UDL Learning Environment Resource Guide By: Kristen Goodwin

Provide Multiple Means of Engagement Purposeful, motivated learners CAST: Provide options for self-regulation +Promote expectations and beliefs that optimize motivation +Facilitate personal coping skills and strategies +Develop self-assessment and reflection  Motivation Latter: Which Step Have You Reached Today?: The latter (top right corner) serves as a visual prompt to show students how their attitude can impact their success. By staying motivated and focused and always persevering students can reach the top of the latter. This poster would be a great addition to any classroom environment.  Coping skills tool box: Follow the following link to see a prompt describing what to include in a coping skills tool box: Students can create a coping skills box by filling it with strategies that help them overcome unpleasant feelings. When a student has those feelings they can go to their box, pick out a strategy, take a few moments to do it, put their box away and return to class. This encourages students to independently self regulate their emotions.  Coping skills: The following link takes you to a web base with over 488 reviewed resources about teaching coping skills to young children. arch_type=narrow arch_type=narrow  Self-assessment: I can statements: Students can reflect upon their learning by assessing their understanding of a specific content area. The picture in the bottom right corner provides students with 5 options to choose from that best describes their understanding. These options are written as I can statements, corresponding to the objective and the common core standards. A teacher could have students hold up corresponding color star to show their choice. The amount of choices could be adapted based on grade level.

Provide Multiple Means of Representation Resourceful, knowledgeable learners CAST: Provide options for comprehension +Activate or supply background knowledge +Highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships +Guide information processing, visualization, and manipulation +Maximize transfer and generalization  Schema anchor chart : Click on the following link to see an example of a schema anchor chart you could make with your students: Teachers and student could collaboratively work together and discuss their prior knowledge of a specific topic. The teacher could document each students discussion point on the anchor chart. This would be a great opening activity to a new unit of study. The Schema Theory states that relating a new topic to prior knowledge and experiences increases a persons ability to store and recall new information.  Text to self relationship : Click the following link to see an example of a worksheet that prompts students to connect Relating a new topic to prior knowledge and experiences helps to improve a person’s ability to store and recall new information. Therefore, improving comprehension.  Visualize-draw- act out : The picture on the top right depicts a visual for students to put onto paper the visual they have in their head. A teacher could read out a brief scenario. The students will visualize the scenario in their head. Then, the will draw it. Finally, they can act it out in individually or in small groups. This provides multiple way for children to process the scenario the teacher read.  What learning style is mine?: Click the following link. This will take you to an activity book for children to complete to find out what their learning style is. The teacher can then use this information as they formulate instruction throughout the school year.   Online Activity: The following link will take you to an online activity created by Smithsonian Education. This online simulation provides resources for children to research. Following their research they will take a quiz. If they answer a question incorrectly they will be provided with a link to go back and find the correct answer. This activity helps children to activate new knowledge while using background knowledge and research to supplement learning.

Provide Multiple Means of Action & Expression Strategic, goal-directed learners CAST: Provide options for executive functions +Guide appropriate goal-setting +Support planning and strategy development +Facilitate managing information and resources +Enhance capacity for monitoring progress  SMILE: The following link will direct you to the SMILE Method for goal setting for students. S- See yourself achieving the goal. M-move towards your goals. I- In trust in your own learning. L-Lead yourself to learn. E- Excel. This link provides access to progress monitoring and tracking sheets that correspond with this method. Teachers and students could complete these forms together to help students to monitor their progress towards meeting a goal. Teachers could hold a conference time with students to help them complete the forms and motivate them towards meeting their goal.  Conquer the problem: The picture on the top right shows an example of a visual that a teacher could use to support strategy and planning development for math problems.  Cast Strategy Tool: Strategy Tool is a web based resource that supports students and teachers doing online reading and research. This site helps students and teachers to manage their information and resources.  Student data folders: The following link takes you to an example of student data folders. The link includes various data tracking sheets that a teacher could use for monitoring student progress. Teachers could share this with students and help make them apart of the process.

Provide Multiple Means of Engagement Purposeful, motivated learners CAST: Provide options for sustaining effort and persistence +Heighten salience of goals and objectives +Vary demands and resources to optimize challenge +Foster collaboration and community +Increase mastery-oriented feedback Extension Activity: The following link shows 8 different activities students can do for an extension or for early finishers. These varying activities help to optimize the challenge for all students. Classroom Management Through Community Building: This link takes you to a teacher’s blog. She writes about various topics about teaching. This specific article is about how to improve classroom management through community building. This helps to foster collaboration and community. through-community-building/ through-community-building/ Develop student motivation: The following link takes you to an interview where an experienced teacher describes ways she develops motivation in her students. This link takes you to an online webase called UDL Editions. This site has a range of flexibile digital media that can be used to reach and engage all learners. There are also leveled supports and aTexthelp Toolbar to help balance challenge and support for each learner.

Provide Multiple Means of Representation Resourceful, knowledgeable learners CAST : Provide options for language, mathematical expressions, and symbols +Clarify vocabulary and symbols +Clarify syntax and structure +Support decoding of text, mathematical notation, and symbols +Promote understanding across languages +Illustrate through multiple media 7 vocabulary activities: The following link will take you a visual that depicts 7 different ways for teachers to introduce new vocabulary to students. Stretch a sentence: The visual on the top right shows an example of a worksheet students can use to practice adding detail to their writing by stretching their sentences. This will provide an opportunity for students to clarify the syntax and structure of a sentence. Clean up writing: This link takes you to a editing program for students to use called clean up writing. The Clean-Up writing method is an extension off of the CUPS editing method that I had previously recommended for Lauren. In the CUPS method, C is for capital letter at the beginning of the sentence. U is for understanding, does my writing make sense? P is for punctuation at the end of each sentence. S is for spacing between each word. For this activity I will create a visual that will prompt Lauren to Clean-up the CUPS in her writing. Decoding strategies: The picture on the bottom left which can also be found at provides a visual prompt of different decoding strategies students can use to sound out an unknown word. This helps to support the decoding of a text and promote understanding across the languages. QR codes: T eachers can create QR Codes at the following link: generator.com/?PID=1076&kw=qr%20codes&gclid=Cj0KEQiA7rmzBRDezri2r6bz1qYBEiQAg- YEtv9FQ_2NjnL6mcTXOhauHw0Nklc51ZVyCyjcM5GSY9kaAoQZ8P8HAQ this provides an avenue for teachers to represent information through multiple medias. generator.com/?PID=1076&kw=qr%20codes&gclid=Cj0KEQiA7rmzBRDezri2r6bz1qYBEiQAg- YEtv9FQ_2NjnL6mcTXOhauHw0Nklc51ZVyCyjcM5GSY9kaAoQZ8P8HAQ Interactive: The following link will take you to an interactive web base that breaks down the important elements of a story. Students can go through the series of steps for constructing a story including Setting, Characters, Sequence, Exposition, Conflict, Climax, and Resolution.

Provide Multiple Means of Action & Expression Strategic, goal-directed learners CAST: Provide options for expression and communication +Use multiple media for communication +Use multiple tools for construction and composition +Build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance Main Idea: At the following link you will find an interactive game for students. They will read a short passage and then the game will assist them in finding the main idea. Drama: readers theatre: After reading a story students could act it out using props and puppets. They could work independently, with classmates or family members to act out the story they just read. The students can assume the role of the characters and work through the events in the story. This activity will provide and interactive way for the students to experience the story. This will help to improve their overall comprehension and recall of the story. Writing: Prompts for Reading: The picture at the top right shows an example of different writing prompts for students to follow when they are writing about a text they have read previously. This provides an option for students to express and communicate information they learned from a text. Scaffolding: Metacognition Think Aloud : Teachers can model to students their thinking process while they are reading a text. When students use these metacognition thinking strategies it will help to improve their comprehension, and ability to communicate knowledge and opinions.

Provide Multiple Means of Engagement Purposeful, motivated learners CAST: Provide options for recruiting interest +Optimize individual choice and autonomy +Optimize relevance, value, and authenticity +Minimize threats and distractions Choice Board: The picture on the top right shows an example of a choice board. This allows students to have choice in some classroom activities. This board allows the teacher to still have control over the activities a student can participate in while till giving the child autonomy. Choices : This is a link to a blog post about how a teacher can provide options for their students. Authentic Learning : This is a link to an article about how to provide opportunities for authentic learning. Authentic Learning: This is a link to a video about how to provide opportunities for authentic learning. Minimize Distrctions: Pace-Car is an online reading tool, designed to increase reading rate and decrease distractions. It masks the distracting elements on the page by creating a reading window that follows the reader's mouse. pacecar.missingmethods.com Sensory Processing: This is a link to a website that provides tips for teachers to consider when they are working with children who have a sensory processing disorder.

Provide Multiple Means of Representation Resourceful, knowledgeable learners CAST : Provide options for perception +Offer ways of customizing the display of information +Offer alternatives for auditory information +Offer alternatives for visual information AIM Explorer: “The AIM Explorer is a free simulation that combines grade-leveled digital text with access features common to most text readers and other supported reading software. Magnification, custom text and background colors, text-to-speech (synthetic and human), text highlighting, and layout options are presented in a logical sequence to help struggling readers decide which of these supports might help them to access and understand text.” Zen Garden: The following link takes you to Zen Garden, a website where you can customize the display of information. This provides the opportunity for the same content to be presented in varied formats. “Described and Captioned Digital Media Program is a library of over 4,000 open-captioned titles (videos, CD-ROM, and DVD). Several hundred titles are also streamed on the web site. The videos are designed for students who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf blind” but could also be beneficial for visual learners. Signed Stories: The following link takes you to an online library of stories. A video is created for each story, with a person signing the text and captioning on the screen. Visual: This website teaches you how to describe STEM topics and/or diagrams to students who are blind or visually impaired. Art Beyond Sight: This website helps to bring art to individuals with visual impairments.

Provide Multiple Means of Action & Expression Strategic, goal-directed learners CAST: Provide options for physical action +Vary the methods for response and navigation +Optimize access to tools and assistive technologies Camera Mouse is a free program that enables you to control the mouse pointer on your computer screen just by moving your head. No Keys is a computer software program that displays an on screen keyboard users can "type" on this onscreen keyboard using a mouse, trackball, or similar pointing device. Assistive Technology: This website provides a list of various assistive technology devices children with a motor disability may benefit from: TechMatrix! Is an online data base where you can search assistive technology devices, compare them to one another, and read research based articles on the devices. This is a great resource to learn more about specific devices and help you decide if that device would be beneficial to a particular student.