Are You Using UDL in Your Lessons?

A good way to see if you incorporate UDL components in your lesson plan is to take your lesson and look through the UDL guidelines. This is exactly what we did for a course assignment. I found that doing this is very beneficial because you are able to see if you have used UDL components in your previous teaching. I found that I did use many different techniques that are considered UDL, however I noticed that I could definitely enhance my lessons to meet the needs of all learners! For my preassessment, my strongest areas were providing multiple means of representation and multiple means for action and expression. I had the students use graphic organizers, pictures, their text book and watch a film clip throughout the lesson which allowed for multiple means of representation. For multiple means of action and expression I had the students writing down their ideas, finding pictures, working in groups, and sharing their posters. For providing multiple means for engagement, students will creating an ecosystem about their own lives.


I noticed that I did not have many areas for providing multiple means for engagement. For my post assessment I decided to focus on enhancing that area as well as some of the gaps in the others. In the multiple means of representation section I decided to have pictures that correlate with the vocabulary words on the board. Students will review the vocabulary words to better understand them. Students will also be provided with a checklist for the steps they need to complete during the lesson. For the multiple means of action and expression section, students will use computers to find more information. In the multiple means of engagement section, I added the opportunity for students to have choice for how they want their posters to look and the choice to gather their pictures from the internet or magazines. Students will also be provided with a rubric prior to the lesson that shows the ultimate goals. This rubric will be given back to the students the next day that shows their feedback to their work.

These UDL guidelines are great because you can go through the list to see if you have met the areas for Universal Design. I will definitely be using this outline for lesson plans to make sure that I am incorporating UDL!

You can view the website which goes in depth and shows examples for each section:
(https://sites.google.com/site/udlguidelinesexamples/ )