Welcome remarks

Student disengagement isn’t a mystery, but it’s often misunderstood. This workshop helps teachers make sense of familiar classroom behaviors, like students going quiet, avoiding tasks, or doing the minimum, and see them as clues about what’s happening in the learning. Using Cambridge frameworks, participants explore how choice, relevance, and manageable challenge affect motivation, especially with secondary learners. The focus is on empathy and practical action, giving teachers concrete ways to redesign learning so students re‑enter the process.

How do we move learners from single words to purposeful student talk? Using images and structured supports such as the Picture Word Induction Model and color-coded sentences, this session models intentional design for language development. Utilizing Waiting for the Biblioburro by Monica Brown, whose work reflects her Peruvian heritage, and images by Peruvian illustrator Elisa Chavarri, whose artwork appears on Lansing, Michigan’s mobile library, participants engage in guided activities that build comprehension and meaningful output. These images and texts support learners in developing language from single words to more expanded and connected ideas, often as preparation for reading a shared class text. Participants observe how structured image-based activities and simple sentence supports, combined with small, intentional teacher moves that increase participation, guide learners toward more confident and meaningful language use. Some strategies are informed by Nancy Motley’s book, Small Moves, Big Gains: Teacher Habits That Help Kids Talk More, Think More, and Achieve More. Participants then consider how to adapt these strategies to their own contexts, including low-resource classrooms, with a focus on practical, classroom-ready applications.

Time to pause and disconnect

This workshop introduces participants to the foundations of Experiential Learning Theory developed by David A. Kolb, focusing on how individuals perceive, process, and transform learning experiences. Rather than treating learning as a one-size-fits-all process, the session presents a practical diagnostic quiz that helps learners identify their dominant approach across two dimensions: Grasping Experience and Transforming Experience. Through a simplified binary (Yes/No) instrument, participants map their preferences onto four learning styles—Accommodator, Diverger, Assimilator, and Converger—gaining insight into how they engage with theory, action, reflection, and application. The lecture explains the theoretical rationale behind the tool, demonstrates how to interpret results, and explores how learning style awareness can inform study strategies, instructional design, and technology integration. By the end of the session, attendees will identify their learning style and also define what AI tools would contribute more to their learning process in accordance with their Learning Style Quiz results.

TBC

Final remarks