By Jana Nicol

As I continue on my journey of integrating more UDL practices into my teaching, sometimes I find it challenging to make time for student self-assessment and reflection. After all, it's not always easy to get through all of the curriculum. 

But I need to keep reminding myself that time to reflect and to assess one's own performance allows students to better internalize what they have learned. It also helps us as teachers evaluate students' confidence with the material, and can tell us about what parts of lessons and activities they enjoyed the most (or the least). This information is vital as it can help guide future instruction, and empowers us to continually improve our instruction to benefit our students. Making the time for self-assessment and reflection is worthwhile.

Developing opportunities for students to self-assess and reflect on their learning is a part of CAST's UDL guidelines. According to CAST, this practice is a part of multiple means of engagement, which stimulates interest and motivation for learning. It taps into the affective network of the brain, a.k.a., the "why" of learning. "For many learners, merely recognizing that they are making progress toward greater independence is highly motivating" (CAST, 2011). In The Three Block Model of UDL, by Jennifer Katz, she also argues that self-assessment and reflection is beneficial because it promotes empowerment, and increases student motivation and ownership over learning.

Students love to see evidence of their progress. They thrive on feedback. By providing them with means to reflect on and assess their own learning, we are empowering them to provide their own feedback. Not all feedback needs to come from teachers. We can give students the opportunity to evaluate their own learning, in addition to teacher feedback, to increase the amount and frequency of feedback they receive.


What are some ways we as teachers can increase opportunities for student self-assessment and reflection?

-  Exit slips - Students can record them on a post-it and stick on the wall. This is a very easy way for students to self-assess and/or reflect on their learning. They could answer questions such as: "what was your favourite part of today's lesson?", "what are 3 interesting facts you learned today?", "if you had a test on the lesson tomorrow, how do you think you would do?", etc.

-  Journals - Teachers can guide student reflection by giving specific prompts, or the prompt could be open-ended. 

-  Surveys - This could be done in a number of ways. It could be as simple as asking a question and asking students to give a thumbs up or down (or holding up a red, yellow, or green card; or any other variation you can think of). Students could also respond to a survey on paper, or online (http://surveymonkey.com is a good source), or with SMART Senteos.

-  Rubrics - Students can be provided with a rubric to grade their own work. This task could be modeled for them by doing a shared activity in which the class looks at a sample of work and then collaborate to grade it based on the criteria set by the rubric.


These are just a few ways that teachers can provide students with more opportunities for self-assessment and reflection. As you can see, they are fairly easy to implement. The hard part is remembering to set aside a small amount of time and working it into instruction before moving onto the next lesson. But we can do it if we set our minds to it!

By Jana Nicol

Many parents and teachers read aloud to young children. Children love to hear stories, and a large body of research has concluded that reading to children helps them learn to decode text, helps improve their fluency, and helps instill a love for books. 

But somewhere along the line, usually after students have been in school for a couple of years, parents and teachers may not read aloud to children nearly as often as they did when children were in preschool and the primary grades.

By this stage of the game, most children can read independently, so it may not seem necessary to read to them as often. This may be true, but I strongly feel that even though many children are capable readers, it is beneficial to continue reading to older children for many reasons.

The pros of reading to older children:

- Modelling fluent reading - some children may be good at decoding words, but may need to work on their fluency. Some young readers need a concrete model of what fluent reading sounds like in order to emulate it when they read independently.

- Exposing children to a broader range of literature - maybe we can even help them discover their new favourite author or genre! We can also take the time to talk to them about what they like to read, and we can suggest other books, authors, and/or genres they may enjoy. Helping them discover more texts can help them read more.

- Teaching them more about topics of interest - some books that cater to students' interests may be too challenging for them to read independently. Many nonfiction books have a lot of terminology that students may have difficulty decoding (or understanding). Children love to learn about new things. We can also show them how to use indexes and glossaries to help them make sense of nonfiction texts when they are reading them independently.

- Inclusion - Some children read below what is considered appropriate for their grade level. When we read texts aloud, it helps them better understand what is being read/taught in class. It can also help them develop decoding skills - particularly when they have the opportunity to see the words as they are being read and are encouraged to follow along. This can help build decoding skills and increase their word recognition, helping them improve as readers.

The cons of reading to older children:

None come to mind.

Links to Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Teachers who have an interest in UDL can incorporate read alouds with older children when it is appropriate, keeping in mind that we also provide time for them to read independently. Reading aloud to children utilizes the following principles of UDL*:

- 2.1 - Clarify vocabulary and symbols
- 2.3 - Support decoding of text, mathematical notation, and symbols
- 3.3 - Guide information processing, visualization, and manipulation
- 5.3 - Build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance
- 7.3 - Minimize threats and distractions

* You can dowload CAST's guiding principles of UDL here.