One of my fascinations as an educator has been gamification, creating novel ways to teach, review, and contextualize content. In this breakout session, I will present some of the activities I have created, such as a book scavenger hunt to correspond with Fahrenheit 451, a crime scene investigation that corresponds with Macbeth, or vocab battleship, a vocabulary review game I use quite often in my classroom. During this session, I will offer some advice on what to consider when creating games or interactive classroom experiences, as well as explain how utilizing AI can make a seemingly daunting task very achievable. This session will most appeal to middle school and high school teachers who seek novel ways to incorporate active learning and gamification into their lessons.
Blog Archives
It’s Your Cue! Using Shakespeare’s Cue Scripts to Unpack Shakespeare’s Folio Clues
Shakespeare’s work provides a wealth of themes and complex characters to engage our 21st century students, though Early Modern English provides challenges in reading and understanding his plays for many students. We can, and should, supplement any modern edition and its resources with excerpts from the First Folio as well as cue scripts similar to those Shakespeare’s actors used to apply the surprising clues the Bard embedded in his plays often missing or obscured in the edited versions students read.
Identifying, Preventing, and Addressing AI-Authored Drafts in the Composition Classroom
Three JJC English faculty members will share their insights on AI in the composition classroom and discusshow it has transformed and will continue to transform their lessons and projects. They will outline their departmental policy on AI use in college composition and explain its rationale. Additionally, they willdemonstrate how they identify AI-authored essays using multiple AI detection services and by analyzingcommon AI language patterns and paragraph structures. The faculty will also describe various approachesthey use to address AI-authored compositions.
Cultivating Multi-Genre Responses to When the Emperor Was Divine
In this session directed toward those who teach high school English, teachers will learn how to enhance students’ ability to connect with the novel When the Emperor Was Divine through the use of sketch journals and explorations of poetic forms like haiku, blackout poetry, and redaction techniques. Presenters will share contextual resources to build students’ background knowledge and help them to “see” the landscapes of the novel. Participants will engage in a simulated activity to create a sketch, haiku, blackout poem, or redaction. Student artifacts will be shared.
Two Heads are Better Than One: Practical Tips for Co-Teaching Success
Feeling the stress of trying to ensure all students are meeting standards? As educators, we often find that we wear many hats in order to meet all students’ unique learning needs. The workload can be overwhelming and daunting. In this session, hear from two experienced teachers who can share tips and tricks for effective co-teaching. When implemented successfully, the responsibilities become much more manageable, and both teachers and students win!
Telling Our Stories: Infusing Creative Writing Practices in Personal Narrative
Let’s celebrate the mighty voices of our young people! This session will provide hands-on strategies for uplifting and expanding students’ personal narrative writing. Whether it’s a stepping stone to the college essay or a fun way of building community, storytelling techniques can enhance students’ creative expression as well as promote an inclusive space to excavate compelling stories based on their lived experiences. We’ll be exploring multi-genre forms including flash narrative, poetry, and graphic memoirs. Participants will enjoy an interactive experience that they can bring back to their own classrooms. No prior storytelling or visual art skills necessary.
Three Minute Poems: Mining, Crafting, Polishing, Sharing
This session will guide you through timed writing protocols designed for instant results. The initial goal is to show how students can write—in as little as ten minutes—a spontaneous, no-pressure poem draft. A draft they may eventually choose to revise, edit, polish, and even publish. The long-term goal is to help students and teachers develop a creative writing practice that resists writer’s block and channels the spirit of discovery. You will leave the session with tools to help you and your students start, develop, and finish a poem.
From Margin to Center: Moving Students’ Voices to the Middle of the Page
In research and other text-based writing situations, student voice is often marginalized—the result both of students’ reluctance to claim authority over somewhat unfamiliar topics and of the cold formality of stereotypical academic language. This session will equip teachers with ways to help students gain confidence and authority in their own perspectives while understanding their relationship with other authors and texts, allowing young writers to join ongoing (written) conversations that are meaningful to them.
Teaching in the Crosshairs: A Study of Literary Censorship and Self-Censorship in Secondary English Language Arts Classrooms
Curriculum control and literature suppression in ELA classrooms is nothing new. But the current climate has increased the struggle to balance academic freedom with external forces looking to restrict teachers’ autonomy. As censorship efforts grow, a subtler yet equally troubling trend is emerging: teacher self-censorship. This session will explore how and why educators are limiting their own choices in the classroom and what we can do about it.
From Pages to Possibilities: A Novel Approach to Amplifying Joyful Latine Voices
Representation matters—and joyful Latine stories transform classrooms for all students. This session shares fresh, creative ways to bring vibrant Latine books into novel studies and classroom libraries. Participants will learn about high-quality books featuring Latine representation, activities to support them, and actionable ideas to amplify student voice, pride, and literacy through authentic voices.