Why Won't More Teachers Set Up a UDL Classroom?

Karen Janowski recently posted a tweet once again expressing her consternation with teachers refusing students tools for success.

This question seems to come up often with different tools.  It really got me thinking about the true reason teachers will not set up a UDL classroom.  But before I get into reasons, a little background on UDL is necessary.


UDL, or Universal Design for Learning, is, according to the National Center on Universal Design for Learning, 


"a set of principles for designing curriculum that provides all individuals with equal opportunities to learn. Grounded in research of learner differences and effective instructional settings, UDL principles call for varied and flexible ways to

• Present or access information, concepts, and ideas (the "what" of learning),   
• Plan and execute learning tasks (the "how" of learning), and
• Get engaged--and stay engaged--in learning (the "why" of learning)"

CAST, The Center for Applied Special Technology, does a wonderful job of explaining what a UDL classroom would look like. But I am going to simplify it here.

UDL means providing all students what they need to be successful. This can be as simple as allowing the child who struggles to remain seated, to stand during class.  It can mean providing fidget toys, spell checkers, laptops, highlighters, pencil grips,  multiplication charts, etc.  It can mean finding a place in the room for children to take breaks without missing out on learning.  It can mean giving extended time for tests to all students, not just the ones with mandated IEPs.

So what needs to be in place to actually create a UDL classroom?  What prevents teachers from creating one?  In my opinion, the following needs to be there:

1. Educators must believe that they are responsible for teaching every child.  

I know that right now you are saying, "Of course.  What else would teachers do?"  But think about this.  Have you ever given a test, had a bunch of students fail, and said, "Well, I guess they didn't study?"  Have you ever taught a lesson and watched that one child who stops paying attention and then just ignored that child?  I think we have all done this from time to time.  We say all children should be successful but maybe we really mean all children who are engaged and work hard should be successful.

Once we wrap our heads around the idea that we, as educators, are 

responsible for helping every child meet with success, then we begin to examine reasons why some children aren't.    My own daughter, who is not classified and, therefore, does not have an IEP, requires extra time to take tests.  She is a slow processor (which causes me much angst when I am trying to get her to make a decision) and she is not a great test taker.  When she has teachers who give her that extra time, she is successful, getting As on tests.  When she is held to a 42 minute period, she often does not complete her exams, severely lowering her grade.  I am eternally grateful to those teachers who allow her, and other students who need more time, to come back during lunch or after school to complete the exams.  I think this should be standard practice.  Why shouldn't she be allowed to actually demonstrate her knowledge of the content instead of always demonstrating her processing and test taking skills?

Let's talk about that child who checks out during class.  Often, it has to do with a teaching style.  Maybe this child can't really concentrate during direct instruction.  A simple solution is to use CoverItLive with your class.  This chat room allows students to discuss the content being taught while the lesson is happening.  It keeps them engaged, helps them formulate the new learning into their own words, and provides them with a new way to demonstrate knowledge.  

Another simple solution - have students draw pictures for note taking during class.  Imagine the child who sits doodling during every lesson.  Make those doodles meaningful.  Instead of drawing hearts while you are teaching about the Civil War, have the student draw quick pictures of each event.  

Hopefully, you have noticed that none of these ideas changes your teaching at all.  But it allows more children access to your information.

2. Educators must teach students how to access tools and then allow them the access.

Okay, this one does take some time from your class curriculum but imagine if your students had been taught how to access tools earlier in their school career.  You wouldn't have to teach them anything.  

I also know that, in order to show students how to access tools, you need to be familiar with them yourself.  Lucky for us, Karen Janowski and Joyce Valenza created an incredible wiki to help us in this endeavor. You can even give the URL to your students and make it a homework assignment for them to explore the site and find two or three tools that would be helpful for them.  Now you have removed the time from your class and have made it clear to students that they will be allowed to access these tools as needed.

3. Educators must give up that position of power to allow students the freedom to do what they need to be successful.

In our classroom, during a typical teacher directed lesson, we might have two students on the carpet in front of the room, one student standing in the back, three students with Koosh balls rolling around in their hands, one child typing furiously on the laptop, and one child getting up to get the Franklin Dictionary to check new vocabulary being used.  It takes some getting used to.  For most people watching, it looks a bit disorganized.  The children appear distracted with all the movement but the reality is, they don't even think about it anymore.  We start a lesson and they move into position.  Who is taking notes?  Who is drawing?  Who is typing? Who is filling out a graphic organizer?  Who is standing?  Who is squeezing a toy?  All children are engaged in their own way and we can focus on the content.  

When students in our class are working, as they most often do, on projects in groups, that's when the room really hits its chaos mode.  Children who need quiet ask to work in the hall, outside by the tree, or in our breakout room (a guided study room used for anything but guided study).  Children who thrive with noise remain in the room with their groups talking, discussing, pulling out equipment, hitting our UDL drawer for tools, heading online to access more tools, etc.  To any outsider, learning isn't occurring.  But get closer and you will hear the conversations going on...the learning, the synthesizing of ideas, the discussions about methods of demonstrating knowledge.  Also within those groups are children using their own tools to access the same information.  So one child has a textbook for its resource.  One child has opened up Discovery Streaming or BrainPop to find videos on the topic.  One child is taking notes from internet articles.  And one child is moving from group member to group member, asking questions, getting data, taking it all in.

It becomes controlled chaos.  And it was very hard for me, as an ultimate control freak, to allow.  I wanted quiet.  I wanted them all to do the same thing at the same time.  But I realized quite early in my career that doing the same thing at the same time left an awful lot of students by the wayside.  

Once educators truly embrace these three ideas, success follows and every child can feel good about what they are learning in school.  Why not try just one to start?

Image: 'Hmmm' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42359338@N00/971611970

 'heart' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71477195@N00/185711235

'What CAN you do in here?' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11080385@N05/3210445645

'Classroom Graffiti' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28330040@N04/2642908744

CoverItLive and Our Social Studies Lesson

Yesterday, we attempted something new in class and it worked so well I wanted to share. I should start by saying that usually, for social studies, we have our fifth graders working on projects. We have textbooks but primarily use them as reference books. There are two exceptions - chapter 14 and chapter 15.

There are two reasons for this. One is that, by the time we get to these units (government and Westward Expansion of the United States), we are usually way behind the other fifth grade classes. The other reason is that the background information given in the textbook is really laid out very nicely.

This year, we scrapped the government chapter for a PBL unit that took four weeks. Ordinarily, this chapter takes one week to cover. The projects were phenomenal, the children learned a great deal about the Constitution (even recognizing parts of it in President Obama's speech), and the students were quite engaged in social studies. You can see the projects here.

So here we are in January and now we are even further behind than normal. So, before starting our big pioneer simulation (check out Interact for some great simulation projects), we need to give the students the background information in chapter 15. And we need to do it relatively quickly. So I spend some time creating a SmartBoard presentation that will at least give the students more visuals than the textbook and we plan to pull out the textbooks.

Christine (my co-teacher) and I speak everyday on the phone while commuting to school. We use this time to celebrate successes, gripe about failures, plan and revamp lessons. Yesterday morning we talked about how boring the social studies unit was going to be. And we discussed our CoverItLive session we held during the Inauguration. The children were engaged, excited, and learning the whole day. Why couldn't we do that during social studies?

So we created and embedded a quick CoverItLive session on our website, chose three students who did a great job conversing during the inauguration and three more students who weren't bad. We sat them in the back of the room with computers and told them to log on. We instructed the three who were experts to pair up with the other three and teach them how to have a conversation in a chat room. Christine sat in back with them moderating the chat room. I stood in front and ran a teacher directed lesson right out of the text book with the rest of the class.

What happened was amazing. The six students who were blogging were extremely focused on the lesson because they were instructed to capture all the information for our site. The other 16 students were engaged in our discussion because it was a smaller, more intimate group. And they were motivated to be chosen to blog on the second day. The conversation that came out of the blog clearly shows a skill in recapping a lesson and will be useful for any students who missed the lesson or need reinforcement. You can see the conversation here. Scroll to the bottom of the page to find it.

Each time we use technology in a new way, I get excited once again. We have decided that we will use chapter 15 to teach the students how to properly and intelligently use CoverItLive. After that, we can offer computers to students during all our lessons. Some will love to have that "voice" and others, I am sure, will pass, preferring instead the live interaction between teacher and student. Either way, we have introduced one more way students can be successful in class. It was a good day.