November 29, 2023
Using UDL to Find Flexibility within Specificity Toward the end of my conversation with Kyanne Obrock and Carrie McSwain, they talked about the conundrum of required summative and formative assessments. We all know that most of the time, those required assessments aren’t designed with flexibility in mind. Often, they are in a fixed format and […]
October 11, 2023
“It Takes 2 Minutes” Supporting our students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) is a key part of my conversation with Kade Friedman during this episode of UDL in 15 Minutes. As they point out, “You know, it takes two minutes at the beginning of class where we do an SEL check in.” So why is it so […]
September 26, 2023
Building in social-emotional standards using a UDL lens “By the end of the year, we had students who may have started the year like little squirrels, you know, their stuff was all over the place, but by the end of the year, their binder had their table of contents, they were able to keep track […]
August 16, 2023
Being a UDL loner: How to persevere We know that the best way to support the persistence of all educators as they learn about and learn to apply UDL is to provide system-wide support. For example, Nicole Glynn and Nicole Peters share how Kansas Infinitec is working to establish state-wide change through their book studies […]
August 9, 2023
PLCs and UDL: Asking the right questions Rick DuFour popularized four succinct questions many school-based professional learning communities (PLC) use. They are: What do we want all students to know and be able to do? How will we know if they learn it? How will we respond when some students do not learn? How will […]
July 19, 2023
The teeter-totter or empowerment What does it mean to empower our learners? When we empower our learners, we are giving them opportunities to discover themselves as learners and to see how their input has a direct impact on their outcomes. The difficult part is knowing how deeply our actions can affect our learners. Every once […]
Three Steps to Implementing UDL During this episode of UDL in 15 Minutes with Mary Waldron and Michaela Clancy, Michaela shares how they began moving forward with Universal Design for Learning (UDL). “As we started this, year two of this, we moved into the COVID response, but we didn’t want our educators to feel like […]
June 21, 2023
The Steps to Inclusion: How UDL Helps The inclusion of students with disabilities in the general education environment has been shown to benefit both learners with disabilities (Cole, Murphy, Frisby, Grossi & Bolte, 2021), and students without disabilities (Katz & Mirenda, 2002). Unfortunately, it is still not the experience of many learners with disabilities. The […]
June 7, 2023
Every learner is an expert learner Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has us look at the current environment, identify the barriers that exist in that environment, and remove those barriers so learning can take place. What if the environment is an entire school and what if the changes you are making not only affect your […]
May 24, 2023
The UDL Gears – My why In this episode of UDL in 15 Minutes, Dakota Hudelson (my guest from Episode 8) helped me introduce The UDL Gears. It’s a project I’ve been working on for a long time and it’s something I’m passionate about. Here’s why. To date (May 2023), there is no firm definition […]
