Category: Universal Design for Learning

The challenge of working memory. Imagine filling a balloon with water. Keeping the balloon open whilst pouring in the water is challenging. As capacity is reached, excess water spills over, even going in many directions. If the balloon is degraded by sunlight or has sustained a small hole, the water seeps out. This is like our working memory. Too much input, competing sources of information and limited capacity affect its ability to manage and manipulate complex information.

Working memory is a key element of executive function. It is crucial to learning, reasoning and making sense of the world. CAST explains that working memory is limited for every learner, but can be further limited in learning difficulties. So, what can we do to support learners?

Key Strategies to Support Memory

All of the following strategies are taken from Pooja K. Agarwal, PhD and Patrice M. Bain, EdS from Powerful Teaching.

Retrieval practice

“Retrieval practice” is a learning strategy where we focus on getting information out of our brains. Through the act of retrieval, or calling information to mind, our memory for that information is strengthened and forgetting is less likely to occur. Retrieval practice is a powerful strategy for improving academic performance. It requires no special technology, no cost and no significant additional class time.

Spaced Practice

Spaced practice involves taking a given amount of time devoted to learning and arranging that time into multiple sessions that are spread over time. In this way, the learning sessions are said to be “spaced” apart in time. Contrast this with cramming, where learning is conducted in a short, massed manner.

Interleaving

Interleaving supports learning by mixing related concepts, encouraging students to discriminate between approaches or similarities or differences. Often used in maths, practice problems are interleaved if the maths problems are arranged so that the same strategy cannot solve consecutive problems.

FEEDBACK- DRIVEN METACOGNITION

Feedback-driven metacognition develops students’ cognition of what they know, and what they don’t. It can be valuable in guiding students’ decision-making when learning, applying and transferring skills or strategies.

Future posts will explore practical strategies related to each of these concepts. They will be linked to this post once released.

Many more practical, easy-to-implement strategies for supporting executive function and accessing the curriculum are suggested in previous UDL File posts. Or check out the CAST UDL framework.

There is more about Universal Design for Learning on this website.

Give a child a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a child to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime. Adapted from Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie’s novel Mrs Dymond, this adage rings true when developing students’ goal-setting skills.

It’s possible there’s not an educator in the country who hasn’t asked students to set goals or who sets goals for students in some capacity – a lesson intention or an Individual Education Plan (IEP) goal, for example. There lies an intrinsic understanding that goal-setting supports achievement. However, when a teacher creates a goal for a student, it is akin to giving a student a fish. It denies the student the opportunity to develop goal-setting skills and strategies that they can develop and use throughout their lives. But for many students, articulating meaningful goals that lead to achievement is very challenging, especially when the student has difficulties with their executive function. So, how do educators develop goal-setting skills in students?

CAST’s Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework recommends processes for students to set personal goals that are simultaneously challenging and achievable.

Teach a Child to Fish – Scaffold it, model it, guide it and mirror it!

Scaffold the goal-defining process. The well-known SMART goal acronym serves as a simple scaffold to plan goals. In addition to the goal itself, guide students to estimate the effort inherent in achieving the goal.  Consider the resources required and the accessibility of these resources. Additionally, encourage students to assess the difficulty of the goal – is it challenging enough to move them forward and gain a sense of fulfilment from its achievement? Is it attainable, given appropriate effort and resourcing?

Throughout the goal creation process, model writing or otherwise documenting task-focused goals. These are goals that have an intrinsic focus on learning and improving, as opposed to rating performance or competing against others. Provide concrete examples of not only the product of achieving the goal but also the goal-setting process.

Support students with organisation tools, such as guides and checklists for tracking not only the construction of their goals but also to schedule and monitor progress.

Highlight the goals. Make them obvious and valued. Post the goals and goal-tracking schedules around the learning space. Reference them regularly and provide explicit feedback on the process of goal attainment.

Many more practical, easy-to-implement strategies for supporting executive function and accessing the curriculum are suggested in the Universal Design for Learning section of this website or in the CAST UDL framework.

See previous posts from Lizzie’s UDL File.

Engaging the working memory, using self-control, managing time and thinking flexibly are some of the mental capabilities described by the term ‘executive function’. Every day, these capabilities are drawn upon to engage productively with learning or working and to succeed in everyday life. Being intrinsically linked to success in the every day, difficulties with executive function make it challenging to focus and remain on task, to follow directions, and to manage emotions.

How can we support students’ executive functioning and what has it got to do with UDL?

Many educators are familiar with the notion of cognitive load. When teaching reading, for example, the goal is for the reader to comprehend the text. However, if a student is unable to accurately and fluently read the text, comprehending it is all the more difficult. As such, teaching reading with a strongly scaffolded systematic and explicit approach, that combines foundational and supporting skills is essential. Once decoding automaticity is gained, the brain can expend its energy on understanding.

The same is true for supporting a student’s executive function. When a student’s energy is expended on accomplishing low-level, low-impact tasks, the working memory is not available to focus on higher-order functioning skills.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) plays its role in a number of ways.  One way is through scaffolding lower-level skills, in order to remove the executive processing ‘brain drain’ of such skills. Many of the practical, easy-to-implement strategies for such scaffolding are suggested in the Universal Design for Learning section of this website or in the CAST UDL framework.

The other rung of support is through scaffolding strategies to support higher-level executive skills in order for them to develop more effectively. Upcoming posts will explore UDL-informed strategies to support goal-setting, planning, managing resources and self-monitoring.

 

From sketch design to fully-realised dream, construction is a complex process. Creating a building from scratch requires appropriate scaffolding from the outset. Strong foundations then underpin the structure, allowing the building schema to take shape as a built form.

Not dissimilarly, learners require a number of ‘structures’ to build their knowledge and skills toolkit. Some require extensive scaffolding to shore up their educational schema, whilst others require liberties in the design of their learning to allow them to extend their thinking and advance mastery.

Regardless of the schematic development process for learners, they require opportunities to express their learning. Like a site visit to sign off on a stage of building production, learners need to perform or express and act on their learning at each stage.

Practical Strategies

Scaffolding: ensure adequate scaffolding is in place for the individual needs of each student. As mastery of a skill is gained, phase the level of scaffolding. An example of this is when segmenting sounds as part of learning to read. The student may initially use Elkonin boxes or ‘sound buttons’ to identify sound-letter correspondence. As the learner moves towards mastering segmentation, reliance on the scaffolds is released.

Guides: Students respond differently to different teachers and their interpersonal skills and teaching styles and methods. Exposing students to a range of teachers or learning mentors increases opportunities for students to make sense of their learning. An example of this is a peer tutoring or support program. Learning from, or practising with a peer provides a different perspective, potentially rewarding the learner with a new or deepened understanding.

Models and demonstrations: Another post in Lizzie’s UDL Files discusses the value in students being encouraged to communicate their learning through different modes. The same is true in teaching new concepts. There are very many ways in which most concepts can be demonstrated or modelled. Making use of a range of models increases the chance of a student finding a model that supports their schema-building. An example is in the teaching the multiplication facts. When using concrete materials to model, demonstrate using region models, arrays, physical jumps on a number line and physical grouping of objects.

Find other practical, easy-to-implement strategies for incorporating UDL strategies into learning engagements in the Universal Design for Learning section of this website. You can read more about UDL Checkpoint 5.3, Build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance.

 

The third Universal Design for Learning principle, to provide multiple means for action and expression, considers options for the ways in which learners act upon and express their learning. Checkpoint 5.2 encourages educators to consider the tools learners use to build their toolkits for action and expression.

As educators, we are required to prepare our students for active participation in the world. CAST, the home of UDL, advise that providing access to more contemporary tools:

• • supports learners to be more prepared for their future
  • broadens the scope of content and methods that can be used in the teaching and learning process
  • increases opportunities for learners to express their knowledge and understanding
  • removes some of the barriers to learning that some students face, opening the door to success for a wider range of learners

Practical Strategies

Maths-related tasks: Provide either virtual or tangible manipulatives for students to construct their learning. Suggestions include MAB (Base Ten blocks), counters, algebra blocks, geoboards, number rods, abacus or Rekenrek. Students may also access, for example, a maths dictionary, graph paper and calculators.

To support language and written expressions tasks: Provide access to software that supports reading, spelling and writing success, including, for example, predictive text options, spelling and grammar checkers, text-to-speech and speech-to-text software. Other tools include any scaffolding tool, such as concept-maps, Venn diagrams, KWL charts, outline guides. Writing prompts, such as sizzling starts or sentence strips are valuable options.

For design and arts-based tasks: area-specific computer-assisted technologies, such as design layout software, editing and illustration applications, notation programs for music or maths, building or engineering software are some examples.

For expressing knowledge and understanding, generally: opportunities for video presentations, animations, infographics, creating wikis or a huge range of other web applications build a student’s repertoire of tools for acting on and expressing their learning.

Find other practical, easy-to-implement strategies for incorporating UDL strategies into learning engagements in the Universal Design for Learning section of this website.