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Provided by Vanderbilt College

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IRIS | Universal Design for Learning: Creating a Learning Environment that Challenges and Engages All Students

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The IRIS Center Peabody College Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37203 iris@vanderbilt.edu. The IRIS Center is funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) Grant #H325E170001. The contents of this Website do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S.

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The world is full of diverse learners. We need to stop thinking that teaching and learning is a one size fits all model. By creating lessons that incorporate options and choices, we provide multiple paths towards mastery of the content.

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Ed. Week article on UDL in Social Studies

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Ed. Week article on UDL in Social Studies

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Weeks of creating our classroom environments are now behind us, and we are well into the school year. We know our students. We know our content. We are set with our planning, teaching, and learning routines. The excitement of the new school year is still in the air. But let's be real-as the weeks move along and the curriculum picks up steam-teachers and students may need a little spark to keep an ongoing connection between learners and classroom-learning environments.

Let's keep the excitement of the new school year fueled by our decisions to create learning experiences that motivate, excite, inform, and inspire! The best part is-all teachers can keep the spark in the learning by looking at their lessons plans through a Universal Design for Learning lens. That's right-any lesson-any teacher-anywhere.

It's All About the Process

Through a UDL lens, our curriculum supports our decisions in guiding students how to learn. The content is taught within a strong learning process, so students experience learning rather than just receiving it. With the research to support learner variability, we know that all students in any classroom need a variety of conditions for optimal learning to occur. These conditions include three brain networks that, when set in motion, serve to guide each learner in our room to connect to the content in significant and personal ways.

Let's consider a hypothetical 7th grade social studies class: As the students walk in, they notice the clearly stated learning target posted on the board. As the teacher introduces the lesson, she weaves in key vocabulary words, which are also posted on the board. She engages the class in a brief discussion to ignite their connection to the content. After watching a brief video clip, the students share their thoughts about the video with their peers.

Just within this 15-minute introduction, students set goals, activated their background knowledge, deepened their understanding through multimedia input, and shared their thinking through peer interactions. During the remaining minutes of class, students were provided choices for reading about the day's topic. Some read from textbooks, some read on iPads, while others listened to peers read within cooperative groups. Some students chose to engage in discussion and jot down key words, while others chose to write a brief paragraph to demonstrate their understanding for the day.

Even in the most basic lessons, all three-brain networks can be illuminated. Simply provide opportunities for your students to think.

Strategies for Affective Networks: Providing Multiple Means of Engagement

Imagine your class filled with wide-eyed, eager, motivated students. Sometimes we feel like we've hit the mark with our lessons, while other times we know a lesson falls flat. That's a lot of pressure to put on ourselves. We know it is not just up to us to create the motivation in the room. We must guide our students to become intrinsically motivated, so they will be engaged in the learning without depending on us to entertain them. Yet we must create the scene. We facilitate the opportunity for our students to be purposeful, motivated learners. Here are some examples to ramp up the engagement:

Make time to hear what your students think.

Shake up the seating plan-form cooperative groups and peer interactions.

Plan for student-led discussions-you facilitate the learning; they guide their performance and deeper understanding.

Create a culture of student reflection-connect students with how they feel and they will be more relaxed and open to learning.

Strategies for Recognition Networks: Providing Multiple Means of Representation

The ultimate goal is to guide our students' abilities to comprehend and to use their resources as they gain knowledge and skills. Here are a few low-tech examples to support recognition networks:

Activate background knowledge by making time for students to connect with their thinking around new topics. Remember, meaningful learning happens when learners connect the new with the known.

Embed vocabulary development while planning for direct instruction as needed.

Provide multimedia input such as visuals, auditory, movement, and kinesthetic modalities.

Check out these free learning tools at the Center for Applied Specialized Technology (CAST), the organization that originally defined UDL.

Strategies for Strategic Networks: Providing Multiple Means of Action and Expression

Sometimes teachers feel that a well-managed class is a quiet class of students who sit, take notes, raise their hands-but above all remain silent. But teachers, listen up! There's no need to be protective of every moment-release some responsibility to the students for their own learning. Meaningful learning should be noisy, active, and above all, productive! So let's make that happen. Take a look at one of your upcoming lesson plans. How can you guide your students to be strategic with a clear focus on the learning goal(s) for the day? Perhaps one of these examples will be worth a try:

If UDL feels like something new to you, just begin by printing a copy of the UDL Guidelines and selecting one guideline each week to embed in your teaching cycle. Before you know it, you will be noticing the natural ways that you can embed UDL principles into your daily routines. In addition, you may use the guidelines to identify specific strategies to target the needs of the learners in your classroom. The bottom line is that UDL is the perfect go-to teaching tool to guide our instructional decisions as we strive to create clear access between the curriculum and the learners in our room. This is an all-access pass that will keep that spark of the learning process alive and well in your classrooms.

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Sparking Up Lessons With Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

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Weeks of creating our classroom environments are now behind us, and we are well into the school year. We know our students. We know our content. We are set with our planning, teaching, and learning routines. The excitement of the new school year is still in the air.

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PreK-12: Instructor-Led Course

In this introductory online course for preK-12 educators, participants learn the research basis for UDL, practical applications of UDL to lesson design, and helpful technology tools that support flexible, inclusive instruction.

Monday, September 11 - Monday, December 11, 2023

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Find out more about CAST. We're busting barriers to learning, until learning has no limits®.

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udl brain research recognition strategic affe

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Universal Design for Learning - TeacherTube

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Describes the relationship between UDL and br

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Classroom arrangement

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Warrensburg - Ashley Pierce said she is not a traditional teacher and she does not have a traditional classroom.

"I'm not a teacher who likes to sit or stand all day," she said. "I don't like rows (of desks). ... I like less structure. ... I want students to feel this is their classroom."

Pierce researched a new trend, flexible seating, which she started this year in her fourth-grade classroom at Martin Warren Elementary School.

Colorful rugs, Adirondack chairs, a coffee table, painted tires with cushions in the middle, tables, and other items allow students to sit, stand or kneel to work. Chairs are scattered around the classroom, without a desk in sight.

Three first-grade and two second-grade teachers introduced flexible seating in their Ridge View Elementary School classrooms this year.

First-grade teacher Dana Elting said she learned about flexible seating from a co-worker at an end-of-the-year bonfire. She said most students chose to stand during class.

"It never bothered me," she said. "I'm a laid-back kind of teacher."

Elting contacted Principal Melissa Marnholtz about using flexible seating.

"She said 'sure,'" Elting said.

She and first-grade teacher Stephanie Green, who attended the same bonfire, "got on it right away," Elting said.

They bought yoga balls, mats, pillows and other seating.

Ridge View first-grade teacher Katie Ritter said she heard about flexible seating from a former mentor in a different school district and approached Marnholtz with the idea. Ritter then learned Elting and Green had the same idea.

"We arrived at the same endpoint through separate discussions," Ritter said.

The teachers exchanged ideas they thought would work best, she said.

"We're all doing it a little differently," Ritter said.

Ritter used to have six tables that each seated four students in assigned spots. Now she has three tables, two rocking chairs, an easy chair, a futon, a short table to allow students to sit on the floor, rugs and pillows, and yoga balls to sit on.

The second-grade teachers heard about the first-grade teachers' plans and joined the movement, she said.

At Martin Warren, Pierce first saw information on flexible seating on Pinterest, she said.

"Teachers were raving about how it felt in their classrooms," she said, "and it fit with my philosophy of teaching."

Pierce said she researched the trend for a year before acquiring a PTO grant to buy some of the furniture. Her husband donated and spray-painted used tires blue, and made cushions for them. Pierce obtained unused stools, bought some of the tables, added chairs from her garage and "begged or borrowed" other items.

"I got rid of seven regular tables that were in the classroom," she said, to make room.

After arranging the classroom, Pierce said, she felt free.

"I didn't realize I felt claustrophobic," she said, in previous classroom settings.

Students are free to move around the classroom. They can choose where to sit twice a day, morning and afternoon, she said.

"It allows them to be flexible and do what they need to do to be comfortable. During the day, they are free to go where they want," she said. "They are picking who they feel comfortable working with. ... They work better with partners. ... Changing (seats) twice a day has been huge.

"I have seen some higher students (sit) with medium students, and they are pushing them up because they feel more comfortable."

Students who do not sit at a table can use clipboards or books to provide a writing surface, she said, and some write on a dry erase board.

"We spent a lot of time on procedures at the beginning of the year. (Students) have to know what the expectations are," Ritter said.

Ritter's students first tried all the different areas "to see what works best for them," she said, "so they could find a spot where they can be most productive."

"They have flexibility and they can change seating if it's not the best place. They can move to wherever they want to. ... They can spread out around the classroom," she said.

If a seat is used inappropriately, the teacher can move the student to a new seat at any time, she said.

"It helps them make better choices," Ritter said. "It has really helped with behaviors."

"It helps them be in control of their bodies," Elting said.

"It's exciting to see all the different ways kids are learning," Ritter said.

Ritter said she spent 10 years in traditional classrooms.

"When I started looking at (flexible seating), the biggest challenge was for me to be OK with it myself ... and come up with methods that would work for me. ... I knew the kids would be OK with it," she said.

Elting said, when she taught kindergarten, students sat at tables, but for the six or seven years she has taught higher grades, students sat at desks.

"I like the idea of tables," she said. "I do a lot of collaboration in the classroom, and desks bothered me."

Desks are more difficult to arrange for a group, Elting said.

"I like the idea of having different-sized tables," she said.

Pierce said flexible seating has helped some students with problem solving as they ponder, "How can I make this seat work for me?"

She said she has no problem controlling the 23 students. The classroom arrangement "gives the students control and takes it off me."

Students helped develop flexible seating rules, Pierce said, and got an idea of what would not work for them. Students "all signed off on it," she said.

Pierce said flexible seating helps students better absorb lessons.

Elting said some parents at Meet the Teacher Night at Ridge View seemed skeptical.

One said, "Let me know how this works out," she said, adding, "We love it."

At Martin Warren, student Kennedy Crookes said she found Pierce's flexible seating classroom "a little weird" at first, but now thinks it is fun.

"I like being able to sit wherever I want and move twice a day," she said.

Classmate Ryan Munsterman said the classroom "looked kind of strange at the beginning," but he liked sitting with friends instead of having assigned seating.

The students said the arrangement makes learning easier.

Returning to a regular classroom next year will probably be "boring," Ryan said.

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Teachers, students happy with flexible seating classrooms

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Warrensburg - Ashley Pierce said she is not a traditional teacher and she does not have a traditional classroom. "I'm not a teacher who likes to sit or stand all day," she said. "I don't like rows (of desks). ... I like less structure. ... I want students to feel this is their classroom."