Universal Design Principles

Every child, every student that works through an elementary school deserves to have a fair, and equal chance to succeed. Every student also has the potential to learn and do great things with their knowledge. The biggest challenge is how do teachers unleash all of this potential, and connect to students when every student is different, including those with disabilities. With this in mind, and federal regulations calling for children with disabilities still to be a part of large-scale assessments, state testing, etc, action was taken to create activities, and ways to run a classroom that maximizes the number of students that could access everything. This begins the creation of Universal Design, Universal Design has seven important principles that create, and promote maximum efficiency and usage for everybody in a school, or classroom setting. The seven principles are; equitable use, flexibility in use, simple/easy to understand in use, effective communication of information, tolerance for errors, low physical

The teachers familiarized themselves with Universal Design, and implemented it into their study guides, and assessments. They then spent the next three months following the principles of Universal Design, maximizing accessibility for all students and then put it “to the test” when state standardized tests took place three months later. All the results came back as improved, and positive. The teacher feedback was highly positive, not only schoolwork, and academics, but also student’s behavior and cooperation with others. This experiment showed positive results in how creating school-wide change can make a difference in everyone in the school, regardless of ability, language, SES,