Providing opportunities for all voices to be heard and all contributions to be recognized is an effective strategy for building science understanding, collaboration skills, and promotes successful group work.

Link to a simple graphic to support group discussion. This simple graphic points out three common ways children participate in discussions (repeating ideas, adding on to ideas, or proposing a new idea).

To build collaboration skills, ensure that each group member has an important role that contributes to the success of all.

To build collaboration and science expertise, try doing a jigsaw activity with students. The jigsaw strategy has been shown to improve social interactions in learning and support diversity.

Mastery and wise feedback can happen anytime. Use Mastery Oriented Feedback and Wise Feedback starters whenever students are trying something new or challenging.

Research has shown that peer feedback is especially helpful for the student giving the feedback. When peers are looking at other students work, they often report seeing the gaps in their own thinking, and then go back to their own work, revise, and improve.

Research shows that reflection and connecting with real-life situations are powerful and effective ways to build science sensemaking skills.

This quick strategy promotes communication skills and collaboration across science groups.

Every group has some people who participate a lot, and some who rarely speak. Yet, everyone has something to contribute AND something to get from hearing the voices of others. This strategy helps give everyone in the group space to speak and to listen.

Science is exciting and is always in action around us. Getting learners to realize that sometimes needs a dramatic or compelling story.Prime interest, connect science concepts with the real world, and build background knowledge with a hook. Try starting with a video, image or intriguing question to help students begin thinking about and making connections with a concept.

The theory behind Universal Design for Learning inspires many educators. However, there are some common stumbling blocks teachers face when they start applying UDL to their instructional design. With years of experience implementing UDL in her own work at the University of Kentucky’s Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching and as a CAST National Faculty member, Jennifer Pusateri offers six steps to jumpstart your practice. These easy-to-implement steps can help you meet the needs of the diverse learners in your classrooms.

The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

This past December, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaces No Child Left Behind. And for the first time, the nation’s general K-12 education law defines and endorses Universal Design for Learning.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for learning design. It is based on research in the learning sciences that each individual is unique in how they learn, and within that variability are patterns that are systematic and predictable based on three neural networks that govern the learning process in the brain (Meyer et al., 2014). Knowing the sources and ranges of this variability helps learning designers proactively design to address it. UDL reflects a paradigm shift from curriculum-centered classrooms to learner-centered classrooms that allow for flexibility in learning. The goal of UDL is for all students to have access to learning and for all students to have agency as learners.