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Just as in architecture and urban planning, education has developed a framework to help educators plan for all students to engage with and demonstrate learning. The framework is called Universal Design for Learning (UDL; CAST.org) and is based upon the principle that if you design curriculum to meet the needs of special learners in the room, all students will benefit. The framework covers multiple means of three basic principles of learning: engagement, representation, and action and expression. In other words, teachers should be providing students multiple ways to stay engaged, and multiple ways to present the material and for students to demonstrate what they have learned. Within each principle there is increasing depth of understanding: from basic access, to building, then internalizing a concept. In this article we discuss multiple means of representation for those teaching in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classes, especially to create access to the curriculum.
STEM subjects in some ways are a natural fit for UDL principles. Since STEM subjects are often more hands-on than English and Language Arts, students who might struggle with learning only from written content have an opportunity to engage with different materials. By providing some basic additions to regular written text and vocal directions, you can help students (including those identified with a disability and those who struggle) to not only fully access the material, but also begin to build on their knowledge and problem-solving capacity. Many of these recommendations you are already incorporating in your lessons. The idea behind this article is to help you think intentionally about how you are presenting material in your lessons for all learners.
Visual support is considered an evidence-based practice in special education for all disability categories (Council for Exceptional Children, 2017; Knight & Sartini, 2015). Some simple additions you can provide are pictorial or graphic explanation of written and spoken directions. A great example could be for an experiment to...