Learning about UDL has helped me tremendously, not only to help the teachers I work with plan lessons to fully reach all students, but has also helped me to think about the ways in which I teach the teachers. While learning about UDL, I have been thinking about the ways that I prefer to learn and it is true that I learn more by doing more than just reading all of the information. During our PD days, we try to incorporate learning for a lot of different learning styles, but sometimes we need to get creative about when to hold PD since sometimes our PD days get taken away. This year we had snow make up days on a lot of our scheduled PD days. That meant we had to find a different time to get that information to teachers. Looking back on it, some of it we did during regularly scheduled faculty meetings, but it was rushed and we probably didn’t incorporate all of the learning styles as much as we could have. Some of the other information was sent out via e-mail. Looking back, I can see that we could have used a different format, such as creating an e-book, to get the information to our teachers.
As I was going through the STAR Module, really liked the triangle linking learner-centered instruction, knowledge-centered instruction, and assessment-centered instruction. This helped me to visualize the importance of each, but also the connection between them. It helped to see how vital it is to have all three working together. I also liked the link of community-centered instruction into this triangle.
Learner-centered instruction takes students’ background knowledge, interests, and social/cultural values into account. With this, it is important to design ways to uncover the knowledge, skills, interests, attitudes and beliefs of every learner. It is also important to make students’ thinking visible. This allows teachers to help them more effectively. It avoids the problem of undiscovered thinking by presenting students with problems or challenges related to the subject area, has students think of thoughts or ideas of how to solve the problem, and it asks them to explain their reasons for thinking. If we think of teaching and learning on opposite sides of a bridge, learner-centered learning keeps an eye on both sides to make sure that they are remaining stable.
Knowledge-centered instruction provides rigorous content and helps students to understand that content rather than simply to memorize it. The teacher asks him/herself three questions: What will be taught? How will it be taught? How will it be organized? Also, this knowledge is taught in a timely manner. I also think it’s important for teachers to ask themselves what they will do if the students don’t understand the material. This way, the teacher is able to foresee any challenges the students may encounter and will be better prepared to help them along the way.
Assessment-centered instruction requires high standards along with frequent feedback, reflection and revision to enhance the quality of learning. This is where formative assessment comes in. It is important for assessment to not only be at the end of a unit (summative), but also throughout the unit, and used as a teaching tool. This helps the students to see that testing can be something to help them and can be beneficial in finding areas in which they still need to learn.
Community-centered instruction is an environment where “learning of the highest order” is encouraged, people (students and adults) are respected and are seen as partners in the journey of lifelong learning, students are connected to a wide variety of resources, and it is acceptable to make mistakes. This can be done through the aligning of students’ and instructors’ course expectations. It is important for students to be willing to allow peers to see that they don’t know everything. This improves problem-solving and focuses learning goals on mastering the content rather than simply to receive a good grade.
