Ms. Speichinger's Blog

     This week, I started out by reading Inclusive Instructional Design, by Rao. The article starts out by summarizing UDL (Universal Design for Learning), reminding us that it is curriculum design focused around representation, action and expression, and engagement. From there, it talked specifically about how to meet the UDL principles when designing online learning. I chose this article specifically because, since COVID, absenteeism has been a significant problem. Classroom instruction has become so interactive and activity-based, I have struggled with how to recreate this for students who are chronically absent, so truly every classroom lesson plan needs to include an online component to make it accessible for students who were not there. In my lesson plan, the students are performing scenes to show their mastery of characterization, and they need to record these scenes and submit them on Canvas. If a student was absent that day, I need to make sure I have monologues ...

      I'm moving from a scripted math curriculum (which is all I know..they implemented it in my first year of teaching, and I used it for 3 years) to Theatre Arts, which I'm not even sure has a textbook to even loosely follow along with during the year. I will literally just have my TEKS and whatever resources I can scrounge from other teachers in nearby districts. Luckily collaboration is amazing, but I will be going from having lesson plans created for me (which I just need to adjust a bit) to having no lesson plans at all. I'm wildly excited about the freedom, this is why I left math, but it is also a really overwhelming task. This weeks tech tool feels like it will literally save my life (and I once again feel like I am so behind in what I should know as a teacher because of these scripted curriculums, but that is another blog post for another day).     I thought about using math standards for this assignment, I am so much more familiar with them and I feel...