and multiple means of engagement.  Here is an EXCELLENT link to the UDL toolkit.  It contains literally hundreds of potential tools for use in designing UDL lessons.
http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/

Finally, I worked with classmates to design a UDL blog for the life cycle of the frog (grade 2 science).  At first, I was worried about how this would work.  It seemed that it may be difficult to coordinate ideas and then decide how to present them.  My worries were completely for naught and I was so pleased at how well my group worked together!  A big thank you to Setz, Jenna, Mary Jo, and Dallas for a job well done:-)  We came up with a fantastic blog that addressed the needs of all the students in our class profile. 

Here is our class profile:
You have 20 students in your class. One student has significant
cognitive delays and is an emergent reader, 2 have dyslexia and struggles with
decoding fixed print, another student has dysgraphia, one boy has ADHD and you have
2 with autism (on different ends of the spectrum). Your class has 16 boys and 4 girls.

We addressed all of the above needs through various levels of reading and writing activities, apps, games, crafts, videos, interesting facts, coloring pages and more!  I can't wait to share this blog with my Grade 2 teaching friends.  Here is the link:
http://tadpoleteachers.blogspot.ca/