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In my classroom, I see every student in the school, regardless of any disabilities. My classroom and my content needs to be accessible to them and I need to be able to engage and include them. While I would normally take this time to discuss how I could differentiate my classroom, I instead choose to focus on making accommodations that will help them, but will also help every student that walks into my classroom. Enter the topic of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
There are three main principles to UDL:
1. Presenting the information in multiple ways (the what)
2. Allowing students to respond in multiple ways (the how)
3. Providing multiple ways to engage students in the content (the why)
Check out this website for more great information on UDL!
Incorporating UDL into the classroom should be done in small steps. The students have to be on board with the changes or they will fight against them rather than embrace and use them. With this in mind, I decided to find apps that I could use on iPads in my classroom (whenever I can get my hands on them). I've summarized some of the apps that I found and listed ways that they can address these three UDL principles in my classroom in this document.
Do you have other ideas for me? What other apps should I play around with? How could these apps help students in your classroom?
