Portlaw National School in Co. Waterford was awarded €5,000 as part to collaborate with St. Stephen’s De La Salle, St. Ursula Primary School and SETU Waterford, to embed Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in practice. This project aimed to establish a cross-sectoral Community of Practice in the South East of Ireland, enabling teachers to enhance their skills and embed UDL approaches, enriching their approach to inclusion within their schools.
School’s reflection
The principals first met in a meeting hosted by SETU and we discussed what was possible with limited resources and the time constraints DEIS schools in particular suffer from. The three principals committed to releasing three or four teachers each for a UDL professional learning day and to develop a community of practice (CoP) from there.
The first half of the professional learning day was facilitated by Blathnaid Breslin from UL. Brian Barron (Portlaw NS) and Caroline McGarry (SETU) facilitated the afternoon session where the teachers discussed ideas and came up with a plan for the CoP based on the ideas of lesson study.
Three groups were created made-up of teachers from each of the three schools. Each group planned a lesson which had UDL as a central component or philosophical mind-set as part of the preparation. Each group then agreed who would teach the lesson, in their own classroom. The lesson study occurred in the schools with all their context specific needs. After feedback following the lesson, a second teacher volunteered to teach the next lesson and the preparation for learning was again collaborative.
As of May 19th, all groups have completed two lesson studies with a hope that the third will occur in the Autumn. The learning for the teachers and the pupils appears to be profound. The teachers have loved visiting each other’s schools and they are genuinely surprised at the impact UDL is having on their pupils learning and their enjoyment of their learning.
We have plans to continue the CoP next year and on June 5th we are bringing the 9 classes form across the three schools together in SETU for a concert based on the Carnival of the Animals, one of the groups focus for their lesson study.