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1. Pre-Assessment
Not to be completed

2. Differentiated Learning Assignment

Points of Interest from the Reading Emphasize Critical and Creative Thinking: School is not the mindless drilling of problems and answers; education is not the memorization of a multitude of facts and figures; learning is not the same as being able to pass a test. Regardless of an emphasis on differentiated instruction, a teacher must emphasize critical thinking. It will not help if a student has memorized the Pythagorean Theorem if they do not have the critical thinking skills to identify when problems can be solved using this knowledge or the ability to apply it to real-life situations. It does not matter if a student can conjugate verbs or indentify the correct adjective endings in German if they cannot comprehend and respond to questions or express themselves using it. Students need to learn more than how to pass a test; they need to learn problem solving, critical thinking, and analytical skills, for with these skills even the smallest bit of knowledge can be effectively used and without them even an encyclopedia of knowledge is left useless and inapplicable. Just as learning simple facts is not true education, drilling and wrote learning is not true teaching. If we hope to foster critical and creative thinking skills, our teaching must be creative. Instruction should draw from a wide variety of sources, methodologies, and tools. This not only helps one to reach multiple learning types, but keeps the class and content interesting for students. It also forces them to apply their knowledge in new and different ways, increasing comprehension and problem solving skills.

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL): It can be very difficult to attempt an adaptation of one's established curriculum once a student with unique learning needs has been placed in one's classroom. UDL proposes that, rather than struggle to alter an established curriculum, one should build curriculum and design lessons with the needs of diverse learners in mind. This can range from designing lessons that utilize multiple learning styles to considering how a lesson would be taught for students with sight, hearing, or physical disabilities. UDL allows one to not only create a classroom that can adapt to the students rather than forcing students to adapt to it (creating a safe and welcoming environment, as well as preventing students with unique needs from being placed at a disadvantage). Many of the components of UDL are common sense practicesuse multiple types of examples, incorporate a variety of activities and examples into a lesson, etc.but they are key to creating a classroom environment conducive to the success of all students, regardless of their background knowledge, learning style, and unique learning needs. Differentiated instruction hinges on choice: choice of examples, projects, methods of learning, and methods of assessment. Creating a classroom with this much choice can seem intimidating, but teachers should remember, that there are a multitude of resources available to them. Be it an online resource, a journal article, or another teacher, teachers should not forget to draw on the knowledge, experience, and assistance of others.

3. Diverse Learning Assignment

Although the links provided on the 21 Things webpage no longer appear to work, I was able to find some information on the WestEd webpage regarding accommodations for English language learners in a math classroom. Although math would seem to be a subject where being

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an English language learner would have the least amount of impact on performance, it is this misconception that causes students to struggle. They often receive significantly less accommodation and assistance in a math classroom than in other subjects. As a high school student, I knew a number of students for whom English was a second language and, though they were capable of performing the algorithms, solving the problems, and understanding the mathematical concepts, they struggled to understand the instructions, had difficulties decoding the meaning of story problems, and were grappled with subject specific vocabulary. Thus, accommodations are necessary to ensure students are not placed at an unfair disadvantage because they were not fortunate enough to have English as their mother tongue. Possible accommodations for English language learners can include simplified text for story problems, vocabulary boxes defining math specific language used in a lesson (noting the English names of various symbols or how various notations are read in English, for example) and simply being aware of any additional assistance or clarification they may need. Although few of these methods require technology, it can be used as well to provide students with translations of common instructions, a means of translating their answers into English, and more.

In the German classroom, there are many ways to engage learners of all learning styles and needs. Activities can be designed to get students out of their seats and moving, to incorporate creative expression, to focus on visual, oral, or written presentation, and to provide opportunity for student interaction. By utilizing a variety of activities, assignments, and

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instructional methods, a German classroom can reach many students and help foster success for each student, no matter their learning style.

4. Universal Design For Learning Assignment (Option B)

The wiki contains the resource GraphCalc (pictured below). This is an excellent resource, especially for schools with tight budgets. GraphCalc allows one to download a program that is capable of performing all of the functions of a graphing calculator and then some. While a graphing calculator is limited to 2-D models, GraphCalc has 3-D capabilities. This would allow for not only projecting examples of basic graphs on the board and illustrating how to enter formulas or equations into a graphing calculator, but it would also enable teachers to illustrate ideas in Calculus which students often find difficult to visualize. GraphCalc could also be an excellent resource for students who simply cannot afford the one hundred dollars required to purchase a graphing calculator for school. This application is free, downloads quickly, and will enable students to complete homework on any computer. I would even recommend downloading the application onto all school computers.

5. Text-to-Audio Conversion Assignment

Although though this tool would be helpful for sight-impaired students, the resulting mp3 is not the most student-friendly. For one, it reads very quickly. It would likely require two or three listens for a student to comprehend what was even being read and more if the content of the text was particularly technical or complicated. It also struggled with understanding some formatting. He/she/it, for example, was read "He slash she slash it." Although this would help students understand exactly what is on the page, the words are spoken so quickly they begin to run together. This would likely also make any mathematical notation more complicated than simple addition or

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multiplication impossible to use. Out of curiosity, I included German in the text to see how well vozMe could handle the foreign words. While it did perform better than expected, the mispronunciation of many German words would, nevertheless, impede comprehension. While I recognize that text-to-speech tools are helpful in the UDL classroom, I don't believe that vozMe is the tool to use. I would be more willing to utilize a tool with a slower pace, and even be willing to pay a small fee to download it, but I would be reluctant to use vozMe.

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6. Post-Assessment
Not to be completed