I was fortunate to present at NCSM in Denver this month on work we’ve been doing with Universal Design for Learning and Lesson Study. This is a long post, but worth it if you are looking for a low-cost strengths-based approach to growing teachers’ capacity to teach and reach ALL learners.
At MEC, we believe every teacher has superpowers, and we are really excited about the work of Rachel Lambert (2024) and the ways her Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Math Framework can support teachers in identifying their strengths while also giving them places they can grow.
We have recently paired the UDL Math Framework with Lesson Study to help teams of teachers lean into their strengths while building their capacity to reach every single student. This wonderful, responsive, messy work is resulting in real commitments and changes in teacher practice. Read on to learn about this relatively low-cost approach to professional learning.
What is Universal Design?
First, let’s consider Universal Design, which originates in the field of architecture. Universal Design refers to the principle that the built world should be planned with the end user in mind – based on what they can do, rather than what they can’t do. This has resulted replacing hard-to-grip knobs with levers on doors and faucets, rollable curb cuts, and easy-grip handrails. None of these designs makes it harder for the able-bodied, and often they make life easier for everyone.
Like its architectural application, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) also starts with the strengths of the end user in mind. The approach positions teachers as learning architects, or designers. Even when they use purchased curriculum, UDL elevates teachers’ power and agency to adapt materials and approaches in their planning. The framework guides teachers to open up access and anticipate strategic support. This makes facilitation easier. Such intentional planning takes time, but alleviates the need for as much redirection, differentiation, and adaptation while teaching. Teachers work smarter, not harder, when they embrace UDL.
An Impactful Pair: UDL & Lesson Study
Pairing UDL with Lesson Study allows explore new ways to think about what it takes for the end user (students!) to access that content. Lesson Study makes the private internal planning and reflective work of teachers a collective cycle. Teachers plan together, one of them teaches, they reflect together, make changes, and then teach again, and finally reflect on whether the changes they made improved the lesson.
To begin Lesson Study, we bring teachers together for a half day a week prior to each all-day reflective cycle. Before our planning begins, the host teacher has identified a content standard and curricular materials supporting that standard. First we think through the mathematics involved in the standard. At this phase of the cycle, we lean into the aspect of the framework that identifies the importance of core ideas, which are those concepts can bear the structural load of new math learning (Lambert, 2024). A focus on Core Ideas can help teachers think about details essential to building conceptual understanding and avoid overwhelming students not-yet relevant information.
Once teachers agree on the important idea at hand, they design together, keeping in mind the end goal of positioning all students as strategic sense makers. During this phase of planning we keep the UDL Math Framework (Lambert, 2024) visible and think through ways to support students in engaging, representing, and taking strategic action. The lesson gets built from the strengths and knowledge of the teachers in the room.
A Focus on Division of Decimals
In a recent cycle, the host teacher brought us the sixth grade Common Core standard “divide decimal numbers using the standard algorithm.” Before teachers began to talk through the lesson, they identified the core idea in this standard was to support students in knowing that multiplying dividend and divisor by the same power of ten results in the same quotient. For instance, 425 divided by 25 is 9. 4.25 divided by 0.25 is also 9. Rather than go directly to the standard algorithm, the teachers decided that the best way to approach this idea was to provide a string of problems so that students could notice patterns in the problems and their solutions. Teachers also brainstormed possible contexts that would help students engage by making the math more meaningful. They considered problems involving money, time, and distance, and finally settled on the question, “If an average sip is 0.65 ml of soda, how many sips does it take to drink a 350 ml bottle?” Students would predict at the beginning of the lesson and apply their newly acquired algorithm at the end to answer the question.
Next teachers turned their attention to multi-modal points of access. They selected numbers for the string that were easy enough to solve mentally if students chose to, and decided to offer calculators. The goal was not mental math: it was noticing patterns, and the calculators should, they thought, offload unnecessary cognitive demand.
They also thought carefully about equitable feedback. How could students learn whether or not the solutions to their string were correct. They decided to write three different strings on color-coded paper so students could confer with each other after solving. This design move also contributed to maintaining a supportive classroom environment. Once students had solved their strings, the teacher would lead a class discussion so that everyone could see the role of multiplying by powers of ten in producing identical quotients, and then they’d apply their new understanding to using the standard algorithm to divide 350 by 0.65.
A week after planning, teachers meet again to find out whether the host has needed to make any adjustments to the lesson, then they convene in the classroom to watch how students respond to the design. At this point in the cycle, we emphasize the importance of attending to student thinking, not to teaching. They already know the lesson, after all. What they don’t know about yet is the degree to which the design will facilitate strategic sense making.
Eyes on Learners
In the case of the team’s decimal division lesson, the majority of the class made sense of multiplying by powers of ten, but when it came to using the calculator and shifting to the standard algorithm, sense-making halted for too many. At the beginning of the lesson, several students struggled to turn on their calculators. One insisted his was broken and spent the whole class period “fixing” it in spite of intervention on the part of several teachers. (It was in stats mode.) The team heard one student “Exclaim, well, that’s it. I am not going to college” as the teacher began directing students to set up the algorithm. Another said, “I’m out,” after writing down the dividend of 350.
Reflection and Revision
In reflecting on the learning, teachers identified some unanticipated barriers that shut out students and used these insights to redesign the lesson. They decided to allow students time to play with the calculators before using them to solve the string. They also realized that landing on the standard algorithm to conclude the lesson had short-circuited the sense-making rather than extending it. The determined to delay using the long-division algorithm until the next day and instead invite a few students to drink a soda, counting sips. Delaying the standard algorithm also freed up time within this lesson for slower processing of the pattern and allowed the teacher to invite students to write and solve their own number string using powers of ten.
As teachers cycle back to teaching, the same teacher can host or another can host. The team again observes student responses with particular attention to how students take up the shifts in the lesson.
Did our redesign make a difference?
In the case of the decimal division lesson, the changes made by the team proved successful. Students helped each other with calculators, removing that critical barrier. The slower pace of the discussion allowed students to place their fingers on their solved strings to identify the role of powers of ten. And the addition of asking students to write and solve their own strings gave the team evidence of student understanding of the core idea that multiplying dividend and divisor by the same power of ten results in the same quotient.
As each lesson study cycle closes, we ask teachers to consider where their greatest strength lies in relation to the UDL Framework and to select an area for growth. In our experience, many teachers feel confident about how they engage students, and set goals for growth in the representation and strategic action aspects of the framework.
Growth can be messy.
While working and planning together can inspire a lot of growth, it can also generate cognitive dissonance. Regarding cognitive dissonance, we here at MEC embrace it. We know how to create the supports, and community and build the trust teachers need in us to embrace learning, even when it overwhelms.
Following our division lesson study, a teacher reached out, ready to quit. Her concern was that we had departed so far from the curriculum that there was no way she could do UDL every day. Unfortunately, in this particular context the curriculum alone does not elevate strategic sense-making.
We had listened closely enough during planning and the lesson study cycle to remind her of her strength. She was especially good and making math meaningful to students. We reassured her she could lean into that to make small changes in her approach. We reminded her that our tiny shift of letting students play before problem-solving had removed any barriers the calculator presented. By working just a little smarter, we reassured, her work would be easier, not harder.
A Low-Cost Approach to Teacher Growth
While we love the way pairing lesson study with Lambert’s UDL math builds on the strength of practicing educators, we especially appreciate how economical this approach can be. We have done two projects so far, each in partnership with a school district. Small grants covered the cost for substitutes and stipends, while the district paid for facilitation. Each of our projects has convened teachers across schools and grade levels for three cycles, either middle school through high school, or elementary through middle school. In every case, teachers have reflected that this was some of the best professional learning they’d ever had. We attribute that to pairing UDL Math and Lesson Study in ways that help teachers see what they do well, while challenging them to reflect, together, on what they can do better.
Collaborative learning doesn’t “just happen.” I had to convince students that they’d benefit from working together. Lucky for me, a teacher down the hall taught me about “Desk Olympics” which provided a competition between classes for which class could form groups of four the fastest. By the time groups had managed to move their tables together, they were interdependent. In a small way they knew they had people they could count on.