Nicole Vigil

UDL Activity
ISTC 731
 Select an instructional lesson or professional development activity that you would like to
improve through UDL.
 I have chosen an Instructional Lesson Plan for Elementary Social Studies. This is
a county provided lesson plan that I would like to improve through UDL. Please
click on the link titled “S.S. Unit 1 – Lesson 2 The Preamble” to view the lesson
plan and the link titled “S.S. Unit 1 – Lesson 2” to view the materials provided for
the lesson.
 Describe the lesson and explain why you have selected it for this assignment. Be sure to
note the setting, the audience, and the instructional goals for the lesson.
 As a 5th grade teacher, I can tell you that Social Studies can be a very dry content
area. In my opinion, it is the perfect content area to incorporate technologies to
support my teaching. This specific Social Studies lesson was created by the
county that I work for. That means it is bare bones because it needs to fit every
general education classroom. That also means that the lesson plan does not
differentiate. The lesson plan explicitly states, “All lesson materials are suitable
for a fifth-grade audience. However, further modification, adaptation, and/or
teacher modeling may be required depending on student readiness and needs.”
Since the lesson plan does not differentiate, here is a breakdown of my class. I
teach 24 5th grade students in an inclusion classroom. Three students have an IEP
and 2 students receive ELL services. I predetermine student groups based on
student needs and class dynamics. The lesson plan provides a lesson overview
which states, “Students will examine and determine the meaning of the Preamble
to the Constitution. They will evaluate how the Preamble satisfies the needs and
wants of the people and determine if the Constitution was an improvement on the
Articles of Confederation government, in terms of distribution of power.”
 Use the UDL Principles Checklist for the specific checkpoints and note or score the ways
the lesson currently reflects UDL principles and the lesson's shortcomings related to the
UDL principles. Share examples where appropriate. Consider... what is the outcome you
want for this lesson in regards to improved representation, action and expression and/or
engagement? 
 Please click on the link titled “Vigil – UDL Guidelines – Educator Checklist” to
view my evaluation of the lesson plan using the UDL Guidelines.
 Choose the 2 or 3 specific checkpoints that will have the most impact on the
instruction when improved with technology. Explain what the instructor or students
would do with this technology in order to promote a learning environment that better
meets your students' needs and improves the instruction aligned to the noted
principle/checkpoint. 
 As I was thinking about how this lesson could be improved with technology, I
almost immediately decided that I needed to reformat this lesson plan using the
online instructional platform Nearpod. Nearpod is an interactive classroom tool
that incorporates multiple ways to engage students in learning.
Using Nearpod to teach my lesson would be impactful to all of Guideline 1:
Provide options for perception. Nearpod displays information in a flexible format
which includes functions like text-to-speech and speech-to-text. Fonts can be
changed, as well as a zoom function can be used to see visual content larger.
Videos can be embedded which allows students to control volume and the speed
or timing of the video. Instead of the teacher displaying the Preamble video 1 time
and hoping students saw, heard, and retained all the information, Nearpod allows
the student to customize their viewing to meet their needs. This is beneficial for
my students with IEPs because they require text to be read to them and the
chunking of assignments. Nearpod allows for both supports.
 Students with IEPs and ELL students are becoming more and more prevalent in
the classroom, and all lesson plans should incorporate supports for these students.
Considering Checkpoint 2.4 – Promote understanding across languages and
Checkpoint 5.3 – Build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and
performance, when it comes to key vocabulary words and the open-ended
questions IEP and ELL students will need differentiation like pictures to support
vocabulary, providing beginning prompts, fill in the blanks, or an organizer to
help generate responses. Nearpod allows for students who don’t need supports to
continue with the lesson while I pull my IEP and ELL students into a small group
to provide these supports.
 One of the first things I noticed when reading this lesson plan was this lesson
requires students to recall previously learned information about the Articles of
Confederation. To support Checkpoint 3.1 – Activate or supply background
knowledge, I can embed previous readings and anchor charts into Nearpod and
around my classroom to help students recall information.
 There was so much “marking with pen and pencil” assignments in this lesson
plan. I really wanted to find a way to address Checkpoint 5.1 – Use multiple
media for communication. In the Nearpod I modified one of the writing
assignments into a drawing assignment.

 Lastly, I thought this lesson plan gave multiple opportunities for collaboration. I
didn’t want to take that away when making the lesson into a Nearpod. Keeping
Checkpoint 8.3 – Foster collaboration and community I incorporated multiple
 collaboration boards so that students can still interact and learn with and from
each other.

 All of this would not be possible if my county was not 1:1 with devices. I am very
fortunate that I can incorporate technology into my lessons to make learning and
teaching more engaging. I am also fortunate to teach 5th graders. My students take
ownership of their digital citizenship, and this makes using technology so much
easier. I have procedures and routines in place that minimize the distractions that
technology sometimes offers. Making the Nearpod was time consuming but the
benefits of implementing the instructional platform outweighed the time it took to
make it and elevated the lesson plan to meet the needs of my students.