Engaging Student Long-Term Memory
Saturday, February 22, 9 a.m. -12:30 p.m.
It must be uncomfortable for students to sit in a classroom and not understand anything. After teaching a good lesson, educators wonder why a majority of the class did not get it. Imagine being given directions for baking a cake, and in less than five minutes, being unable to recall those directions. Research explains that the information was not lodged in the long-term memory, and only temporarily in the working memory, and hence the speedy loss of information. In this session, we will focus on the development of cognitive structures, activities and conditions that secure information in the long-term memory.
Session Objectives:
Create favorable learning conditions
Identify brain-compatible activities
Maintain a healthy brain
Social Media: Students and Learning
March 22, 9:00am-12:30pm
Today's students often use cell phones, laptops, and tablets daily as they tap into their natural inclination to communicate with friends and family. Consequently, these devices are appearing in classrooms with greater frequency. Though the use of social media as an instructional tool is a relatively new phenomenon, many educators have already found success though careful planning and preparation. Join us for the opportunity to learn best practices and explore different strategies to academically engage your students through social media.
Session Objectives:
Identify professional considerations & cautions in using social media in the classroom
Identify the benefits of social media as a tool for the instructional process
Use social media as a tool to facilitate and enhance classroom instruction
The Game Factor
April 26, 12:00-3:30pm
Fun is in store for teachers and, in turn, their students through this module, which examines the research, different types of games, and how they can be used to enhance content instruction for students in today's diverse classrooms.
Session Objectives:
Delineate the difference between gamification and game-based learning
Identify the features of a good game
Design a classroom unit using the game structure
Using Questions to Teach & Learn
May 17, 12:00-3:30pm
Student responses to questions help teachers assess how well students understand content. Responses also reveal students' critical and metacognitive thinking patterns. Several researchers have established the fact that teaching students to think is a very complex process and caution that students must have domain knowledge (content that is related to the subject matter) in order to demonstrate their ability to think when responding to questions. This is a caution to consider when fulfilling educational mandates related to "higher" and "lower" categorizations of questions
Session Objectives:
Determine the Surface and Deep Structures of questions
Use Bloom's Educational Objectives (Taxonomy) as a "thinking" tool
Teach students to formulate meaningful questions