Blogging Times Two

Wednesday May 30 - We began class tonight with a review of assistive technology and Universal Design for Learning (UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual need) and then the fun began. We started our next project for which we had to create a Blog that included teacher resources and student resources for an unit on Ecosystems for a grade 7 Science class. We needed to ensure that our resources provided different ways to present information, differentiated the ways that students could show what they knew, and stimulated student engagement and interest in the topic. Our class consisted of 21 students with a wide diversity including 2 students with Asperger Syndrome, 3 with dyslexia, 2 with dysgraphia, 1 non-verbal with autism and an emergent literacy learner. Once Leanne created the Blog, Dawn, Leanne and I were off with fingers flying. We began by finding a variety of learning resources textual and visual at different reading levels, so that all students could understand the material. Next we looked for interactive websites to increase student engagement. We added in activities for visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. When planning education games, we considered the social and learning needs of our autistic students. We added in a First Nation's perspective to the knowledge base, so that all our students could see themselves in the curriculum. Interactive quizzes were included so students could receive immediate feedback on their learning, quizzes at different reading levels. We ended the night by including a PowerPoint that identified apps that would be helpful for the students in our class. We need to add in a variety of assessment opportunities and have discussed included assignments such as making a food chain or web using Inspiration or a digital text explaining key ideas using iMovie or Photostory 3. Both of these applications will allow students to include pictures, text, music and their recorded explanations if they wish. I am very excited about the number of resources we collected in the short period of time. I'll have to pass this link on to the grade 7 Science teacher :) Check out our Blog: http://wandadawnleanne.blogspot.ca/