UDL in 8th Grade ELA

8th Grade ELA

Avery Ciarrocchi & Damian Jones

One of the main problems that 8th Grade ELA has identified has been mostly surrounding our writing units. Students are currently operating with varying levels of writing skills, thus creating challenges for less proficient students. We hypothesized that if we hold small need-based workshops for students during an upgrade mini unit, then students will be able to more effectively approach the learning outcomes that they are not mastering. We took a small digression from our hypothesis, and rather than implementing this strategy during an upgrade unit, we implemented the strategy during an essay revision week. Students with a less proficient set of writing skills were provided with a “Writing Companion” folder for the duration of their revision process. In this companion folder, students were given access to a variety of different transition examples, sentence starters, and mentor texts to help guide their writing. In addition to these supports, students were also given two different types of checklists to refer, depending on their preference. While we had only initially planned to use this resource for our lower students, it was ultimately a resource that we created for each table in our classroom. Students of all levels found themselves referring to the “Writing Companion” folder to help improve their essays. In the future, students will have access to companion resources that are relevant to the unit or topic of the week.