Are your students engaged in deep thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration—or are they just waiting for answers? In this dynamic session, we’ll explore Building Thinking Classrooms strategies that shift students from passive receivers of information to active thinkers and doers. Rooted in Peter Liljedahl’s research, these strategies empower students to take ownership of their learning while fostering curiosity, critical thinking, and perseverance.
What You’ll Learn: ✅ Strategies for forming randomized, collaborative groups that increase participation and accountability ✅ Techniques to reduce student dependency on direct instruction while increasing engagement ✅ Practical ways to shift classroom norms so students take risks, share ideas, and develop persistence
Why Attend? Expect an interactive, hands-on experience where you’ll engage in thinking tasks just like your students would. Walk away with ready-to-use strategies that can be implemented immediately in any secondary classroom—whether you teach math, science, or humanities.
Imagine cutting hours off your planning time while delivering more engaging, personalized lessons—sounds like magic, right? Magic School AI is the ultimate AI-powered tool designed for all teachers, in all subjects, at all grade levels! From generating lesson plans and assessments to providing instant differentiation and feedback, this platform does the heavy lifting so you can focus on what truly matters—your students.
Join this session to see how AI can streamline your workload, spark creativity, and supercharge student learning. Whether you're a tech newbie or an AI enthusiast, you'll walk away with practical strategies to make AI your most powerful teaching assistant!
Let’s work smarter, not harder—because teaching should be magical!
This session is also offered on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Tired of teaching in a silo? This session will show you how to build meaningful cross-curricular connections that engage students and reinforce key skills across all content areas. Whether you're in math, science, CTE, ELA, social studies, or the arts, you’ll explore easy ways to collaborate, design relevant lessons, and bring real-world learning into your classroom. From using parables in math, to novel circles with STEAM, to workplace readiness through technical writing and soft skills—this session offers practical, tested examples that can inspire your next unit and energize your instruction.
Discover how Baldwin County Public Schools’ After School Care program is creating innovative, in-district partnerships that benefit both student organizations and younger learners. This session will explore the In-District Contract initiative, which enables high school and middle school groups to earn funds by designing and delivering engaging presentations and activities to elementary students in after school programs. Available during the summer, fall, and spring semesters, these contracts not only support student-led leadership development and organizational fundraising, but also serve as a powerful recruitment tool for sustaining club involvement across grade levels. Learn how this model promotes cross-grade collaboration, strengthens school communities, and offers meaningful enrichment experiences for all ages.
Perfect for administrators, program coordinators, and student activity leaders looking to expand student engagement while maximizing community impact.
Gizmos is a STEM interactive learning tool used to provide opportunities for students to make connections, discover concepts, analyze data, and draw conclusions. Teachers can create deeper and meaningful lessons integrating academic standards and technology with Gizmos activities. Come ready to see how Gizmos can help support you and your students as we model lessons, share Gizmos and academic standard correlation lists, discuss experiences, and provide time to support you in exploring specific Gizmos for implementation in your classroom.
This session will provide information on the Civil Air Patrol Aerospace Education Member Program. This program offers lesson plans, materials, and kits to introduce STEM into your classroom. Materials provided include all grades from K-12.
Come learn about tie-dye. Learn how easy it would be to do tie-dye for yourself, a group, a class, a club, or even the entire school! Let's tie-dye Baldwin county!!!!
Bring a 100% COTTON T-shirt the morning of your session, drop it in the bucket, and then come back and tie-dye a beautiful creation!!!!
Hello!I am excited to be returning to GRITC as a presenter!I graduated with my bachelors of fine art and master's of education from the University of Montevallo, which is located in Montevallo, AL.I am married and we live in Loxley. I teach elementary art and I absolutely love it... Read More →
