Glimpsing the Future: Curricula with Built-In Flexibility
We have seen how teachers can use new media and electronic tools to create options for their students and accommodate differences in recognition, strategy, and affect. By collecting a variety of good software programs, Web sites, and digital content, teachers can gradually build the capacity to individualize instruction for every student in the class.
These kinds of tools and media will always be essential for successful implementation of UDL, but in our view, another approach represents the future of curriculum design. This is generating curricula with built-in flexibility that inherently accommodates diverse learners. Such curricula require designers to consider from the outset the varied learners that might use it and the potential instructional approaches that teachers might take. Since our early work with Gateway Stories, Gateway Authoring System, and WiggleWorks, we at CAST have focused our research and development on meeting this challenge.
Among CAST's relevant research is the "Engaging the Text" project, funded in part by the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs. The goal of this project is to develop readers who are strategic, engaged, and self-aware as learners. Drawing on a body of research-supported techniques in strategy instruction, including Reciprocal Teaching (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; Palincsar & Brown, 1984), we are exploring how teachers might combine successful instructional techniques with versatile technologies.
One of this project's outcomes is "Thinking Reader," a research prototype of a supported reading environment that can be customized for different learners. Thinking Reader embeds strategy instruction into digital versions of award-winning children's literature (Dalton, Pisha, Coyne, Eagleton, & Deysher, 2001). Although Thinking Reader is not an actual product, CAST has tested the design in classrooms as part of our research. The results are promising, indicating that on average, students who read the computer-supported novels made greater gains on a standardized reading comprehension achievement test than did peers who read and applied strategies with the print version of the novels.
Curricular tools modeled on the Thinking Reader prototype would work with a variety of genres and types of text, ranging from picture books to science articles or social studies Web pages. The prototype (see Figure 6.7) shows how teachers might use various built-in supports to customize instruction for individual differences in recognition, strategic, and affective networks instead of assembling additional materials.
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- Figure 6.7 -
Thinking Reader's Built-in Supports for Customized Scaffolding
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Scaffolds in Thinking Reader can be customized for all three networks:
- Recognition. Students can use text-to-speech capabilities to hear the text read aloud, and they can change the font size and visual presentation according to their needs. Students can also receive vocabulary support through an online glossary and learn about various strategies through the help section.
- Strategy. Support for strategic networks is integral to Thinking Reader's design and purpose. While students are reading, they can stop periodically to apply different strategies to predict, question, clarify, summarize, visualize, make a personal connection to the story, or reflect on their progress as readers. Students can ask the Genie for hints or review their saved responses in the work log at any time. There are multiple levels of prompts, hints, and responses available for each strategy, allowing students to begin with extensive support and then reduce it as their performance improves.
- Affective. Thinking Reader addresses affective networks through the use of age-appropriate, appealing literature, variable levels of challenge and support, student control over access to help, and the focus on learning how to learn.
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