102084 Inclusive Education - Theory, Policy & Practice

Application of Universal Design for Learning

Part 1. Universal Design for Learning and Case Study

Mariyam is an year 8 student with mild intellectual difficulty and consequent

behavioural issues. intellectual disability includes deficits in mental abilities that affect
intellectual functioning (learning, problem solving, judgement) and adaptive functioning
(communication and independent living) (American Psychiatric Association (APA), n.d).
intellectual disability affects about one percent of the population and 85% among them have
mild intellectual disability (APA. n.d). Inclusive education has brought students with diverse
needs and disabilities into the main stream classrooms and teachers are to design adaptive
lesson plans, resources and assessment tasks to support these students.

Mariyam loves stories and has great interests in animated movies. She likes to create
animations and make simple stories to align with it. She does not like to write long sentences
or paragraphs. Instead she likes to draw a mind map or make some drawings. She is highly
engaged when lessons are told like a story and there are some elements of technology
involved. She completes her worksheet when it has pictures and she only need to write few
words on it. When she is given an opportunity to make a story or an animation she is very
creative and comes up with the best in the class. She does not like to present what she had
made in front of a classroom. However, she is happy to hand it over to the teacher or best
peer and when the teacher starts explaining, she always interferes with her ideas. She gets
disengaged when the lessons have too much content and writing.

These characteristics of the student specifically aligns with the intellectual disability
problems which affects the intelligence and problem solving. The major characteristics of ID
are difficulty in understanding new information, difficulties with communication and social
skills, slow cognitive processing time and difficulties comprehending abstract contents
(Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training (ADCET), n.d).

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework to facilitate teaching and learning
for everyone and is based on the insights of how humans learn. The UDL strategy includes
eliminating the barriers of learning through universally designed curriculum, instruction and
assessment (Lieberman, 2017). It involves the adjustment of classroom environment, lesson
activities, resources used, equipment used and feedback given. This can benefit learners with

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different intellectual and behavioural disabilities (Johnson- Harris & Mundschenk, 2014). It is
a student centred approach that focuses on the fact that one does not fit all. There are three
underlying guidelines for UDL. These include providing multiple means of representation,
multiple means of expression and multiple means of engagement ( CAST, 2011; National
Centre on Universal Design for Learning, 2014; Johnson-Harris & Mundschenk, 2014). UDL
provides learning environments that scaffold and provide (a) multiple means to access
information and knowledge (the “what” of learning), (b) multiple ways to do strategic tasks
(the “how” of learning), and (c) multiple ways of staying engaged in learning (the “why” of
learning). It is developed on the belief that catering for learners with difficulties improves the
learning outcomes for all students (Coyne, Pisha, Dalton, Zeph & Smith, 2012).

Multiple ways of representation includes the different methods through which

content is presented to the students. UDL highlights the need for representing one piece of
content in different ways which helps diverse learners to understand the content at the same
time help other students to re enforce their learning. This may include shifting between
spoken, displayed and written information in the same lesson, including videos or animations
and simulations about the concepts, using software to read the text aloud etcetera (Post &
Rainville, 2011). This provides opportunities for the students to learn the content using their
individual interests, experiences and contexts (Johnson-Harris & Mundschenk, 2014). This
can help students with intellectual disability as well as behavioural problems as the multiple
ways of representation of the same content helps them intellectually understand and thereby
reduces disengagement.

The current lesson plan has made adjustments through out, to ensure that Mariyam
can learn contents along side with others in the classroom. The lesson starts with an activity
of sharing something from students’ experience during the holidays. This provides a fresh
start by giving students an opportunity to share their interests and focus on mental well being.
Mariyam can share her favourite thing from the holidays (she would probably bring a story
about an event). This can help students to engage and at the same time help them align with
the class and teacher. This can be aligned with the ‘Mind Matters ‘program objectives of
mental wellbeing though conversations to support students’ interests (Raaba, 2012). This not
only helps Mariyam but trigger the interests in other students as all get an opportunity to
share their experience.

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 102084 Inclusive Education - Theory, Policy & Practice

The lesson plan includes multiple means of representation by giving resources on a

power point slide, hardcopies and online materials (Teaching for inclusion, 2018; Foreman &
Arthur- Kelly, 2014). Providing students with online materials can help them be organised in
each lesson and saved to online learning platform help them to retrieve it later. The power
point presentation along with the learning journal can help students to make a record of their
understanding of the lesson and can make changes as they learn more about the concepts.
The students are also given the questions on the projector screen to write down on the
notebooks and the teacher provides cues and guidance through out this process. The answers
are also given after an allotted time on the power point slide for the students to read through.
This enables multiple means of knowledge and re enforcement for every student (Loreman,
Deppeler & Harvey, 2010). Multiple means of recording the lesson journal either by answering
questions on their Ipads can help them use assistive technologies (Friend & Bursuck, 2012).

Multiple means of expression involves the pre arrangement of various methods by

which students can demonstrate their understanding of the content and performing the
classroom activities (Johnson-Harris & Mundschenk, 2014; National Centre for Universal
Design for Learning, 2014; Coyne, Pisha, Dalton, Zeph & Smith, 2012; Loreman, Deppeler &
Harvey, 2010). The animated video task is specifically designed for Mariyam to understand
the concept of energy transformation and express her learning through editing the video by
labelling the energy transformations she identifies in the video. This can help her to engage
and be creative in the classroom (Evmenova & Behrmann, 2011). Other students are given
various options to enter their answers through worksheets, flowcharts or any other kind of
representation. This type of adaptive videos can help them be engaged and interactive during
lesson and at the same time help them in learning the content (Evmenova & Behrmann,
2011). This also lowers the students stress because it allows them to use their interests to
express their understanding (Rao & Torres, 2016).

Through out the lesson Mariyam is given special assistance and guidance in
completing the tasks (for example scaffolding the tasks by giving key things to look for,
breaking down the concepts connecting to real life scenarios of energy transformations and
setting up goals and time restraints) (Foreman & Arthur- Kelly, 2014). Multiple means of
expression could also be used to assist John’s behavioural issues (Johnson-Harris &
Mundschenk, 2014). Editing the video can also be a challenging task for other students and

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 102084 Inclusive Education - Theory, Policy & Practice

can be given as an optional homework task and can be added to their student portfolio for
the lesson in the online platform (Stefanakis & Meirer, 2010). Differentiation can help
students, both struggling and advanced learners, to learn within their current proficiency and
emerge to the next level (Meng & Bell, 2015; MacDonald & Dana, 2016).

Multiple ways of engagement involves the use of various pedagogical approaches to

encourage learning and to include student interests in the lessons. The students’ learning
styles, abilities and interests are taken into consideration while designing tasks, to ensure that
along with needs, students’ strengths and interests are also addressed (Loreman, Deppeler &
Harvey, 2010). This is a major focus in the lesson plan to incorporate the interests and
strengths of Mariyam into the learning activities. Another strategy that is followed for
engagement is to link the concepts with real life examples. For example energy
transformation is explained through the identification of these in the day of an athlete (video
task) and different appliances that the students are familiar with (worksheet activity)
((Johnson-Harris & Mundscenk, 2014).

Regular constructive feedback is another important factor for engaging students in the
learning process. This can be used by students as check for future learning and studies have
showed that students respond positively to feedbacks given (Clarke & Pittaway, 2014; Lyons,
Ford & Slee, 2014). This is done through immediate feedbacks and formal written feedback
in the lesson. The student answers are discussed and the student lesson journal as well as
worksheets are checked and given feedbacks before the next lesson. Students are also open
to peer feedback on their activities as the worksheet/ lesson journal is corrected by the peers.
Multiple means of feedback can assist in better learning and engagement.

The lesson plan specifically relies on the three guidelines of UDL to enhance student
learning and engagement. The lesson focusses on the use of technology to a large extend,
however, students are given options to select their way of doing tasks (handwritten oy using
ipads). The use of video media as a source of information helps students create mental models
and improve comprehension, for both students with and without disabilities (Stefanakis &
Meirer, 2010). Videos which are modified to support students to identify the key points or
concepts or to find answers can enhance student involvement (Stefanakis & Meirer, 2010).
This is done through the animated video created with cues to the main points and to identify

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 102084 Inclusive Education - Theory, Policy & Practice

and label the transformations. Even though, it is not a highly adaptive video resource this can
help students to link the concepts to their daily life.

Not just the lesson, the overall design of the teaching strategy is based on the
continuous and organised learning and assessment. Students are to keep a student portfolio
with a journal for each lesson and worksheets attached. They are given the option to do in
their own preferred way as a notebook with each day’s work or an E-portfolio. This remains
as a record of their work and the feedback they get. In addition, it helps them to go back and
revise or add more details as they learn. Continuous learning and regular constructive
feedback along with different ways of representation of content materials are fundamental
factors used in the lesson plan. These derives its roots from Universal Design for Learning.

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 102084 Inclusive Education - Theory, Policy & Practice

Part 2: Adjusted Lesson Plan

Colour Code:

Multiple Means of Representation

Multiple Means of Expression

Multiple means of Engagement

Topic area: Physical World PW3 Stage of Learner: 4 (Year 7 & 8 ) Syllabus Pages: 107-108

Date: 27/09/2018 Location Booked: Lesson Number:

Time: 60 minutes Total Number of students: Printing/preparation

Print out worksheets
PowerPoint presentations

Outcomes: PW3 Energy appears in different forms including movement (kinetic energy), heat and
potential energy, and causes change within systems. (ACSSU155)

Content statement/s: PW3a. identify objects that possess energy because of their motion (kinetic) or
because of other properties (potential)

Cross-curriculum priorities: Nil

General capabilities: literacy, numeracy, ICT capability, personal and social capability, critical and
creative thinking.

Assessment: formative assessments through questioning, discussions , worksheets and exit slips

Lesson overview:
It will focus on the transformation of energy happening within different contexts. Students will learn
about the different energy transformations that is happening around them

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 102084 Inclusive Education - Theory, Policy & Practice

Time Teaching Learning

Introduction Students bring in one fresh thought
(10min) to the class. This can be anything Students can speak about it or just write
related to their interests, life or down and hand in to the teacher or bring
event that they want to share with some pictures or things they collected. This
the class. works with the class as it is small group of
The roll is called and accordingly 15 students.
students will do this.

The lesson was taken after school

holidays so students could share one
thing from their vacation

Activity 1: Recap quiz: Students fill up the blanks with words. They
(5 min) Power Point Slide with fill up blanks can do this in pairs or individually.
passage
Students are given this as hard
copies if they need and is also
available on the online platform
where they can fill in and save for
later.

Presentation The major points of the lesson are Students takes note on the types of energy.
(15 min) covered through the powerpoint Students are given a learning journal for
presentation. each lesson which they fill while the teacher
explains the concepts. The powerpoint has
Walk around the class from time to same questions from the online journal and
time to ensure students are writing the teacher pauses now and then for the
notes. Ask questions to students to think and answer them either
reinforcement. on books or online.

Answers are also displayed at the They can write down the answers or
end. keywords or draw a concept map.
In this lesson, students can just draw chart
for different energy transformations at the
end of the powerpoint presentation and
have multiple choice questions and filling
blanks questions in between.
Video Animation video on different energy Students are asked to develop a mind map
(10 min) transformations happening in a day of energy transformations while watching
of an athlete (created by the the video.
teacher)
Students can do this either by drawing a
flowchart (handwritten/ipads), write or type

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 102084 Inclusive Education - Theory, Policy & Practice

The video is played in class and the a narration of the activities of the athlete
animated video is available in the and mark the energy transformations or just
online platform which they can write down the transformations that they
modify. can see or they can mark within the
animation with the transformations at
different stages.

Students can do it pairs or discuss with each

other while they do this.
Activity 2: (10 Work sheet for energy Students are to fill the types of
min) transformation. The work sheet has transformations involved in the appliances
the pictures and names of different when they are used to perform specific
appliances. work.

Students can complete the worksheet on

the hardcopies given or in the online
learning platform

Conclusion (10 Lesson summation/exit slips Students enter the lesson summary in their
min) books or online platform.
Peer correction of the worksheet/ lesson
journal and discussion on the conclusions of
the lesson

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 102084 Inclusive Education - Theory, Policy & Practice

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