Activity

Universal Design pitch

students brainstorm and present ideas about UD

I created this activity for JHS 2nd graders when my JTE asked me to do a lesson on universal design because it is the theme of unit 5 in New Horizons 2 (pg.79 contains the chart I used for the visual). This activity is a group activity and it is easy to incorporate and practice any specific grammar point you'd like.

First, use the powerpoint to remind students what they learned about universal design. While talking about the groups of people who are helped by universal design, I added colorblind people and blind people to make a total of 8 different groups of people.

Remind students about some of the textbook examples of universal design using pictures from the powerpoint.

Let students know that the goal of the activity is to brainstorm or decide the best universal design for specific groups of people (listed earlier).

Show my example of colorblind people. The best idea I chose was to adjust class projections and chalk to only using colorblind-safe colors (white, black, blue, and yellow). You can also point out that the entire powerpoint is made using only those colors for backgrounds and text.

After that, break students into groups and assign them their group numbers. The numbers will correspond with the empty slides and will indicate which group of people they need to think about universal design for.

This activity works best if students all have their own school ipads so that they can receive the entire powerpoint and edit their own slides directly. Give students around 5 minutes to discuss and make a visual similar to the example. I tried to encourage students not to write sentences on the slide itself, but to show their ideas through pictures.

Have groups present their ideas one by one. It's best if you can display their slides on a TV or projector screen while they talk. I didn't push for students to speak using any particular grammar, but here is a good chance to encourage extra practice of superlatives, comparatives, etc...

This activity met my JTE's specific needs and I hope it can be useful to someone else, too!

Files:
Large files (requires a subscriber account) -
  • NH2 - unit 5 - universal design product pitch.pptx (47.4 MB)
  • 3
    Submitted by stadiumkaylam June 8, 2022 Estimated time: 30-40 minutes
    1. HTemple June 9, 2022

      This seems like a cool idea! My JTE already does this kind of activity, where the students edit slides and present, so I think I'll pitch it to her. It seems like maybe you took photos of the physical textbook with your phone for some of those images. If that's true, I recommend asking your JTE for the access key to the digital textbook online. I always windows+shift+s and cut my images out of the text that way. They turn out much brighter and a little more crisp looking. Cheers!

    2. stadiumkaylam June 10, 2022

      Ah, that would have been better (because yes I took the photos with my phone). I no longer teach at JHS, but I'm sure that if any of you out there have access to the digital materials that it wouldn't take long to replace my phone pictures or to use different pictures entirely :)

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