UDL for the Uninformed

Before today I had never created a formal lesson plan. My plans simply consisted of notes to myself that I hoped to accomplish with my lecture. Though I consider the fact that I have a classroom full of people that have different learning styles, I have not ever had to put in writing how I plan to address this fact. Universal Design for Learning makes it easy to consider each individual student in your class. The UDL Lesson Builder at http://lessonbuilder.cast.org helps the instructor to build lesson plans that consider all of the UDL principles which will ensure that each student has the ability to be successful with every lesson.

The lesson builder site serves as a checklist of sorts. Using the UDL principles is the key to a learner-centered lesson plan and classroom. A lesson plan that uses the UDL principles will have goals and objectives that consider both the curriculum that needs to taught and the students that are learning. The principles guide the instructor as they consider the methods of teaching in the classroom and help them to give the proper background to the student while ensuring that the students have various ways to express their level of understanding. The instructors are also reminded that there are multiple tools at their disposal that can be used to present the material. Finally, the UDL principles help to ensure that the assessment techniques used are thorough and varied as well. A teacher that implements the UDL principles in the classroom, and uses the UDL Lesson Builder, will surely see the results in the level of acheivement in the students.