What does Universal Design for Learning (UDL) look like in my classroom and how does it help my ELL learners?
UDL is carefully woven into my daily lesson plans and units in order to provide equal access and opportunities for all my students. Ensuring that I provide different learning opportunities for the diversity of learners is essential to ensure that all students are able to reach their full potential.
A tool that I love using in my classroom is the use of C-pens. A local company in town donated these incredible tools and I am lucky to have 5 C-pens in my classroom! These provide opportunities for my low readers and ELL students to be independent and read text that is above their level but still within grade level. These are available not only in my language arts class but in every subject area.
Another tool that I implement early in September is the use of speech to text. We practice it and use it as a class in multiple assignments and subject areas to build a comfort level and so that all students are successful with using it. This provides extra support for my ELL learners who struggle with writing English. At times the program is unable to pick up the appropriate words due to an accent, the student not saying the correct sounds or using the correct word. Having a conversation and giving feedback to the student helps clarify any of these errors.
Lastly, my classroom contains flexible work spaces and choices in tasks. I am not sure if this comes from my kindergarten background but I love creating little pockets within my room where learning looks different. There are small carpeted areas with a variety of manipulatives and tools that students can use, little tables for smaller groups or individual seating and different heights of tables and chairs. This allows for students to find the right space for them to focus and concentrate on their assigned task. As a class we always start each lesson coming together and learning the outcome and expectations for the lesson that class and then we break out and students find an area to work in. This gives me the ability to walk around and support students as needed.
In the end, my goal as an educator is to expose and provide my students with a variety of learning tools and strategies. Making all these tools and strategies accessible to everyone takes away the stigma that one student "needs" a specific tool. Building a classroom community and relationships with students is so important in order to accomplish this. We are all unique and learn in different ways!
