In the second semester of last year, I was given a new assignment due to some shifts that needed to be made as a result of some teachers leaving. I went from teaching strategic reading to teaching three sections of English I and one section of strategic reading, a course designed to be an intervention for students reading below grade level. Unfortunately, due to a lack of resources, strategic reading was my largest class with a total of twenty-nine students, four with IEPs, (one of whom is in a self-contained English class), one with a 504, and one that was flagged advanced. While only six students in that class were flagged for needing differentiated instruction, twenty (69%) of my students were readng two or more grade levels below, only four (14%) of my students were reading one grade level below, and only two (7%) of my students were reading on grade level.  The reading levels of students in this class ranged from early first grade to on grade level, which it made it difficult to differentiate instruction.

Unfortunately, the data for my English I classes last year were not much better. I taught a total of eighty-three English I students, ten of whom had IEPs, six were ELLs, three who had 504s—one of whom was on a Behavior Improvement Plan (BIP). I only have iReady data on seventy-seven of the eighty-three. Eleven (14%) of the seventy-seven students with iReady diagnostic data were reading one grade below grade-level, while an overwhelming sixty-four (83%) out of the seventy-seven were reading two or more levels below grade level. Only three (3.8%) of the students were reading on grade level. The reading levels for my three sections of English I range from early first grade to on grade level.

Because there is such a demand for adequate differentiation of materials, and because I was fortunate enough to be given full use of a Chromebook cart four days out of the week, I utilized technology as a tool to deliver a Universal Design (UDL) based instruction, disseminate learning materials, and allow students with different learning needs to accomplish tasks. While I make it a mind to be extra aware of my students with specific IEP goals when delivering instruction, the majority of my students benefited from the differentiated materials and resources I provided, which supported by findings in “Preparing teachers to use Universal Design for Learning to support diverse learners” (Evmenova, 2018). This information impacts everything I do: lesson planning, the way I deliver instruction, creating materials, grading, scheduling, and much more. I make a mind to include accommodations within my lesson plans, I do constant checks for understanding and repeat instructions, I never grade below a 50%, I offer a variety of supplementary material including graphic novels to help students develop within the discipline, and I often scheduled extra coach classes and made myself available during lunch for students who couldn’t stay after school due to transportation needs and a variety of other reasons. According to “Going deep: Leveraging Universal Design for Learning to engage all learners in rich disciplinary thinking in ELA”, “By designing for difference from the start, teachers can focus their real-time adjustments on responding to student thinking without having to focus simultaneously on responding to unintentional barriers in the design of the curriculum,” so I make such services available to all students, despite their level of need (Gravel, 2018).