UDL Lesson Plan

Marilyn Shank, Ph.D.

Instructions

The Dilemma

How can I teach grade-level standards to all students in general education, regardless of exceptionality?

How do I assess and grade them? How do I keep students who already know the skill challenged?

How do I follow President Bush’s mandate and leave no child behind without watering down the curriculum?

How can I maintain high expectations for all students?

The Answer

Make learning accessible for all students by universal design for learning.

Using the Lesson Plan for Universal Design

Keep in mind!

The UDL lesson plan is NOT a daily lesson plan. You can use a typical teacher lesson plan book to write your daily schedule. The UDL lesson plan addresses the activities, assessments, and accommodations you will need to enable all students to master (or in the case of students with severe disabilities, approximate) specific objectives. For example, it may take 5 days to cover the three objectives you are addressing on a single UDL lesson plan. (You might cover one objective in science related to space, another objective in language arts related to critical reading skills, and a third related to visual arts on using various are media, including papier mache. The objectives relate, however, through your space theme.) Keep in mind, though, that these combined objectives MUST be taught for mastery. You must also address the pre- and post-assessments for each on this lesson plan. (The pre-assessment for the science objective might be a space unit pretest. Other space objectives from different lesson plans might use the same pre- and post-assessment. The aapier mache pretest is simply asking students to raise their hands if they have ever worked with papier mache before and to provide examples. The pretest for the writing objective might be asking them to write down the steps for the writing process the day before you teach the objective.)

Standards

Locate the standards from your State Department of Education website.

Plan a schedule for covering the standards during the school year.

Use a theme approach for covering the standards when possible. We recommend using Academic Clubs (see Smith in resources).

Co-plan with gifted and special educators to see how IEP and enrichment objectives for particular students can be addressed by the standards.

Specific Behavioral Objectives

State Department Standards are often not observable or measurable.

A well-stated behavioral objective has three components:

the specific behavior or skill the students will perform once they have learned the skill that uses a verb that is observable and measurable (write rather than know)

the condition or setting requirements that must be in place for the student to perform the skill

the criterion or mastery level that will determine that the students are ready to move on to a new skill

Be careful! Make sure your SBO is the outcome that will demonstrate mastery, not an activity they will do to help them learn the skill.

If you have written a well-stated objective, your assessment description will be easy to determine.

If you are unsure how to write behavioral objectives, we recommend

http://www.adprima.com/objectives.htm

http://www2.potsdam.edu/CRANE/campbemr/curriculum/college-methods/planning/behavioral-obj.html

http://www.okstate.edu/ag/agedcm4h/academic/aged5823/goals/

http://www.courses.psu.edu/trdev/trdev518_bow100/D_C6present/

Big Ideas

The big ideas are the most important concepts the students need to learn. Learn more about Big Ideas, a component of the Understanding by Design framework for curriculum development: http://www.iearn.org/civics/may2003workshop/Understanding%20by%20Design%20Teaching%20Ellen%20Meier%20CTSC.pdf

Essential Questions

The essential questions can be brainstormed with your students ahead of time. What questions are most important for them to be able to answer when they complete this lesson?

Transition

What previous skill(s) have the students already mastered that prepare them for this skill? How can you build on their previous knowledge?

Relevance

How does what they will learn relate to their current life? What value does it have? How will they use it in the future? Keep in mind that kids and teens have a difficult time projecting to adulthood. Current relevance is going to be a stronger motivator than future relevance, although communicating both is important. (If you can’t come up with this, why are you teaching it?) Generalization is extremely challenging for kids with exceptionalities. Please do not assume your students will already know the relevance, even if it seems obvious to you.

Activities and Purposes

Anticipatory Set includes (a) making a transition from previous learning, (b) communicating the instructional plan, an advance organizer that tells the students what they will be learning and the activities that will help them do so, (c) current and future relevance for their learning, and (d) a hook that will motivate them to engage in the lesson.

Instruction includes (a) input of necessary information, through lecture, software, research, manipulatives, etc., (b) modeling the skill for the students, and (c) questioning to check for understanding.

Guided practice prevents students from practicing errors and can be accomplished through cooperative learning, teacher monitoring, using software, etc.. The essential feature is that feedback is immediate and ongoing.

Closure provides a summary of what the students have learned and how they learned it. You might have students complete an exit slip or in some other way reflect on their learning. This might also be a good time to engage the students in higher level thinking related to their learning through discussion or a summary activity.

Independent Practice

After students understand the skill, they can practice for fluency and recall. Because independent practice does not require immediate feedback, it can be assigned in class or for homework. Students should NEVER receive homework that they do not understand. Parents should not be expected to do YOUR job. Homework can also involve research, project development, or reflection that expand their knowledge beyond the skill, once the objective is mastered.

Learning Style

To make sure that the needs of various learners are being met, we recommend coding your activities using Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. Who is likely to benefit most from the activity?

Linguistic (LI)– skills in language usage

Mathematical/Logical (ML)– reasoning skills, computer usage

Bodily Kinesthetic (BK) – skills in athletics and/or drama

Interpersonal (IEP)– social skills

Intrapersonal (IAP)– in touch with feelings and values

Rhythmic/Musical (RM)

Spatial (SP)-- visual, artistic skills

Naturalist (NA)-- skills in science and nature

Existentialist (EX)– philosophical skills

To learn more about Multiple Intelligences, check out http://surfaquarium.com/im.htm

Communication Strategy

(I thank Dr. Victor Lombardo, retired from Marshall University, for this addition to coding a lesson plan.)

The purpose for this section is to determine how much student involvement you have incorporated in your lesson.

The codes are

S=student

T=teacher

M=material

Use arrows to indicate the direction of the communication. For example, if students are discussing, code SóS with the arrows going both ways. If you are lecturing, code TðS with the arrow going one direction from teacher to student.

Technology Integration

For students with exceptionalities, assistive technology often provides curriculum access.

Students who are advanced can expand their learning through technology.

We recommend the sites www.cast.org and www.ncite.org to help you learn how to incorporate technology in your lesson plans.

Assessment Description

Your assessment measure should be clearly tied to your specific behavioral objective.

If you pretest the skill, you will know which students will benefit more from enrichment than instruction and which students will need supports to learn the skill.

You need to include pre- and post-tests for your objective(s).

Needs-Based Planning

To use universal design for learning, your curriculum and instruction must be planned with the needs of all learners in mind.

We have listed nine categories of learner differences that must be considered during lesson planning.

Think about which students may need special supports or services during any given instructional activity.

Also specify any activities that you think will especially address the needs of students with a particular difference.

Enrichment

Students who demonstrate mastery at the pretest level do not need repeated instruction in a skill they already know. Please, do NOT assign them more of the same thing for enrichment.

Enrichment allows the students to perform the skill in more depth or at a higher level.

Students contract to work on a particular project while the rest of the class receives skill instruction.

Beware the peer-tutoring pitfall! This is not enrichment! Students who are advanced resent being asked to teach others instead of being able to further their own learning.

Enrichment must be determined by pre-testing rather than assumptions about student ability. A student who is gifted may need a particular math skill while a student with a learning disability may already know how to do that particular skill.

Grading

List any accommodations you might need to make in grading or student response modes on assessment measures.

Remember to test only the skill you are teaching. A student who knows the content addressed in the standard you are teaching in social studies should not be penalized for spelling errors.

Some teachers are under the mistaken assumption that reducing the number of questions a student with a disability receives on a test is unfair to the other students. Think about it. A student with cerebral palsy does 10 math problems instead of 50 because of the physical demands of writing. When the student with cerebral palsy misses one, she receives a 90%. When the other students miss one, they receive a 98%. The student with the disability will have to know the skill well to demonstrate mastery.