Week 3 - Using the UDL Lesson Plan Builder

Reading about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has been a very informative experience.  UDL uses a set of principles for instruction development that give all students in your classroom an equal opportunity to learn.  It levels the playing field of learning inside the classroom by developing different technology related activities in your lesson plan that will trigger 3 different parts of your brain (recognition networks, strategic networks, and affective networks).
After talking with my team, we decided to focus our unit of study around a third grade citizenship TEK.  Listed below are the TEKS that our Unit of study focused on.

SS3.1 (3.1) History. The student understands how individuals, events, and ideas have influenced the history of various communities. The student is expected to:

(A) describe how individuals, events, and ideas have changed communities, past and present.

SS3.11 (3.11) Citizenship. The student understands characteristics of good citizenship as exemplified by historical and contemporary figures. The student is expected to:

(A) identify characteristics of good citizenship, including truthfulness, justice, equality, respect for oneself and others, responsibility in daily life, and participation in government by educating oneself about the issues, respectfully holding public officials to their word, and voting.

SS3.12 (3.12) Citizenship. The student understands the impact of individual and group decisions on communities in a constitutional republic. The student is expected to:

(A) give examples of community changes that result from individual or group decisions.


My UDL Lesson's title is "An American Hero: Helen Keller".  My specific learning targets for this lesson is in the form of an "I can" statement.  "I can explain how the gift of communication helped Helen Keller".  I enjoyed using the UDL lesson planner, and found it to be user friendly.  I can see myself encouraging the teachers at my school to use this type of lesson builder to ensure that all the students in their classrooms are able to feel successful.

CLICK HERE to access my UDL Lesson Plan!


References

Cast.org (2009). Model UDL lessons. Center for Applied Special Technology. Retrieved from http://udlselfcheck.cast.org/