UDL to unlock the potential

UDL is what we as teachers should be strive for in and outside of our classrooms. It always should be about the students and how we can reach them in the designs of the curriculum and supplemental materials given to the students. Implementing something such as universal designs on the materials we create for our students will help us as teacher manage our time we spend on trying to recreate these materials we may want to use again at a later time. This article provided several charts and examples to try to implement the universal designs on teacher created supplemental materials, such as study guides and test.

The example provided in the article about study guides, was a good example of how easily supplemental materials can be universally design to meet the needs of all students. Sometimes I find that teachers try to squeeze as much information onto a study guide or use the one provide by the book. These materials may include too much information for the student to know what to study for and therefore the student may become frustrated with trying to study because they don’t know what to concentrate on. Once you have created some kind of template for study guides, you can then apply these rules and applications to other material you create. It’s so much easier to spend your time making things that are valuable to your students rather than making something that the students would get frustrated with in addition to the frustration that will continue because of the assessment results. These design principles, such as properly using the size of font, placement, spacing, color, bullets, etc. may help the student focus their attention to the content that is most important for the lesson or unit.

Considering a graphic designer was brought in to aid with the universal design workshop at the middle school mentioned in the article, I think it would be important for teachers to take design workshops. Being an art teacher and already have basic knowledge of design principles it is important to all teachers to use in their classroom on any material used for the students. Many teachers don’t think about these design elements as part of “art” but they really are. With the advances in technology there are many avenues teachers can take to make universal designs for learning easily and assessable to other teachers.