UDL: Action & Expression

1. What does the research say about this?
• The UDL guidelines state, "Learners differ markedly in the ways in which they can be engaged or motivated to learn. There are a variety of sources that can influence individual variation in affect including neurology, culture, personal relevance, subjectivity, and background knowledge, along with a variety of other factors." This means that students engage in the content in different ways and that we should be providing different styles for the students to engage in. The UDL guidelines also say that learners differ in ways that they can express their knowledge and there is not one way that is best for all students to express their knowledge. This means that we have to give students a variety of ways that they can express themselves not just a test every time.
2. How can this be effectively integrated into your teaching?
• I can give a variety of lessons in which students can learn the content I am teaching. We can do project based learning, direct instruction, a lesson that involves different cultures, and so on. If I do just a project based learning class or just a direct instruction class then there will be a lot of students that will become uninterested and miss out on the learning. I also need to give students an opportunity in different ways that they can express their knowledge. If I just do a summerative test every unit then that will just measure some of the students' knowledge and won't be best for all my students. If i give the students a choice in how they want to present what they learned then that will help a lot more students to be able to express what they know.
3. How will this help your students?
• This will help my students to be able to learn the materials using problems in real life and hands on learning instead of just memorizing a bunch of equations or methods. It will also give students a chance to choose how they will express their knowledge and add things that they have learned instead of me choosing what they have learned.
4. What are your goals with regard to this topic?
• My goal is to bring in different styles and methods to teaching my content. I don't just want to do direct instruction for all my lessons and I want to get away from doing a worksheet everyday for me to gauge what students have learned.
5. How does this shape your vision for empowered learning for your students?
• This shapes my vision by having the students more involved in their learning. They can have more autonomy by choosing how they want to present a project and what styles of learning work best for them.

Sources:

http://udlguidelines.cast.org/action-expression

http://udlguidelines.cast.org/engagement