DFW Mini-CAST

You don't have to work harder to create authentic content for English Learners, you just have to work smarter! Comprehensible Input is a key component of sheltered instruction for English Learners; students cannot learn what they do not understand! Creating or accommodating content to make it comprehensible can be challenging, even for experienced teachers. In this session you will experience firsthand the unique needs of beginning/intermediate English learners and develop a new perspective on how to create and deliver *Content that Works!* The presenter will model strategies, highlight helpful resources and tools, and provide opportunities for discussion, active learning, and collaboration.

Have you run out of interesting ways to review content or do formative assessments? Put together engaging and challenging digital escape rooms using Google Suites and other free online resources. All the fun of an escape room, without the locks and boxes and expense. Come learn to build these fun activities that build your students critical thinking and problem solving skills while evaluating their content knowledge. Participants will have the opportunity to build an escape room during the session and go back to school with a ready to use product.

Transform your classroom into an escape room! Help foster collaboration and problem solving in your classroom by learning how to create the basics of breakout escape games. You will experience hands-on digital escape scenarios based on 3-5 grade TEKS. You will leave the class with an understanding of what escape games look like and the basics on how to create them. Participants will also receive access to three digital escape lessons and a list of resources to take back with them to use in their own classroom!

What are techniques and tools that *really* help learning stick? In this interactive session, we'll explore the core learning strategies and share resources about the research behind them. Next, we'll take a deeper dive into the strategies, especially retrieval practice, and investigate tech tools that can be used to embed these ideas into everyday practices. You'll leave the session with ideas you can implement on Monday! For maximum engagement, please bring your device (tablet, laptop, Chromebook).

Talk Read Talk Write (TRTW) is a process for scaffolding listening, speaking, reading, and writing with grade-level text. This process promotes student confidence in literacy and boosts content mastery as well as academic vocabulary. This extended session will outline the purpose of each step in the process while providing ideas for classroom application. Teachers will have time to apply what they have learned by planning a TRTW lesson with support.