PAL "Planning for all Learners" Toolkit

PAL or “Planning for all Learners” is a toolkit that will assist educators in implementing the UDL guidelines and principles into their instruction. In my last post, I examined a digital textbook that deepened my understanding of UDL which is necessary in order to implement PAL. When putting this toolkit into effect there are 2 prerequisites to keep in mind:

1. A basic understanding of UDL.
2. The commitment of the participating educators to make the curriculum and learning accessible for all learners.

Once a PAL team is established, they will follow these 4 basic steps based on the UDL principles to implement PAL into the curriculum:

 

 

As the common core standards will soon be implemented, I think that the PAL tutorial would be very useful to educators when reexamining their curriculum. One specific resource that I saw to be extremely valuable to myself and especially beginning teachers when thinking about how to use UDL most effectively was the UDL Class Learning Profile. “The Class Profile Maker tool supports you in creating a learning profile for the students in your class. By noting the key strengths, needs, and interests of each student in each of the three networks, you may learn things about students that were not obvious before" ("Tool: UDL Class Profile Maker: Tools and Activities: Teaching Every Student", n.d.). You could also develop individual profiles for students and merge them into your class profile. As a teacher, I like how this tool would help me to adjust my teaching according to my students’ individual needs.

 

Here is a model individual profile that was provided about a girl named Sophia.

	Strengths	Needs	Interests / Preferences
Recognition (learning "what")	Good ear Good language comprehension; understands nuance	Legally Blind
Strategy (learning "how")	Excellent singer; quick learner auditory; reads Braille well	Cannot sight read music
Affect (learning "why")	Strong social relationships		Loves music

 

 

REFERENCES

Tool: UDL Class Profile Maker: Tools & Activities: Teaching Every Student. (n.d.). Retrieved June 8, 2013, from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/classprofiletool.cfm