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About Universal Design for Learning

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Universal design for learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn.

UDL at a Glance

See how the UDL framework guides the design of instructional goals, assessments, methods, and materials that can be customized and adjusted to meet individual needs.

Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice

Anne Meyer and David Rose, who first laid out the principles of UDL in the 1990s, provide an ambitious, engaging discussion of new research and best practices. This book gives the UDL field an essential and authoritative learning resource for the coming years.

Read the book

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Universal design for learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. UDL at a Glance See how the UDL framework guides the design of instructional goals, assessments, methods, and materials that can be customized and adjusted to meet individual needs.

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Guidelines and strategies

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Reenvisioning the UDL Guidelines

Because the UDL Guidelines are meant to be informed by feedback from the field as well as new research, they have been updated several times in the past. We are in the process of updating the Guidelines once again in our UDL Rising to Equity initiative.

This update will focus specifically on addressing systemic barriers that result in inequitable learning opportunities and outcomes. CAST aims to develop a transparent, inclusive, and community-driven process. If you are interested in collaborating and staying updated on our progress, we invite you to complete a brief survey.

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST.

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A MiddleWeb Blog

One might say that vocabulary is the currency of the classroom. And wouldn't you agree that we want our kids to be RICH with vocabulary?

If kids don't know lots of words, if they don't understand the words, and if they can't use the words, then those words are of no value to them.

Instead, they are deprived. Undernourished. The words we use with students must be accessible, valuable, and usable. Think of them as nutrients, vital to their learning muscles.

So how do we create classrooms that build and strengthen students' vocabulary? Classrooms where student vocabulary is thriving?

One of best techniques I've come across in my years in education is the interactive word wall. You might recall the traditional type of word wall. You know, the teacher-created, alphabetic, random word wall. That is not what I'm referring to here.

The interactive word wall is very different. Here's why.

Interactive word walls across the curriculum

I was first formally introduced to interactive word walls by Dr. Julie Jackson, an Associate Professor of Science Education at Texas State University, who has done research and implemented interactive word walls in many Texas schools.

Her discoveries about interactive word walls have been published in multiple journals. And she is amazing! Her work is primarily with science studies; however, her word-wall strategies can be applied in any content area.

An interactive word wall is basically a large graphic organizer displaying critical vocabulary on the wall. It is thematic or unit-based and includes pictures or graphics related to the words. The benefits of an interactive word wall are outstanding for all students, not just language learners!

Picturing words to boost retention

Since the interactive word wall is structured in the form of a graphic organizer, students are able to grasp and organize information easily. Words become related to one another and connections are built.

In a typical static word wall, the only organization is that the wall is in alphabetical order. Under each letter the teacher places random words that start with that particular letter. For example, under the letter A, words like airplane, ambulance, art, angel, always, anytime, etc. could be listed. These words have no relationship to one another. And only students who can already read the words truly have access to them.

An interactive word wall includes visuals, graphics, or realia (real objects) with each word. Students are able to connect words with their meanings very quickly. For language learners, the benefits are obvious! If the interactive word wall is about Energy and one the words on it is light bulb, a visual is the quickest way to demonstrate the meaning. Instantly a language learner identifies what that word means and sees the word daily inside the classroom environment.

Students do the work!

It has often been said that "those who do the work, do the learning." Absolutely! That's another reason why the interactive word wall benefits all students. Students are the ones doing the work.

The teacher creates the overall outline of the graphic organizer and the headings. Then while the teaching, learning, reading and exploring happen, students interact with the wall. They write the words that go in the categories and they add pictures for the words. If needed, the teacher is there to guide them.

Kids get so excited about seeing these walls come alive and grow as their own knowledge grows! I've seen kids bring words and pictures from home and put them on the wall. Essentially, they've given themselves homework, but it's self-motivated!

During the process, the teacher can model how to use the word wall for listening, speaking, reading and writing. Here's how:

T: reads the title Forms of Energy. "I can say this in a complete sentence. Listen and then repeat after me. There are many forms of energy."
S: "There are many forms of energy." T: "Look at the headings. Heat, sound, and light. I can say this in a sentence too. Listen and repeat. Heat, sound and light are three forms of energy." T: "Now look under the heat column. Pick an example. Use this sentence frame to talk with your partner about heat energy. I claim that ______is a form of heat energy because...." (Sentence frame was posted on the wall for students to refer to as they spoke.)

Setting the stage for writing
S: Use the sentence frame to talk with their partner.

The interactive word wall provides students with the academic vocabulary that we want them to use when they are speaking and writing about the topic. The sentence frames provide the language structure.

When we put this vocabulary in their mouths before they write, they are more capable of developing higher quality writing. Imagine what the writing will look like if they have a chance to talk first and have the wall to refer to during writing.

When the wall is pretty much complete, we can teach students to use it to form a piece of writing. Just like we taught them to talk using complete sentence with each piece of the wall, now we model how to write that way.

Some students will need more scaffolding than others. Language learners at various levels will have different needs. Some will benefit from example writing pieces or mentor texts. Others will need paragraph frames to help with language structures and propel their writing.

Another technique to support writers is to chunk the writing. Start with modeling how to write the introduction. Then let them try. Always refer back to the interactive word wall. This is their word bank.

A method to include all students

This type of word wall is accessible to all students. That's the beauty of it. It's not just good for some of the kids. It's not just valuable and readable to the kids who can already read in English or who are reading on grade level. Every student can access it because of the visuals, graphics, and realia.

Teachers ask what to do with the interactive word wall once the unit is over. I've come across many options, and you just have to figure out what works best for you. Some teachers layer their interactive word walls over one another. Some hang theirs on clothing hangers and on a rack, so students can access them if needed. Others take a picture of their wall and keep an album of all the interactive word walls in one spot for students to look at if needed.

As middle grade teachers we have to remember that word walls are not just for primary grades. In fact, as the vocabulary gets more difficult, word walls should become more sophisticated and used in every classroom all the way up to twelfth grade.

Adapting to messy, student-created walls

Interactive word walls are messy. But learning is messy too. They are student created. So don't expect them to be cookie cutter and perfect. They won't look like you spent all night preparing them. We have to get over that. Trust me, I used to be that teacher who prepared the entire word wall for the class. I did all the work. I did all the writing, cutting, and putting the words up. I learned a lot. I also learned that the kids needed to be doing the work.

Now, you may be that teacher who is saying to yourself, "But I love my traditional word wall. I've done it for years and I think it works for my kids." I know. Change is difficult. I used to think the same thing about my beautiful word wall UNTIL I witnessed the power of the interactive word wall.

Realizing that my traditional word wall was not emphasizing and connecting the vocabulary from the state standards that my students really needed was a big eye opener too. My students needed higher levels of academic vocabulary in order to make adequate progress in reading and writing. The old word wall just wasn't cutting it.

Our classroom walls are massively valuable to us. We know that what we put on them needs to be important. Being selective is key. Interactive word walls definitely give you the biggest bang for your buck!
Resources I recommend for learning more about interactive word walls: Step by Step video on How to Create an Interactive Word Wall The Science Toolkit The Science Toolkit Facebook Page Interactive Word Walls The Best Ideas on How to Use Classroom Walls by Larry Ferlazzo Image credit: The photos above are from 6th Grade classrooms. Used with permission from Dr. Julie Jackson.

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Engage Kids in Vocabulary: Use Interactive Word Walls

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Valentina Gonzalez recommends interactive word walls in all subjects, creating classrooms where vocabulary learning is robust for ELLs and everyone else.

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Theory and Practice online book - free multimedia access

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Theory and Practice

by Anne Meyer, David H. Rose, & David Gordon

$59.99, Paperback (ISBN: 9780989867405)
$59.99. ePUB (ISBN: 9780989867412)

Overview

Anne Meyer and David Rose, who first laid out the principles of UDL, provide an ambitious, engaging discussion of new research and best practices. This book gives the UDL field an essential and authoritative learning resource for the coming years.

In the 1990s, Anne Meyer, David Rose, and their colleagues at CAST introduced Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework to improve teaching and learning in the digital age, sparking an international reform movement. Now Meyer and Rose return with Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice, an up-to-date multimedia online book (with print and e-book options) that leverages more than a decade of research and implementation.

This is the first significant new statement on UDL since 2002, an ambitious, engaging exploration of ideas and best practices that provides the growing UDL field with an essential and authoritative learning resource for the coming years. This new work includes contributions from CAST's research and implementation teams as well as from many of CAST's collaborators in schools, universities, and research settings. Readers are invited to contribute ideas, perspectives, and examples from their own practice in an online community of practice.

Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice includes:

New insights from research on learner differences and how human variability plays out in learning environments

Research-based discussions of what it means to become expert at learning

First-hand examples of how to design and implement UDL at all levels and across subjects using the UDL Guidelines

"Dig Deeper" segments that enrich the main content

Dozens of original videos and illustrations

A blended multimedia presentation with interactive activities and tools to save and share notes

Opportunities to connect with other educators to share ideas and best practices

Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice is available in paperback ($59.99, 200 pages, ISBN: 9780989867405) and ePUB ($59.99, 278 pages, ISBN: 9780989867412).

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Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice

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Theory and Practice by Anne Meyer, David H. Rose, & David Gordon $59.99, Paperback (ISBN: 9780989867405) $59.99. ePUB (ISBN: 9780989867412) Overview Anne Meyer and David Rose, who first laid out the principles of UDL, provide an ambitious, engaging discussion of new research and best practices.

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Involving executive functioning and social emotional learning skills

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This website is a companion resource to a presentation given at the Just Read! Florida 2019 Summit in Orlando, FL. It includes handouts and additional resources to help increase students' executive functioning skills and social emotional learning; both of which are important for students to become proficient in the English Language Arts while learning in a group setting with a diverse student population.

This web based resource includes information the following:

Lenses (foundational ways to look at instructional design)

Shifting to Team Learning

Universal Design for Learning

Vocabulary and Language Shifts

Executive Functioning

Social Emotional Learning

Language Shifts

Printable handouts are available on different pages. The presentation set of activity handouts are below.

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This website is a companion resource to a presentation given at the Just Read! Florida 2019 Summit in Orlando, FL. It includes handouts and additional resources to help increase students' executive functioning skills and social emotional learning; both of which are important for students to become proficient in the English Language Arts while learning in a group setting with a diverse student population.

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Inclusive Education Modules

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Empowering The Spirit- This website will provide opportunities to expand your understanding of literacy and numeracy practices from First Nations, Métis and Inuit perspectives and gain tools and strategies to support First Nations, Métis and Inuit and all students' success in your community.

Our Way Is a Valid Way- The purpose of the Our Way is a Valid Way courses on the ARPDC Moodle site is to provide educators an opportunity to engage in professional learning in an online environment as part of a professional learning plan which is based on the Provincial First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Professional Learning Strategy .

Exploring Numeracy through Traditional Games- Find out how a Traditional Games Day creates a context for meaningful numeracy learning. First Nations, Métis and Inuit Peoples traditionally used the context of games to teach skills needed for surviving on the land. This video illustrates how this traditional way of learning can be just as valid today.

Engaging all Students through Numeracy- See first-hand how two different teachers engage their students in meaningful numeracy experiences through traditional contexts, including exploring probability through traditional rock hand games and calculating volume by examining the structure of a traditional tee pee.

Storytelling, Its Many Forms- Learn how the different forms of storytelling give students channels for expressing their voice and connecting to culture. This video features First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists, educators and scholars sharing their perspectives of how the tradition of storytelling permeates their cultures and world views.

The Importance of Storytelling- Learn how storytelling, a traditional way of sharing the culture and values of a community, remains a valuable teaching tool for today.

Storytelling: Understanding Who We Are- Tap into the power of stories to engage students and help them better understand themselves and the human condition. This video explores the the central role that stories hold in First Nations, Métis and Inuit world views, and how stories reflect our universal experience.

Literacy and Numeracy for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Students- This short video begins the journey as we explore the role of literacy and numeracy in developing self-knowledge and personal success for First Nations, Métis and Inuit students.

Working Collaboratively with FNMI Parents, Families and Community- This learning playlist centers on the theme of Working Collaboratively with FNMI Parents, Families, and Communities.

Supporting Successful Transitions For FNMI Students- This playlist is for school-based administrators to use with their staff to develop and enhance FNMI cultural awareness. Specifically, it provides information, strategies and resources to promote successful transitions in support of improving FNMI student success.
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​ Where the Spirit Lives Film - "This period Canadian drama tracks the difficult life of Komi (Michelle St. John), a First Nations child who is abducted from her traditional home and forced to live at a boarding school where she is taught how to behave in "civilized" culture. Given the new name of Amelia, Komi endures strict and often violent treatment as she is made to learn English and behave in a typical Canadian fashion. Intent on maintaining her identity, however, Komi embarks on a bold escape." Wikipedia

Classroom Reading Resources - This article provides information regarding various books that you may want to use in your classroom.

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FNMI Cultural Awareness For Administrators- This learning playlist centers on the theme of Leadership. In addition to providing you access to the complete Facilitator's Workshop Guide for FNMI Cultural Awareness for Administrators, it will also help you and your team answer these three important questions surrounding FNMI Awareness.

Engaging FNMI Students using Culturally Relevant and Responsive Education Practices and Strategies- This playlist is for school-based administrators to use with their staff to develop and enhance cultural awareness to support FNMI student success. Specifically , it provides insight into culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy and instructional strategies that have shown promise in improving FNMI student success.

The Collaborative Frameworks serves as a guide to strengthen collaborative processes between school authorities, parents, communities and other stakeholders, as they work together to improve the educational outcomes of First Nations, Métis and Inuit students. FNMI Collaborative Framework: Building Relationships-

​ (with Christy Jordan-Fenton, Margaret Pokiak-Fenton and Kerry Aiken) Fatty Legs Webinar Series, Grades 5-8 - This archived two part webinar series is about the book 'fatty legs' which shares the story of Margaret's experience in a residential school. You will learn the origin of the book and how it can be used to support student learning about the topic of residential schools. Meet the author and her mother-in-law (about whom the book is about) in the first webinar. In the second webinar, a teacher shares how she has used the book with her grade seven students.

Supporting FNMI Student Success (with Debbie Mineault)- This archived webinar examines strategies to deepen and strengthen understanding of cultural uniqueness around FNMI families and communities and the impacts on teaching and learning. You will learn practical skills, ideas and strategies in working with FNMI families, parents and communities.

Walking Together to Support FNMI Student Success- This series of three archived webinars supports exploration and implementation of the digital resource Walking Together and is intended to promote further dialogue and deepen understanding of three concepts within the resource as a model for how it might be used in staff meetings, PLCs or for individual learning to enhance your awareness and knowledge of FNMI culture and perspectives.

Reconsidering the Universality of Nation and Nationality: Exploring Indigenous Notions of Land, Citizenship, and Nation- During this presentation, Dwayne Donald addresses the ideas of identity, citizenship and nation within the Canadian context from the First Nations perspective. He explores, using specific examples, how First Nations in Canada belong but don't belong in the constructed understanding of nationalism. This presentation sets the stage for further discussion on the concept of nationalism and its varied perceptions and meanings.

FNMI Curriculum Collection- The Faculty of Education sponsored the development of this First Nations Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) Curriculum Collection. It is a collection of lessons and resources designed to help pre and inservice teachers incorporate FNMI content in their teaching across subjects and grade levels.

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Empowering The Spirit- This website will provide opportunities to expand your understanding of literacy and numeracy practices from First Nations, Métis and Inuit perspectives and gain tools and strategies to support First Nations, Métis and Inuit and all students' success in your community.

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The redesigned BC curriculum is built around core competencies and big ideas, which makes it easier to implement a UDL goal-based approach. Just as in UDL, the big ideas are separate from any particular method or...

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The redesigned BC curriculum is built around core competencies and big ideas, which makes it easier to implement a UDL goal-based approach. Just as in UDL, the big ideas are separate from any particular method or...

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Harvard University

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Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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Executive function and self-regulation (EF/SR) skills provide critical supports for learning and development, and while we aren't born with these skills, we are born with the potential to develop them through interactions and practice.

This 16-page guide (available for download, below), describes a variety of activities and games that represent age-appropriate ways for adults to support and strengthen various components of EF/SR in children.

Each chapter of this guide contains activities suitable for a different age group, from infants to teenagers. The guide may be read in its entirety (which includes the introduction and references) or in discrete sections geared to specific age groups.

Suggested citation: Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2014). Enhancing and Practicing Executive Function Skills with Children from Infancy to Adolescence. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.

Download PDF

Enhancing and Practicing Executive Function Skills with Children from Infancy to Adolescence

An activities guide for building executive function

Download PDF

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Activities Guide: Enhancing & Practicing Executive Function Skills

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Download free guides of executive functioning activities to support and strengthen skills, available for children ages six months through adolescence.

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Strategies for 5 to 7 year olds

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Strategies for 7 to 12 year olds

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Adolescent Strategies

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Learning maps

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What's the most important thing for students to learn at school? Reading, writing and arithmetic matter more than ever-but if students don't have good social and emotional skills, their ability to learn anything else will be severely compromised.

That's why many schools are implementing formal "social and emotional learning" (SEL) programs to build non-academic skills like self-regulation, empathy, and effective decision-making. While these skills are not directly tested on standardized assessments, schools that focus on SEL find that these programs have a significant impact on both school climate and academic outcomes.
The Five Core Social-Emotional Learning Competencies
SEL encompasses a suite of skills, attitudes, and behaviors that influence how well students are able to navigate daily challenges, interact with people around them, and understand themselves and others.

The Cooperative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning ( CASEL) has identified five core SEL competencies. These competencies include:

Self-Awareness: This is the ability to identify your own feelings, thoughts, and values and recognize how they influence your behavior. Students with high self-awareness are able to accurately assess their strengths and weaknesses, set personal goals, and maintain a "growth mindset" grounded in optimism and self-efficacy.

Self-Management: Awareness alone isn't enough-students must be able to use that self-awareness to adjust and regulate their own emotions and behaviors. Students with good self-management skills demonstrate high levels of self-control and are able to delay gratification and persevere through challenges in order to meet their goals.

Social Awareness: Social awareness turns the focus outward, on the emotions and needs of the people around us. Students with social awareness are able to understand and follow social norms, demonstrate empathy for people around them, appreciate diversity, and show understanding and compassion for other people's needs, including people who are different from them.

Relationship Skills: Relationship skills involve the ability to apply social awareness in how students interact with people around them. This includes the ability to work cooperatively, resolve conflict peacefully and constructively, resist negative peer pressure, seek help from peers and adults, and engage in behaviors that build healthy relationships.

Responsible Decision-Making: To make responsible decisions, students must be able to evaluate the potential consequences of a decision and consider the impact of their decisions on both themselves and others around them. This includes consideration of ethical norms, health and safety standards, other people's needs and feelings, personal values, and how a decision may impact the student's ability to reach a goal.

The five core competencies are interrelated and build on one another. Together, they create a solid foundation for success in the classroom and beyond. Social-emotional skills are the basis for the essential "soft skills" that employers are looking for-skills like time management, self-direction, teamwork, and leadership. Mastering the five core SEL competencies will enable students to reach their academic, career, and personal goals.
The Impact of SEL
Social and emotional skills are important both for their own sake and for their impact on learning and academics. Brain research tells us that the brain focuses best when there is a balance between emotion and meaning. SEL creates the conditions in which effective learning can take place.

SEL programs can help schools improve their school climate and learning environment. SEL is linked with:

Reductions in behavioral problems, including aggression between students, bullying, and vandalism

Increases in pro-social behaviors such as helping others, kindness, tolerance, conflict resolution, and cooperation

Lower levels of stress and distress among students

Stronger relationships among students and between students and teachers

More positive attitudes towards school and learning

SEL can help school leaders create a learning environment in which students feel safe, confident, and motivated. This is an essential foundation for learning; students who are stressed, distracted by conflicts with peers or teachers, or unable to regulate their emotions and behaviors cannot perform to their best ability academically.

The impact on academics is significant, measurable, and long lasting. A 2011 meta-analysis of SEL research found that SEL programs are associated with an average 11-point percentile gain in academic achievement. A 2017 meta-analysis by CASEL showed that students exposed to SEL in school continued to outperform peers on academic, social, and behavioral indicators as long as 18 years later.
The SAFE Approach to SEL
Fortunately, SEL skills can be explicitly taught and developed in the classroom as well as at home and in the community. Teachers can support the growth of SEL skills in their students through explicit SEL lessons, modeling of the core SEL competencies, and positive reinforcement of desired behaviors and attitudes. Teachers should also provide opportunities for students to practice and apply SEL skills throughout the day.

One approach to SEL uses the acronym "SAFE":

Sequenced: Activities are connected and coordinated to foster skills development.

Active: Active/hands-on forms of learning are used to help students master new skills.

Focused: The program emphasizes personal and social skills and provides focused time for practice of these skills.

Explicit: The curriculum targets and explicitly teaches specific social and emotional skills.

Additionally, the program should be evidence-based and implemented with fidelity.
Mapping the Way to Positive Behaviors and Outcomes
SEL programs may incorporate a variety of strategies, including storytelling, modeling, role-playing, and structured practice in decision-making, conflict resolution, and relationship skills.

Many Thinking Maps schools are also incorporating the Maps into their SEL programs. Thinking Maps are highly effective in helping students think through the consequences of decisions, brainstorm solutions to problems together, create action plans for reaching their goals, and understand themselves. As students construct the Maps independently or collaboratively, they take ownership of strategies that help them construct meaning, make abstract ideas concrete, and build self-awareness and empathy.

Here are some examples of Thinking Maps for SEL:

Thinking Maps helped build a more positive learning environment at Kenilworth Elementary School. Principal Anthony Pietrangeli says, "Thinking Maps has changed the culture of our school. There is more enthusiasm for learning, and students and teachers are having deeper dialogues in the classroom."

In today's high-pressure K-12 environment, any time spent on something other than pure academics may feel like time wasted. But the research on social emotional learning says that these programs are time well spent. In fact, few programs have such lasting and positive impact on student outcomes in the classroom, college, and career. Students with strong SEL skills go on to build happy and healthy relationships, achieve success in higher education and the workforce, and make positive contributions as citizens and community members.
For Further Reading and Viewing

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Reading, Writing and Relationship Skills: Social and Emotional Learning at School - Thinking Maps

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What's the most important thing for students to learn at school? Reading, writing and arithmetic matter more than ever-but if students don't have good social and emotional skills, their ability to learn anything else will be severely compromised. That's...Read more ›

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Self competency scale

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https://www.additudemag.com/tag/download/

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ADHD Teacher Card

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Search by issue and grade level

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Apps for Kids with Special Needs and Learning Disabilities | Common Sense Media

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Find apps, games, and other tools to help kids with special needs and learning disabilities acquire and improve skills from communication and reading to math.

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Anxiety is a huge barrier to learning and very difficult for educators to identify. "When anxiety is fueling the behavior, it's the most confusing and complicated to figure out," Minahan said. That's because a student isn't always anxious; it tends to come and go based on events in their lives, so their difficulties aren't consistent. When we are anxious our working memory tanks, making it very difficult to recall any salient information.

Researchers surveyed a group of first graders none of whom had any reading or math disabilities. Those who had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder were eight times more likely to be in the lowest achieving group in reading, and two-point-five times more likely to be in the lowest quartile in math achievement by the spring.

"Anxiety is a learning disability; it inhibits your ability to learn," Minahan said. But it isn't usually recognized as a learning disability and there is almost never a plan for how to address it in the classroom. "For kids with anxiety, the 'can'ts fluctuate," Minahan said. "When they're calm they can. When they're anxious they can't. And that's very deceiving."

Anxiety isn't about ability, it's about interference, which means that traditional rewards and consequences don't often work with this group of learners.

"Rewards and consequences are super helpful to increase motivation for something I'm able to do," Minahan said. But an anxious person's brain has shut down and they aren't able in that moment to complete the task being asked of them. The best way to combat this tricky problem is to try to prevent anxiety triggers and build up students' social and emotional skills to cope with the moments when anxiety sets in.

When kids are in the throes of bad behavior they have poor self-regulation skills, often get into negative thinking cycles that they can't stop, have poor executive functioning, become inflexible thinkers and lose social skills like the ability to think about another person's perspective. That's why kids can seem so unempathetic when teachers ask, "how do you think that made Sam feel?" At that moment, the student acting out has no ability to take Sam's perspective, but a few hours later or the next day, he might be able to show the remorse educators want to see.

ALL BEHAVIOR HAS A FUNCTION

Bad behavior is often connected to seeking attention, and when kids act out, they can see the results.* "Negative attention is way easier to get and hands down easier to understand," Minahan said. "It's much more efficient." Adults tend to be unpredictable with attention when a student is doing what she is supposed to do, but as soon as there's a dramatic, obvious tantrum, the student has the teacher's attention. And negative attention is powerful -- one student can hijack a whole classroom.

A common teacher response to low-level negative attention seeking is to ignore the student. The teacher doesn't want to reward bad behavior. "I want to caution you about ignoring someone with anxiety because their anxiety goes up," Minahan said. Ignoring an already anxious student can accidentally convey the message that the teacher doesn't care about the student, and worse might escalate the situation. Perhaps a teacher can ignore a student tapping his pencil or banging on his desk, but threatening behavior can't be ignored. And the student learns exactly what level of behavior he must exhibit to get attention.

TIP 1: Instead, "what you need to do is make positive attention compete better," Minahan said. She often suggests that teachers actively engage the most difficult student at the beginning of class saying something like, "I can't wait to see what you think of this assignment. I'm going to check on you in 5 minutes." When the teacher actually comes back in five minutes, validates the student's progress, and tells her another check-in is coming in ten minutes it sets up a pattern of predictable attention for positive behavior. And while it might seem unfair to take that extra time and care with one student, it ultimately saves instruction time when a teacher doesn't have to deal with a tantrum that sends the student out of the room.

TIP 2: Often in an attempt to form a positive relationship with a student teachers will publicly praise positive behavior. That can backfire, especially with anxious kids who don't want any extra attention from peers. Private or non-verbal praise is often better. Minahan recommends pulling students aside at the beginning of the year to ask how teachers can best tell them they're proud. "It's a gift to your February self if you can figure out a system now, otherwise you'll get stuck on the negative attention scale," Minahan said.

Tip 2.1: She also recommends fact-based praise as opposed to general praise. Vague praise is easy to dismiss.
ANTECEDENTS TO BAD BEHAVIOR
Many kids have predictable anxiety triggers like unstructured time, transitions, writing tasks, social demands or any unexpected change. Similarly the antecedents of negative behavior are fairly predictable: unfacilitated social interactions, interaction with an authoritative adult, being asked to wait, when demands are placed, being told no, writing, and transitions.**

Tip 3: "Teach waiting now," Minahan said. "When you are anxious, despite your age, it's very hard to wait." She was asked to observe a boy who constantly disrupted class. Minahan soon noticed the boy often did his work, but if he finished early or there was downtime in the class, he would start causing trouble. When Minahan pointed this out to him he had no idea what "wait time" was. She had to spell out to him that when he finished a task he should apply a strategy, like turning over the paper and doodling appropriately on the back. After this small intervention the student's behavior was so improved that his teacher thought he'd gone on medication.

'You can have really bright, able children whose anxiety is interfering so much.'

For kids with anxiety, there are a number of strategies teachers can employ. The first is not to take any student behavior personally. The student isn't trying to manipulate or torture the teacher, his behavior is reflecting something going on internally. Often a short movement break can help relieve anxiety, but not the way they are commonly given.

Minahan described a seventh grade girl who was recovering from an eating disorder. The girl was scraping her arms so badly they would bleed. After lunch, predictably, the behavior was worse, so her teachers were letting her color and draw to relieve her anxiety. Another common break is to tell a student to go get a drink of water down the hall. The coloring break wasn't working for this seventh grader and Minahan soon figured out why. "We accidentally left her alone to fester in her anxious thoughts," she said.

Tip 4: Leaving class doesn't give the student a break from internal negative thoughts like "I'm fat," or "I'm not smart enough," which paralyze thinking. But a break paired with a cognitive distraction does offer respite from the "all or nothing" thinking that's so common with anxious students. An older student might take a break and record herself reading a book out loud for a younger student with dyslexia. It's impossible to read out loud and think another thought. Other distractions could include sports trivia, sudoku or crossword puzzles. Little kids might do a Where's Waldo or look through a Highlight magazine for the hidden picture.

Tip 5: When teachers want to wrap up a task they often use a countdown. "Silent reading time is going to be over in five minutes." But counting down doesn't support a high achieving anxious child who feels she must finish. And it takes a lot of executive function skills and cognitive flexibility to fight the urge to keep going after the time is up. So instead of counting down, a teacher might walk over to that student and say, let's find a good stopping point. She may stop a minute later than the rest of the class when she reaches the designated point, but it won't escalate into a tug-of-war.

Transitions are another common time for kids to act out. Younger students often don't want to come in from recess, for example. But when a teacher says, "Line up. Recess is over. It's time for your spelling quiz," it's no wonder the student doesn't want to go from something he loves to something he hates.

Tip 6: The teacher can give students an in-between step to make the transition more palatable. Go from recess, to two minutes of coloring, to the spelling quiz. The intermediary step gives that non-compliant student behavioral momentum. He's already sitting down, quiet, with pen in hand, so the jump to spelling isn't as jarring.

For middle and high school students, school is all about being social, but the only times students get to see their friends are in the two to five minute passing periods between classes. Again, the transition is from something they love to something they hate, so don't make that transition extra hard by collecting homework as they come in the door. The toughest kids are probably already not doing well in the class, and a reminder of the homework exacerbates feelings of inadequacy.

Tip 7: One high school geometry teacher started playing two minute YouTube videos about geometry as students came into class. It got students from the hallway into the classroom without thinking negatively and her class started to run more smoothly. She didn't have the same interruptions she used to, which made the lost two minutes seem worth it.

Tip 8: Minahan also likes some of the biofeedback tools that are now available, like the EmWave. A wound up student puts a sensor on his finger and calming down becomes a game. He might start out with a picture of a black and white forest, but as he calms down (and the sensor monitors his heart rate) the colors start to pop in. It can take as little as two to five minutes to completely calm a kid down when they can see the feedback so clearly.

"I like it because it's so concrete," Minahan said. A student with high functioning autism might not even know what a teacher means by "calm down," but with the biofeedback device she can see what it means.

WORK AVOIDANCE

Minahan says it's very common for students to have trouble initiating work, persisting through work and asking for help, but there are strategies to help kids build the skills to get better in these areas.

"You can have really bright, able children whose anxiety is interfering so much," Minahan said. The anxiety isn't coming from nowhere; it's coming from prior experiences of feeling frozen and stupid. In that moment the child's working memory isn't working, so teachers need to find ways to bypass it until the anxiety passes.

Tip 9: One way is to let students preview the work for the day. In the morning, an elementary school teacher might work on the first few problems with the anxious child so she knows she can do it. Then, when it's time for that work later in the day, that child receives the sheet she's already started and can go from there.

Tip 9.1: In high school, teachers can give students with trouble initiating the preview as homework. Students can start at home without any pressure and continue at school. "Fight or flight is the worst when they first see it," Minahan said, so try to bypass that moment and prevent a breakdown.

Tip 10: At the same time, when the teacher names the strategies a student is employing, he is helping the student build a toolbox that can be used independently. Strategies might include, asking a teacher to help her start when she feels frozen, or asking to preview the homework. For perfectionist students, difficulty starting can stem from a fear of messing up. Give those students dry erase boards, where the mess ups can be easily erased. It helps when teachers treat the difficulty starting as a small problem and say something like, "Looks like you're not initiating. What strategy are you going to use?"

'When I shift the reinforcement to skills, I've noticed the skills go up and that's what makes the difference for the kids who have mental health difficulties.'

Tip 11: Some strategies to build persistence include skipping the hard ones and doing the ones a student knows first, working with a buddy, and double checking work on problems that have been completed.

Giving help in class is often a tricky balance, especially if a student is too embarrassed to ask vocally. Instead of acting out because she can't do the work, the student might raise her hand, pass the teacher a note or make eye contact. Then the teacher has to be careful not to give too much help. "We accidentally create dependency because we help so much," Minahan said.

That goes for academics as well as behavior. Often a teacher will notice a student becoming agitated and dysregulated and tell him to take a short walk. But ultimately the student will be better served if he can learn to monitor himself and implement strategies when he notices early signs of agitation. "Kids have to learn how to catch themselves on the way up and calm down there," Minahan said, because that's when the strategies work. But kids need to be taught how to recognize the signs.

Tip 12: Teach kids how to do a body check. With younger students a teacher can describe the signs of agitation as they are happening so the student starts to recognize them. With older students, ask them where in their body they feel anxious, for example, "in your belly?" "Give them the data every day," Minahan said. "This is your body on the way up." After the groundwork has been laid, a teacher can just say "body check, please" to let a student know it's time to check in with themselves and start using a strategy.

But what can you do when a kid is already exploding? Minahan says, not much because the child will have a very hard time reacting in a reasonable way once he or she is riled up.

Tip 13: What educators can do is anticipate those moments and rehearse self-calming strategies when the child is calm.

In one case, Minahan knew an elementary student she was working with was going to have a traumatic change in her life. The child's mom was giving her up to foster care and the date had been set. To prepare for what would undoubtedly be a moment when the student couldn't control herself, Minahan had her practice self-calming in the social worker's office, where she would probably go on the day. Twice a day for five minutes she rehearsed a self-calming routine when she was already calm so her working memory was available and she was learning the strategies.

When the day came and the child did freak out, Minahan quickly got her into the office with very little touching or verbal interaction which might further set her off. Once there, the girl got into her routine, and started singing to herself as a cognitive distraction. "The rehearsal allowed for automaticity and did not require cognition or working memory in that moment," Minahan said.

Tip 14: Rehearse replies to confrontations. Minahan worked with a high school student who constantly got in fights. If he felt disrespected he'd start swinging. Together they rehearsed over and over him saying, "I don't have time for this," and walking away. During the rehearsals, Minahan gave him something to hold in his hands as he said this. And soon, he stopped getting in fights. It gave him the moment he needed to make a decision not to use his fists and a go-to automatic reply.

Tip 15: Use data to disprove negative thinking. Writing is a common barrier for kids with anxiety, Minahan said. But one way to begin getting students past this hurdle is to ask them how hard a task will be before they start and again after they've completed it. Almost always the perception of the task is worse than the actual task. With several weeks of data you can show students the pattern in their responses.

Minahan worked with a girl who hated writing so much that she was skipping school twice a week. She would often say that writing was torture to her. Minahan broke writing down into component parts with corresponding strategies for getting started on each part. When the student worked on a writing task Minahan would ask her how many strategies she employed. Often the girl didn't use that many strategies, which didn't fit with her own conception of herself. "We reframed her whole thinking and she felt more empowered to solve her problems," Minahan said.

INTERACTION STRATEGIES

In any interaction with students teachers can only control their own behavior, but that's actually a lot of power. "We are 50% of every interaction with a child," Minahan said. "We have a lot of control over that interaction."

Tip 16: If a teacher gets off on the wrong foot with a student early in the year, try randomly being kind to the child, rather than only giving positive attention based on his or her behavior. This kind of noncontingent reinforcement helps the child to see the teacher likes him for who he is, not because he does math well or reads perfectly, Minahan said.

Tip 17: In areas where the difficult student is competent, give her a leadership role. Maybe let her take a younger child to the nurse or start an activity club. This helps change the child's perception of herself and also her relationship to the teacher.

Tip 18: When demanding something of a student, don't ask yes or no questions and teach kids not to ask yes or no questions. In that scenario, someone has a 50 percent chance of being disappointed with the answer. By changing the question, the teacher opens the door for the answer to be diffusing, rather than an escalation of defiance. For example, if a student asks, "Can I work with Jack?" The teacher can reframe the question: "Oh, did you want to know when you could work with Jack? You can ask: When can I work with Jack." The student might not like the answer, but it likely won't produce the same explosive reaction as getting an outright "no."

Tip 19: Give kids time and space. If a student is prone to arguing, eye contact and physical proximity can escalate potential protests.*** For example, if a kid is humming in an annoying way, a typical teacher move might be to make eye contact with the child and shake your head to get him to stop. But in this situation eye-contact is non-verbally asking the child for a response, which he may be incapable of giving at that moment. Instead, calmly walk over and put a note on his desk that says, "please stop humming." Then run away and do not make eye contact with that student for a few minutes.

"The initial reaction is not pleasant and you have to wait for them to de-escalate before they can comply," Minahan said. Sometimes the mere presence of the teacher prevents that de-escalation.

Tip 20: Reward practice or strategy use, not performance. "When I shift the reinforcement to skills, I've noticed the skills go up and that's what makes the difference for the kids who have mental health difficulties," Minahan said. Ultimately, educators are teaching kids the skills and strategies that they can then use throughout their life when they're anxious, so rewarding practice makes sense.

The more teachers can empathize with students, teaching skill building and focus on preventing challenging behavior, the smoother the classroom will run. Often that means learning about the student in order to identify triggers and design new ways of interacting with even the most challenging students.

*An earlier version of this post overstated the connection between bad behavior and seeking attention.
**An earlier version of this sentence highlighted only one type of negative behavior -- fighting.
*** This section was updated to include the situations under which eye contact could make a situation worse for a student. We regret these errors.

Don't miss an episode of the MindShift Podcast

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20 Tips to Help De-escalate Interactions With Anxious or Defiant Students | KQED

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Interventions and strategic behaviors can help teachers manage students who are acting out or missing out on learning because of behavioral issues.

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Differentiation Stratgeies

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Differentiation is adjusting and modifying what skills and concepts students learn, what materials they use, and/or how their learning is assessed based on the needs of the students.

Our students are not all the same, so we cannot expect that teaching a lesson in one way will reach every student. Our students are unique individuals with their own prior learning and their own learning preferences.

An effective teacher makes the changes needed to reach every student where they are and to guide them to an understanding of the skills and concepts we want them to learn.

Differentiation can take place at several points during a lesson:

Each of these can be further differentiated by student readiness (their academic level) and/or their personal interests and learning styles.

Not every lesson needs to be differentiated, and certainly not in all of the possible ways. When determining the most effect way to differentiate, consider the size of the class, the needs and personalities of the students, the range of skills, the availability of materials, time available and even time of day. The possibilities are endless!

Printable version of Differentiation Planning diagram

Material from the Learning Continuum is provided by courtesy of NWEA and may not be republished, rewritten, or redistributed. All rights reserved.

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Differentiation is adjusting and modifying what skills and concepts students learn, what materials they use, and/or how their learning is assessed based on the needs of the students. Our students are not all the same, so we cannot expect that teaching a lesson in one way will reach every student.

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Instructional Strategies

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Shelley Moore - 5 Moore Minutes

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The Heart and Spirit of Inclusion Podcasts

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The Heart and Spirit of Inclusion Podcasts

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Inclusion Research in Canada

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Podcasts

The Canadian Research Centre on Inclusive Education is a network of stakeholders who provide a uniquely Canadian view of inclusive education. Comprised of people with expertise in leadership, research methodologies, and theoretical approaches, they have experience working with diverse partners and stakeholders, and a employ a range of approaches and contexts for knowledge mobilization.

In this series of podcasts and live events, the research, work and connecting conversations emerging from the work of the Centre are featured.

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Podcasts The Canadian Research Centre on Inclusive Education is a network of stakeholders who provide a uniquely Canadian view of inclusive education. Comprised of people with expertise in leadership, research methodologies, and theoretical approaches, they have experience working with diverse partners and stakeholders, and a employ a range of approaches and contexts for knowledge mobilization.

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Social Narrative/Stories Bank

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Kansas Technical Assistance Network (TASN) Autism and Tertiary Behavior Supports Resource Center

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The Mission of KISN is to support Kansas school districts in building local capacity to serve students with diverse learning needs through results based professional development training and technical assistance.

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These sample lesson plans support Education for Reconciliation through the inclusion of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit perspectives; treaty education; and residential schools' experiences, with learning outcomes identified in the current Alberta programs of study.

Each sample lesson plan includes content(s) or context(s) related to one or more of the following aspects of Education for Reconciliation:

diverse perspectives and ways of knowing of First Nations, Métis, or Inuit, including values, traditions, kinship, language, and ways of being;

understandings of the spirit and intent of treaties; or

residential schools' experiences and resiliency.

Links and relevant information in Guiding Voices: A Curriculum Development Tool for Inclusion of First Nations, Métis and Inuit Perspectives Throughout Curriculum and Walking Together: First Nations, Métis and Inuit Perspectives in Curriculum are provided to support understandings of First Nations, Métis, or Inuit ways of knowing. Both online resources are accessed through LearnAlberta.ca.

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These sample lesson plans support Education for Reconciliation through the inclusion of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit perspectives; treaty education; and residential schools' experiences, with learning outcomes identified in the current Alberta programs of study.

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Whole class, small group or individual strategies

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The 5W Cube is a portable strategy to target open-ended questions (beginning with who, what, when, where, why, and how) as a means of exploring content and conversational speech. The 5W Cube helps students formulate questions and foster meaningful connections with content. The 5W Cube is a general strategy...

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An interactive activity with ideas for instruction and assessment, based on the principles of Universal Design for Learning.

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A Toolkit for Promoting Empathy in Schools

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A Toolkit for Promoting Empathy in Schools

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Toolkits and Strategies for Social Awareness, Self-Efficacy, Self-Management, Growth Mindset

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We are committed to sharing what we're learning in order to help educators act on what is known today about social-emotional learning and whole child development.

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Select a word or phrase, right-click it, and choose . If you're on a touch device, like an iOS or Android device, double-tap the word to select it and then tap Smart Lookup or .

The insights pane will open with more information about that word or phrase, including definitions, Wikipedia articles, and top related searches from the web.

The Smart Lookup feature debuted with Office 2016 and has improved greatly with Office 365.

See also

Research your paper easily within Word

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Get insights into what you're working on with Smart Lookup

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Select a word or phrase, right-click it, and choose . If you're on a touch device, like an iOS or Android device, double-tap the word to select it and then tap Smart Lookup or . The insights pane will open with more information about that word or phrase, including definitions, Wikipedia articles, and top related searches from the web.

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Report on barriers students face in schools

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He wāhi mō te katoa | A place for all of us

Practical guidance for Aotearoa kaiako and educational leaders. Check out our range of guides, helping you to plan for the diverse learning and wellbeing needs of all ākonga.

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This site provides New Zealand educators with practical strategies, suggestions and resources to support learners with diverse needs.

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Autism Q & As

Monotropism is a theory of autism which was first developed by autistics Dinah Murray and Wenn Lawson. Dinah and Wenn independently formulated the key ideas of monotropism, then later worked together for years developing,...

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Autism Awareness Centre is a Health on the Net Accredited site that strives to offer the best list of resources for understanding autism and ASD in Canada, the UK and beyond.

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Helping over 1 million educators, clinicians and families around the world. Strategies to teach essential life skills including social emotional learning and self-regulation across all environments.

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Autism Spectrum Disorder - 27 focused interventions. Online modules, called AFIRM, for each of the 27 identified practices - accessed through a free membership.

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What are Evidence-based Practices?

An evidence-based practice is an instructional/intervention procedure or set of procedures for which researchers have provided an acceptable level of research that shows the practice produces positive outcomes for children, youth, and/or adults with ASD.

What EBPs have been identified?

The National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice (NCAEP) recently released their new report idenityfing EBPs. The new report reviews literature published from 1990-2017 and identifies 28 EBPs and 10 manualized interventions that also met criteria. The list of EBPs is here.

The NCAEP and AFIRM teams are working to update our user-friendly materials and AFIRM modules to reflect these changes. Until then, please select an EBP identified in our 2014 review to access the AFIRM module about the practice. Each module provides an overview and general description, step-by-step instructions of implementation, an implementation checklist, and the evidence-base which includes the list of references that demonstrate the practice meets the NPDC's criteria.
To print out a specific EBP Brief Packet, access the AFIRM modules and download the EBP Brief packet.
Comparison of NCAEP and NSP EBPs

NCAEP (2020) and the National Standards Project (NSP, 2015) published reports of their systematic reviews of the literature and identification of evidence-based practices. Nineteen of the NCAEP EBPs were also identified as established interventions in the NSP report Five of the NCAEP EBPs were identified as emerging interventions (i.e., some evidence but not sufficient to be classified as an EBP). NCAEP identified four EBPs that were not included in the NSP previous report and NSP identified Language Training (Production) as an established intervention, whereas it was not included in the current NCAEP report. NSP also included Comprehensive Behavioral Treatment for Young Children, and NCAEP did not consider comprehensive treatment models in the current review. In summary, there continues to be a substantial overlap in EBPs identified by these two independent reviews.
To print out the NCAEP NSP Comparison table, download the table here and open using Adobe Reader.

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An evidence-based practice is an instructional/intervention procedure or set of procedures for which researchers have provided an acceptable level of research that shows the practice produces positive outcomes for children, youth, and/or adults with ASD. The National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice (NCAEP) recently released their new report idenityfing EBPs.

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resourceSET - student and classroom resources

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Create visuals, schedules, etc. Paid membership

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Save valuable time and find already created activities, from the Boardmaker Community and Premium Activities, to meet all your students' individual needs.

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Tips and Takeaways for Teaching All Kids - All grades

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Today's blog post has been adapted from Susan Craig's popular book, Reaching and Teaching Children Who Hurt. Paying attention-in a classroom or in any other setting-always involves selecting from a variety...

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Multiple tools to use for math, literacy, writing, research, study skills and more.

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Books, readings, blog on inclusive education resources

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Posted on July 22, 2022 in News

I know that many of you are already aware, but I want to officially welcome all visitors to check out my new site, InclusionRules.com. In addition to loads of new content, the most popular content from PaulaKluth.com will be available on InclusionRules.com too.

InclusionRules.com is where you can find ...

Posted on July 22, 2022 in News

In August and September of 2022, I am offering my Co-Teaching Kickoff event to get us all back into the game of collaboration, co-planning, co-visioning, and, of course, co-teaching.

This opportunity is for all team members, including administrators ...

Posted on February 02, 2021 in News

In case you missed the news, the UNCONFERENCE has started!

Come and learn from the voices featured in All In: Creating Inclusive Virtual Classrooms!

While some students with disabilities are heading back to physical classrooms, many are still in virtual or hybrid settings. As we begin the second semester, it is so important that we continue to engage these learners and seek creative ways to include and support them and their peers without disabilities.

If you value inclusive education and are ..

Posted on June 27, 2020 in News

I have been having so much fun working virtually with book clubs this summer- it has helped me to connect with so many of you in a personal way. To keep the fun moving forward and to provide inclusion energy and support for your inclusive activities, I wanted to share a handout that I've been using with study groups, book clubs, and steering committees who are using ...

Posted on March 24, 2020 in News

We may be sheltering in place, but Coaster refuses to "stay"! I have made him available to all of you as of last week via my YouTube channel.

To support teachers and families who are teaching and learning virtually, I released this clip so teachers of young children can share storytime with their students and teachers of older students can craft lessons about ...
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Toward Inclusive Classrooms and Communities

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Handouts, curriculum resources, strategies, templates from Shelley Moore - Inclusion Specialist

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Canadian Research Centre on Inclusive Education

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Canadian Research Centre on Inclusive Education

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Canadian Research Centre on Inclusive Education - Western University

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Connections have been established, creating a strong group of renowned researchers in inclusive education at universities all across Canada.

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Supporting School Principals developing inclusive school environments

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Supporting principals and school leaders as they develop inclusive classrooms and school environments.

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Paper on the role of leadership in shaping inclusive schools

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A Principals Guide

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Questionnaire

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Medical and Disability Information for Teachers

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Medical and Disability Information for Teachers

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Strategies to support students with specific medical and disabilities in classrooms

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Loui Lord Nelson provides strategies/resources for UDL implementation

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Co-teaching and UDL: The bricks and the mortar

Co-teaching. Two adults sharing a space. Two people trained in different disciplines bringing together different content. Two people who each come at relationships and interactions in their own unique way now creating a single space together. Two personalities. Two bodies bringing their own mood to the classroom each day. That "two" isn't just a 2. That "two" is exponentially bigger.

In this week's podcast, Karen Keener and Jordan Landis share why they think their co-taught classroom is so successful and how they believe Universal Design for Learning has benefitted them to frame their "two" and make it successful for all learners. Below are a few of the themes that I heard and appreciated.

Co-teaching is an expectation in their building - Brick 1

Karen and Jordan's building administration value co-teaching. They value it to the point that it is in the master schedule. Teachers know that this will be dedicated time together and it is a defined expectation. This is an incredibly important step that administrators need to take. To ask teachers to co-teach is a positive step, but those teachers need support in what co-teaching is, what structures should be in place, and how to plan with other another. There are plenty of quality online articles (more are here) specifically about getting started with co-teaching. These pieces are for both administrators and teachers because that unified knowledge will lead to better outcomes! And then, teachers need designated time for planning. Karen and Jordan designated a specific time each week during the defined planning period and have fallen into a comfortable pattern of what they do during that time and about how much time it will take them to do that planning. They have shifted from planning alone during that slot to planning together. This is another shift each leader will need to support with resources, examples, and guidance.

Co-teaching is a relationship - Brick 2

All relationships need time and trust to grow. Karen and Jordan have worked together for a few years and fully rely on one another to complete whatever tasks they've defined. They've consciously and subconsciously agreed upon their norms for building relationships with the students. But the most important piece is the equal partnership they have developed and convey to one another and to their students. They recognize the strengths, talents, and gifts they each bring to the space and work collaboratively to share those with the students. In a profession that is still predominantly developed as solo effort, this can be a huge request. Co-teaching becomes a critical time for personal reflection on how to meet the needs of the learners through the benefit of two teachers. There is a great Edutopia article about this topic.

This Photo by Ian Britton is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

Understanding how co-teaching can elevate UDL implementation in the classroom - The mortar

Karen and Jordan are clear about how UDL has improved their co-teaching. UDL created a mindset shift, but they both experienced it. They shifted from asking why the students wasn't learning to investigating what they designed that kept a student from learning. As Jordan put it, "...what kind of changes do we need to make so that kid can access the material in our classroom?" But here's the key to this: they both experienced and owned that mindset shift. Going back up to the former point, co-teaching is a relationship and mindset is a foundational piece of any relationship. There are other resources out there, including great articles and books that bring together co-teaching and UDL that get to this mindset piece as it develops in a co-teaching relationship, but I like the way Karen so bluntly put it when I asked her how UDL had affected the way she designs. Now she asks, "What's wrong with our lesson that kids are not getting where they need to be?"

UDL places us in a position of investigating our mindset and investigating our design. It's a framework of checks and balances. We need to have the mindset to design that environment that will truly empower all of our learners to become expert learners.

When UDL and Fidelity Play Well Together

When you think of standardized assessments, do you think of student empowerment? I didn't either until this conversation with Rebecca Chappell. As she shares in this podcast, she figured out how to maintain the fidelity of an assessment while providing student choice within the assessment (you'll have to listen to find out how). She states, "And I think just reflecting on it for me was just to see how just two small changes in how I approach [the assessment] has really impacted how the students engage with it." Just two small changes. To me, that's the magic of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). That's why it works. There's a lot of debate, though, throughout the educational community about UDL. Some don't believe in it at all, saying things like, "If you can't measure it, it's not worth it," or something like that. And while there are a healthy number of people working to figure out how to measure it, I come at it a different way.

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UDL requires us to have a behavioral change and a mindset change. Beginning with the behavioral change, if you're someone who used to be more sage-on-the-stage, you (hopefully) shifted from that because you now understand that the sage brings little relevance and authenticity, provides little or no opportunities for students to develop any kind of self-assessment skills or strategies, and offers few opportunities for students to use tools to construct and compose (and that's just a few of the things that are minimized when an educator talks too much). You altered your planning and teaching behaviors to align more with the UDL framework. That's a good thing because the framework is made up of researched and validated evidence-based practices. As I say, it's all the really good stuff neatly organized and ready to use! Next is the mindset shift.

For some, the mindset shift comes immediately. For others, it comes after working with the framework for a while. One isn't better than the other because the mindset shift that occurs with UDL is not a race, it is a process. It is within that process that you experience a release similar to what Rebecca shares:

"I was just really surprised, and I think relieved, to see that little change. And just thinking about these guidelines and what I want my students to leave my classroom being able to do is not just be able to produce a bunch of words in a certain amount of time and half correct writing sequence and spelling. I also want them to have the skills that are that are a part of those expert learner characteristics."

The mindshift happens when we realize that education is much, much bigger than standardized assessments. We realize that knowledge is only 1/6 of the expert learner package. Education is providing our learners with opportunity after opportunity to gain skills that lead them toward owning purpose, motivation, knowledge, resourcefulness, being strategic, and being goal-directed (those are the 6 traits in case you're wondering what the other 5 are). None of us are born as expert learners. We acquire these, but we only acquire them when provided the opportunity to do so.

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I know that the field will continue to demand a way to measure UDL because our current education culture leans that direction. But I hope you take the time to see where you sit in your teaching behaviors (i.e., how you design and deliver instruction) and your mindset. We operate in a field where we are consistently and persistently evaluated. I'm asking you to take a step toward personal empowerment, a step toward becoming your own expert learner, and examine where you are. If you do that, I guarantee that you're one step closer to helping your learners travel the pathway to becoming expert learners.

It's summer time in North America. Whether you're carting your children around to countless activities, working a summer job, or taking a brief vacation to sit on a chaise lounge and watch the ocean, hike a trail, fly on a plane, or visit a new place somewhere on our big beautiful ball called Earth, I hope you take time to enjoy that space.

Others in the world are still within their teaching year. You're making your lesson plans, meeting with parents, and continuing your quest to educate learners in the best ways possible. Thank you.

Wherever you are, when you're ready to feel inspired, we're here for you with over 4 hours of easy listening and learning. UDL in 15 Minutes is taking a break from production during July, but that's the beauty of podcasts - they're always there waiting for you.

And remember, stories about UDL implementation are transferable to all grades and subjects. I guarantee that you'll learn from the 8th grade teacher even if you teach 1st and vice-versa. Here's a quick breakdown of the episodes:

Grade/subject

Guest and Topic in podcast

Episode number

4 th - 5 th grade

Adria Gold - Chunking information in English Language Arts
14

District resources teacher

Melissa Toland - Using her experiences as a 7 th grade teacher implementing UDL to help others learn about it
15

When UDL Guides the Use of Technology

Technology is a learning tool used in many classrooms. We know that it can have a positive impact on learning. Organizations like The International Society for Technology in Education ( www.ISTE.org) work hard to promote pedagogically strong use. They push for educators to see technology as something more than engagement and we are responsible for designing how it will be used. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL)-influenced design behind Rebecca Chappell's use of Quizlet provides a perfect example and the guidelines provide a perfect structure for the description.

Though Rebecca and her co-teacher knew they wanted to use Quizlet, they took the time to design the entire process through the lens of UDL. They knew they would recruit the interest of their learners right away. They also knew they needed to sustain their effort and persistence and would need some support in identifying how they would self-regulate their learning. It would be a mistake to think that the learners would gain skills toward becoming engaged expert learners (purposeful and motivated), so they addressed the second and third guidelines through environmental supports. These included private conversations and additional instruction on how to use Quizlet more effectively for their learning needs.

They knew that this tool would help represent the information to their learners, but the learners needed guidance on how to find those supports and use them. Rebecca describes how the students perception was enhanced because they could use words or images to represent the vocabulary, that the tool is designed to support learners' clarification of vocabulary ( language and symbols), but she and her co-teacher needed to step in to support students' growth in comprehension. The design of that lesson hinged on students' background knowledge rather than a curriculum-generated vocabulary list.

Students' access to the tool was ensured ( physical action) and the tool did give the learners a platform to compose their own definitions, further connecting them to the vocabulary, but this was a choice that Rebecca and her colleague made. They could have easily added in definitions for the learners to memorize or had the learners simply use dictionary-generated definitions. Rebecca and her colleague knew the value of learner ownership. While the exercise of learning more vocabulary would help the learners become more knowledgeable, they needed to ensure a different use of the tool to ensure their learners gained skills related to becoming more resourceful. They knew this through their work with UDL. Finally, Rebecca and her colleague worked with their learners on appropriate goal setting. This was part of the learning environment. They knew that their learners needed this support to be successful in their strategizing and goal setting.

What made this lesson even stronger, though, was the clarity Rebecca and her co-teacher have around what I call the roots of UDL. This is a fully inclusive setting, so Rebecca and her colleague are always working to ensure full access for every learner. They understand that the methods and the materials chosen for the environment need to be flexible and need to be used flexibly. They know that the lesson needs to be goal driven so the students know what they were working toward and how they will know when the students have met their learning targets. The rigor is still high even through the barriers are lowered and the students are provided choice within the structure of the lesson. Some of that choice is inherent within the online tool, but choice actually begins outside of the technology. In the case of the shared lesson, it was in the selection of the vocabulary.

This podcast provided a wonderful example of how the design of the lesson and learning environment is what provides a way for expert learner growth. It is a solid combination of goals, methods, materials, and assessment. None of those can stand alone and all must be influenced by the entire UDL framework. When that happens, we watch the growth of expert learners.

"Experience is the teacher of all things."

The title of this blog comes from Comments on the Civil War (Commenterii De Bello Civili, c. 52 B.C.) written by Julius Caesar. It is likely Caesar was reflecting on the hard-won lessons of war. There were things he and others might have read about or talked about but they would have never truly understood them unless they had the experiences they had.

Leaving behind the connection to war, I find that the quote is applicable to all experiences. My first job was at a garden shop. I knew how to keep the plants in my home alive and loved reading books about plants (I was passionate about my high school botany class), but I learned through experience that each plant within the cells of the flats were individual organic beings. If I wasn't careful, I could easily kill a number of them. Maybe the water wouldn't reach the roots of one plant because its foliage was thick and then the soil would dry up. Or the sun would scorch the plants closest to the blacktop so it was important to rotate them or move them up a shelf. It was also my first lesson in the economics of business. Dead plants can quickly eat into the bottom line of a family-owned business. Respect the plants.

(Pixabay)

Justin Freedman puts this quote to work within his college course at Rowan University. He knows that his pre-service teachers not only need the experience of using the UDL framework to consider the design of the lessons and learning environments they hope to construct in the future, they also need to use the framework as a lens to observe the lessons they view and learning environments they visit. But here's where Justin makes this a 365-degree experience. Justin designs his own learning environment and lessons using the UDL framework. His students experience what it is like to be in an environment that responds to their variability. The environment is flexible, accessible, goal-oriented, rigorous, and driven by choice.

During the podcast, Justin talks about his dissertation study. It focused on the professor-student relationship as perceived by students requesting disability-related accommodations. One of his findings was that many students did not want this request to be the basis of the initial relationship with their professor. They did not want to be perceived as asking for anything special and would, in fact, clarify that they would not take advantage of the requested accommodation unless absolutely necessary. The conversation made the students feel disempowered versus empowered. This was a catalyst for Justin in the design of his own learning environment. His purpose for using the UDL framework is to ensure all students experience emotional, physical, and academic access to learning.

You hear Justin discuss the design of his course, how he clarifies his expectations, and the flexibility he provides to all learners, but my biggest take-away is how powerful these pre-service teachers are going to be in the classroom. I know they will be powerful because these learners spend time thinking about their experiences in their own learning environment and then reflect on how those experiences might align with their future students' experiences. How does the environment make them feel as a learner in relationship to themselves, to others, and as a community? Are there issues around equity? If a student is allowed to use a computer to write her exam essay versus hand-writing the essay, is that advantage harmful to others who also have choice in how they express their knowledge? (The answer here is no. When all learners are given the opportunity to best express their knowledge and skills, everyone has the advantage). These learners are experiencing a learning environment designed using the UDL framework. They are learning that there is not a stand-alone example of UDL. They are learning that they have to take more responsibility for their learning. They are learning how to be purposeful, motivated, resourceful, knowledgeable, strategic, and goal-directed learners. They are learning how to be expert learners.

Executive functioning skills: Start early!

My podcast interview with Karlene Warns focuses on self-regulation skills, but in other conversations, Karlene and I talked about how important those skills are in conjunction with executive functioning. That's probably why the smart people at CAST put them in the same row of the UDL Guidelines! Because you heard some great examples from Karlene of how she supports the development of her students' self-regulation skills, I'm going to continue down the pathway of executive functioning so you can link them together.

Executive functioning (EF) is " the self-management system of the brain ". If you do a simple Google search of just those two words to get more information, you will see 113,000,000 results. One would need extraordinary EF skills to get through that list! (I admit it. That's bad UDL humor). To give us direction, CAST broke down EF into four main areas that we can support in the classroom: guide appropriate goal-setting, support planning and strategy development, facilitate managing information and resources, and enhance capacity for monitoring progress. But Karlene is a kindergarten teacher. Do those students need to be so focused on such seemingly complex skills?

In those initial Google search results, you will find reports on a 3-year study that looked at how the executive functioning skills of kindergarteners were predictors of future academic outcomes. The authors (Morgan, Farkas, Wang, Hillemeier, Oh, & Maczuga, 2019) used modeling to show that executive functions exemplified by kindergarteners predicted academic outcomes in second grade. In another published paper on the same study, the researchers reported that children with EF deficits, especially in working memory, were at risk for repeated academic difficulties in future years. As a reminder, working memory is the part of executive functioning that helps us hold onto information in the short term so we can make it through an assignment or task. Why is this so important? Because there have not been many robust studies that have looked at the risk factors for repeated academic difficulties in elementary school. Moreover, this study looked at reading, math, and science. In short, executive functioning is a really, really important set of skills that deeply affect future success in academics.

Though I've only mentioned this one study, there is a significant amount of research that aligns with and backs up the idea that we need to provide our youngest students opportunities to build their executive functioning skills. Learners of all ages need guidance in how to set and achieve goals, plan out their tasks and choose a strategy to complete the tasks, figure out how to manage all of the information and resources coming their way, and continue to build their ability to monitor their own progress. So, can you work in this kind of skill building in the midst of heavy academics? Yes, you can! A more focused and purposeful approach like Karlene models with self-regulation is much, much more effective, but you can tuck activities and small tasks in here and there.

Edutopia offers a list of nine ways you can support students develop executive functioning.

LDonline offers some straightforward tips that can easily be nestled within your day-to-day work.

Because executive functioning skills are a major part of our daily success, there are tons of videos and articles written about it, but remember that all learners are variable and that variability is due to context. How does your context support your students to practice their EF skills? In each case, the focus should be on providing your learners with as many opportunities as possible to build these skills sets throughout their academic careers and help them understand that these are part of their own lifelong journey toward becoming expert learners.

(Pixabay)

Morgan, P. L., Farkas, G., Wang, Y., Hillemeier, M. M., Oh, Y., & Maczuga, S. (2019). Executive function deficits in kindergarten predict repeated academic difficulties across elementary school. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 46, 20-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.06.009

While sitting on the main stage in front of a live studio audience at the UDL-IRN Summit, Camille shared her experiences as a learning coach at Sunflower Elementary School in Lawrence, Kansas. She told us the story of her school's fourth grade teachers and what brought them to UDL. They came to her saying, "We have a weekly assessment that we give to check for student understanding, but we don't feel like we're getting the information from the students that they know. We know they know main idea but we don't allow them to give us all their information." It's the second sentence that caught my attention: "We know they know main idea, but we don't allow them to give us all their information." It caught my attention because those are such powerful words that demonstrate a certain mindset. It is a mindset that primed the teachers to begin their relationship with UDL more quickly.

These teachers not only recognized the control they had in relation to their students' learning opportunities (e.g., they owned that they wrote the lesson plan, they chose the materials students used, they decided on the assessments given), these teachers went a step further and understood that this level of control was what inhibited or freed their students to fully demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. In this case, they already saw that the design of the assessments impeded student progress. They already realized that their students knew more than the assessment structures allowed them to show. These teachers demonstrated an assumption of student competency and an acknowledgement of narrow assessments. That combination set those educators up to connect more deeply with the UDL framework.

Later in the podcast, Camille shared that the teachers were initially, "very structured." She continued with, "And then as they went along, they released that control to the students. And that is amazing when you see fourth graders, they're learning main idea, they're getting that direct instruction, but then they take it upon themselves to plan out how they're going to show it." They gave more control to their learners and everyone benefitted.

When educators learn about UDL, the first question is always, "How do I get started?" I'm a very pragmatic person and I love to give people concrete instructional steps to take. Thinking about mindset is a very different angle to take. An angle not everyone is willing to take. Mindset gets at the core of who we are as individuals and as teachers, but if we're not willing to do the deep work of discovering and naming our mindset, we run the risk of inadvertently creating barriers for our learners. This isn't easy work and it is not always comfortable, but you and a partner or PLC can begin with these three steps.

20 Minute Activity

Background knowledge: Some practice implementing the nine UDL guidelines.

Goal: to discover where you assert control in your learning environment and whether or not that control can be shifted to the learners through the use of the UDL Guidelines.

1. Individually, write down your answers to these questions on notecards or 1/4 sheets of paper:

1. Where do I exert control in my learning environment? Think about everything from lessons and classroom design to daily routines (list one item per piece of paper) - 2 Minutes

2. For each of the items, why do I exert control over it? (write down your reasons on the same side of the paper as the item) - 2 Minutes

2. Discuss your answers with a partner. Where do you see similarities and differences? Did you add items to your list? - 5 Minutes

3. Turn each piece of paper over on the table so the side with writing is facing downward and mix them up. Each person chooses three cards. With your partner, brainstorm how you could give up some/more control of that item so students can practice skills that lead them to become expert learners. Use your UDL guidelines to help you design this shift. - 6 Minutes

Debrief: what was the most challenging part of this activity? What item always requires you to have full control? Is there anyone that sees that item differently? Did you shift? - 5 Minutes

This is one step you can take to begin investigating your learning environment design mindset. You will always be the facilitator - the person who determines the overall plan, but keep pushing yourself and your students to see what they can take on. After all, increased active participation in the design and implementation of the lesson will help them gain more skills associated with becoming expert learners.

Being a UDL Influencer

This week's podcast highlight's Melissa's work in helping others become knowledgeable about UDL. She moved from teaching 7 th grade to the position of district resource teacher. She even shares how she took an existing UDL tool and modified it to accommodate the needs of her learners (Wait! Did I just use a phrase we normally reserve for our K-12 learners and apply appropriately to all learners? Why yes, I did!). Melissa made sure that the tool was going to be helpful to the teachers with whom she worked. She accommodated those needs by altering the tool. But what if you love being in the classroom and you want to influence others to use the UDL framework? What kind of impact can you make?

Not to get too wonky, but there is a theory that works here (and after I share it, you'll be able to identify how Melissa's work is right in line with it!).

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

There's this thing called diffusion theory that's been written about by Everett M. Rodgers (and many, many others) since 1962. Without going too deeply into it, there are 5 phases: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption.

Let's say you've been working with the UDL framework and you've blown away by the changes you've seen in your learners and in your instruction. You're psyched! You're in luck because you can raise awareness and interest (the first two phases) by sharing internet links and stories. This is where mass communication is effective. You're getting the information in front of people, but it's information that is out there for everyone. You don't have to tell your story yet (though you can. That doesn't mess anything up).

The phase of evaluation is your personal attachment to UDL. This is where you begin to share your own stories of the differences you've seen, the steps you've taken, and the students' outcomes you can point out. This helps your peers see how they can evaluate UDL in their own environments. You're taking away some of that fear of "What do I do to get started?"

Trial and adoption are also based on personal influence. Again, you share your stories of how you've played around the framework. What worked and what didn't work in your environment? Why did it work or not work (that "why" part is huge!)? And, whether or not you feel like you're at the adoption stage - where you've totally adopted UDL - it's perfectly fine to help others move into the phases.

Having defined phases can be helpful for something that feels as unwieldy as a framework. It can help you chunk things and categorize your actions as a communicator. Whether you see yourself as an educational leader or not, you are an innovator. How do I know? Because you've decided to work with the UDL framework. It is a framework that doesn't leave room for mechanized practices. It is a framework that promotes creativity and change. It is a framework that relies on you using your own expert learning traits. It relies on you to bring your learners along as they explore and build on their own expert learning traits. Design on, my friends!

Are they accommodations or supports? How you view them makes a difference

Adria Gold's podcast offers the perfect example of the "UDL takeover" that happens when there is full implementation of the framework. Her story comes from the angle of identifying supports that are, at times, reserved for learners with Individual Education Plans (IEPs), but that same support can benefit all learners. The particular support she discusses is chunking.

The National Center on Educational Outcomes describes chunking as a structure that can support learners who are "classified as poor or low-ability readers" ( NCEO, n.d.) The only caution is over-chunking, or breaking up the text so much that it can stifle learners' comprehension of the passage. Though this particular support could be used as an accommodation, in Adria's classroom it is a support offered to all. What's the difference, though, between an accommodation and a support?

First, an accommodation is something that changes how a student learns. The term accommodation is used when describing supports offered to learners with disabilities. It isn't unheard of for people to confuse accommodations and modifications. This piece from Understood.org lays out the difference between them (namely, modifications change what a student is taught or is expected to learn). With that understanding, we can look at a list of common accommodations that are discussed in another article on Understood.org titled, " Common classroom accommodations and modifications." These include:

Audio recordings instead of reading text

Recording notes instead of writing notes

Using a word processor to type notes or give responses in class

Sitting where the learner learns best

In a learning environment like the one Adria describes, these accommodations are seen as supports for any student who choose to use them because the teacher understands what she/he/they want(s) the learners to accomplish. Instead of individual students using these supports at specific times, they are supports provided to all learners based on the goal of the lesson or task. For example, if you want your learners to comprehend the text, listening to the story lowers the barriers of decoding. If you want your learners to capture key elements of a lecture, recording the notes can lower the barriers or slow writing or typing. For other learners, the barrier might be writing, so using a word processor will lower the barrier. And classrooms across the US (and the world, for that matter) are adopting flexible seating which involves learners not only suggesting the surface on which they will sit so they can learn best, but also the location in the learning environment. In each case, you have to know and your learners have to know what they are working toward so they can make informed choices.

In environments designed using the UDL framework, these options are made available to all learners, just like chunking is made available to all learners in Adria's classroom. Adria uses chunking to help her learners break down the success criteria (the components they need to identify to successfully achieve the standard) and asserts her choice by saying, "So why not offer them a little bit of structure or chunking or just breaking down your expectation so that they know what they're being held accountable for?" The learners can pay attention to the colored chunking, they can use the checklist to help them chunk, or they can move through the assignment without giving the colors or checklist any attention. They decide what will help them achieve the goal. Adria recognizes that the support is helping her learners understand their job in the learning process.

Above, I referenced a "UDL takeover" that happens when the framework is fully implemented. That framework is driven by the variability of our learners. We recognize that they all learn differently and it depends on the context. This podcast really focuses in on the access Adria provides to those variable learners. She wants every student to spend time in deep thinking, not wondering whether they will skip a step. She wants them to blend information, not see it as disparate parts. She wants them to think about and talk about the big ideas, not get stuck in the process. Adria understands that access is based on a mindset of inclusion. It is that mindset that drives the design of her learning environment and the focus is on the maturation of expert learners.

When Kim Babeu created her S.P.O.R.T. system, she was thinking about what skills learners needed to be successful in the world. For her, those included:

sportsmanship (e.g., cooperating with others and upholding one another),

participation (e.g., being fully present and involved on behalf of yourself and for the team)

organization (e.g., includes being on time and prepared),

respect (e.g., watching their language, respecting oneself and others), and

teamwork (e.g., stepping up to the plate).

As described during the podcast, this system has led to wonderful outcomes for her students. She's so excited about it, she sent me student interviews where they talked about the impact SPORT has had on them. They shared the following:
They see themselves as individuals who are part of a collective:
Marquel, sophomore: "You feel closer with your peers. We are so far ahead because we have quite a few kids that are just a lot more mature and on task. Their characters are just amazing. They are good people."

Adrianna G. "I think we've earned so many 5 out of 5s because we work together. Like, if there's a problem we'll all help out. We all participate. We're all on the team."

Alexis, junior. "I think our class works as a team and actually wants to earn the sports and follows it. This class feels different. It feels like the class wants to be here and actually learn what we're learning Other classes just come [ sic to school] just because they have to."

Marcos, Junior: "To earn a class wide like SPORT feels great because everybody was on task, doing their work, you know. Everything was just perfect, it was a perfect thing, you know? [And] this class feels like home because I feel, like it's a structured place where I can be myself. I can see myself using it in the future because it helps keep me focused."

Samira, sophomore: "SPORT has helped me not just in class but out of class. It helps me in other classes because I know how to respect, talk, help my team, my classmates, and how to participate. It's a big thing to understand because it has a lot of meaning in a lot of places. Learning how to respect yourself, elderly, other students."
More focused:
Diego, sophomore (via a student translator). "S.P.O.R.T. made him be more focused in class which made him more respectful and want to do better in class."

Alexis, junior: "In my classes it has helps me stay more focused and calm. It has helped me be more respectful of teachers and be more on task. I'll follow [ sic S.P.O.R.T.] when I'm not in school because it has made me become a better person in life and accomplish more things. S.P.O.R.T. is a really good thing. It has helped me in many ways and I'm sure it will help you, too!"

Larry, sophomore: "[ sic S.P.O.R.T.] has helped me motivate myself. It helps me stay focused in class."
Understanding themselves as learners and citizens:
Marquel, sophomore. "I do better with set goals in mind. With SPORT, there's a goal for the day, so I do better. It keeps me on task."

Alexis, junior. "Has helped me in many ways, not only in school but in life. It has helped me become more responsible and organized and respect others more. It has helped me realize that everybody deserves respect."

Marco, junior: "S.P.O.R.T. has helped me mature my mentality and gain skills like be on time, pay attention and focus. It has helped me be engaged more with the lessons."

Larry, sophomore: "It has helped me with daily activities, like if my mom needs some help, I'll do what she asks me to out of honor and respect."
The impact they can have on others:
Samira, sophomore: Responding to earning SPORT points as a class. " We have achieved a big goal because we worked for it. We really, like, put a lot of effort into it. We want to be role models and show other classes what we can do."

Samira, sophomore: What she wants the world to know. "To just respect and work together, not throw shade at other people. Instead of putting them down, hold them up. Make a difference in life."

And now...intentionality

When listening to Kim and hearing the outcomes these students have experienced, it's easy to identify how S.P.O.R.T. aligns with UDL. A quick scan of the guidelines under Engagement alone shows a strong alignment to the affective networks. Those students are learning that: their choices make a difference (recruiting interest), being part of collective has value (recruiting interest), they are part of a collective (sustaining effort and persistence), goals are important in both class and in life (sustaining effort and persistence), the expectations set by Kim are meaningful and doable (self-regulation and recruiting interest), as they improve on their own coping skills, they will be able to accomplish more academically and in life (self-regulation), and that they have ability to reflect and alter their behaviors based on that reflection is a life skill (self-regulation). It's no wonder this system has the potential to be seen as the implementation of UDL!
Did I just say "potential"? Yes. Is that a slam? No.
The number one thing that must happen to implement UDL is the intentional use of the framework to design something. That means we are thinking about the systematic variability and potential barriers learners might experience before any design decisions are made. But what if people tell you that they "see UDL" in your teaching and you don't do either one of these things? It means you have been practicing strategies and methods that are backed by quality research and now you get to bring more into your repertoire! Let's use S.P.O.R.T. as an example.

Toward the end of the podcast, Kim shares that she provides direct instruction about S.P.O.R.T. at the beginning of the year. She also uses posters and student leaders to help new students learn about S.P.O.R.T. to ensure they feel welcome and know how to be part of the community from the beginning. I did not have time to ask, though, what other barriers she has considered. I didn't get to ask what systematic variability she knows will be present and how can she plan for that up-front. For example, Spanish is the predominant first language in her building, but these students are in an English-speaking environment. Though she knows that students support one another in their language-rich school, she can use Microsoft's translator (LINK) and then ask students to clean up the translation. Now, her Spanish-speaking students don't have to wait for their peers to assist them in reading about S.P.O.R.T. That barrier is removed.

Next, UDL is built on the premise that barriers are in the environment, not in the learner, and that the goal determines the support needed. If a learner utilized a wheelchair and needed to get from one room to the next and there are two steps, the barrier is that there is no ramp not that the learner uses a wheelchair. Likewise, if a leaner is a non-reader and they need to comprehend the directions for an experiment, the barrier is that the learner in not provided with audible directions (i.e., given by another learner, teacher, or technology), not that the learner is a non-reader.

If a teacher learns about S.P.O.R.T. but believes that student behaviors purely originate from inside the learner versus seeing behavior as a learner's reaction to the environment, S.P.O.R.T. cannot work. That's because the teacher will always look to the students to behave versus scanning the environment for barriers (e.g., something that might trigger a behavior in a student, academic tasks that aren't scaffolded causing the student to act out, or academic tasks that are too simple causing the student to be bored and frustrated).

This is where UDL helps. How? The intentional and successful implementation of the UDL framework depends on an understanding of variability - context directly impacts all behavior. More specifically, UDL guides us to design environments that help students learn coping skills, self-assessment, and executive functioning.

Finally, after we worked together in the summer of 2018, Kim became enthused about providing her students choice during their anatomy assessments which we talked about in the first podcast. Now, she can ask herself whether her students have choice when learning about and demonstrating their understanding of S.P.O.R.T. When students aren't successful in exemplifying S.P.O.R.T., are there barriers in the environment related to choice-making that can be removed? Can the process be scaffolded more for some students who demonstrate a lack of connection? These are the questions UDL makes us ask. This is the reflective use of the framework. This is how you guide your learners toward becoming expert learners.

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Co-teaching and UDL: The bricks and the mortar Co-teaching. Two adults sharing a space. Two people trained in different disciplines bringing together different content. Two people who each come at relationships and interactions in their own unique way now creating a single space together. Two personalities.

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Companion website to the book, authors Kendra Grant and Luis Perez offer educators three different levels of UDL learning.

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Immersive Practices to Develop Expert Learners

Welcome to the Second Edition!

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Video (with captions and transcripts)

Interactive components to challenge your thinking or apply what you've learned

Resources to extend your understanding

Reflection questions to focus your thinking about UDL.

One way to determine your level is to take the UDL Self-Assessment we created. Once you have your level you can determine if you will Wade In, take a Shallow Swim or go for a deep dive into UDL.

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Immersive Practices to Develop Expert Learners Welcome to the Second Edition! ​ Video (with captions and transcripts) Interactive components to challenge your thinking or apply what you've learned Resources to extend your understanding Reflection questions to focus your thinking about UDL. One way to determine your level is to take the UDL Self-Assessment we created.

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Maryland Assistive Technology Finder

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Welcome to mATchup, created by the Johns Hopkins Center for Technology in Education (CTE). This dynamic tool is designed to help educators, parents and caregivers to find high-quality and affordable assistive technologies and apps that can be used by all children with a particular focus on the needs of students who face challenges or who have disabilities.

The high tech and low tech resources are divided into six key areas: Academic; Writing; Auditory; Organization; Vision; Communication; Seating, Positioning and Mobility; and Independent Living, and are all designed to help children at home, in a childcare setting or in school. Users can search by category and see recommendations for apps or tools or both. This is not an exhaustive list, and will continue to be updated as new tools are investigated. mATchup does not take the place of the IFSP or IEP process, but is designed to help inform all potential tool users of the relative purposes and benefits of our featured tools, and to allow all members of the IFSP/IEP team to have informed opinions on what tools might work during the team discussion.

We invite you to share your experiences with these resources or to learn about the experiences of others by visiting our Pinterest page.

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mATchup Tool (Maryland Assistive Technology Connection Hub)

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Welcome to mATchup, created by the Johns Hopkins Center for Technology in Education (CTE). This dynamic tool is designed to help educators, parents and caregivers to find high-quality and affordable assistive technologies and apps that can be used by all children with a particular focus on the needs of students who face challenges or who have disabilities.

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"All things Gifted" - created by Carolyn K

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Differentiation & Curriculum
My good friend Ian Byrd has a truly awesome website for teachers that you have probably visited/stalked for hours. Byrdseed.com is one of the awesome, most-visit sites for teachers.

Differentiation Central wants to be your "go-to" site for differentiation, so I'll list it first. The resources and blog pages are particularly useful.

projects from Mind Vine Press are teacher-created (i.e., ready-to-use) and fun! I love the real-world topics; and tons of choice allows students to be individually challenged at the highest levels. Perfect for pull-out or extension, this is the only curriculum-type material I am 100% behind so far. If you know something else awesome, let me know!
Social & Emotional Needs
Really, all you need are two things:

First, this site - the homepage of Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted.

Secondly, Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence book.

Well, you need my class, too, but I can't print that here. One thing I sincerely recommend are film- and bibliotherapy to help gifted kids understand themselves.

The Feelings posters at KindleMental are fabulous and inexpensive. Love this company; love their product.
Identification & Assessment
This is where you go to interpret CogAT scores. It's a good place to send parents.

Hoagies has a comprehensive (if cluttered) list of tests and information about them.

Wright's Law has solid information about testing and how to understand the math behind it. It includes the legal side of it, too, so it's deeper than a typical teacher would need. I include it here because it does an excellent job at explaining standard deviation and what it means when a kid is "average" or not.
Creativity & Instructional Strategies
The Creating Minds site has a wide variety of resources, including tools, articles, and - added benefit - is easy to use.

I love the book How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci. It's great for teachers and to use with students as well.
General Stuff I Like
I love the blog Byrdseed Gifted. The teacher who does it is clever, a good writer, and a real, live programmer, so it's fun to look at, too.

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Resources for Gifted Educators from Gifted Guru

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Differentiation & Curriculum My good friend Ian Byrd has a truly awesome website for teachers that you have probably visited/stalked for hours. Byrdseed.com is one of the awesome, most-visit sites for teachers. Differentiation Central wants to be your "go-to" site for differentiation, so I'll list it first.

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Aggression Management Anger/Frustration Management Anxiety Management Articulation Skills Attendance Strategies Attention Skills Assistive Technology Skills Blind/Vision Impaired Bullying Management Skills Central Auditory Processing Deafness Depression/Sadness Management Disengagement/Motivation Strategies Eating Disorder Strategies Emotional Regulation English Language Skills Executive Function Fine Motor Skills Gambling Disorder Grief Management Gross Motor Skills Hearing Intellectual

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Hello! I'm Ian Byrd. I've been writing about education since 2009. I grew up as a gifted student, taught gifted students, spoke at dozens of conferences, and led professional development around the US. Now, I take work off of teachers' plates by developing video lessons that they can just use. Check it out at Byrdseed.TV.

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Differentiated lessons from Ian Byrd that'll get your students' brains sweating.

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Hello lovelies,

In the absence of our art classroom, please use this padlet to upload photos of your art and help support each other through comments and helpful suggestions if asked.