WYTeacherCon25

Whole Brain Teaching: The Engagement Revolution!

🚀 Are you ready to transform your classroom into an energy-filled, student-led learning powerhouse? 🚀

Imagine a classroom where students are so engaged they beg to participate, where disruptions vanish because learning is too exciting to ignore, and where every brain—yes, every brain—is firing on all cylinders.

Welcome to Whole Brain Teaching (WBT)—a high-energy, research-backed approach that turns traditional instruction on its head! In this interactive session, you'll experience WBT in action, learning powerful techniques that engage both teacher and students from bell to bell.

🔹 Discover the four POWER teaching strategies that will instantly boost student engagement.
🔹 See how WBT's brain-based methods increase retention, reduce behavior issues, and make learning FUN!
🔹 Leave with ready-to-use strategies you can implement tomorrow—no prep needed!

Come see, hear, and FEEL how Whole Brain Teaching will revolutionize your classroom!

Participants will experience the transformative power of place-based education through the lens of rural Wyoming classrooms. Session attendees will discover how local, Wyoming teachers from Rock River School have integrated their unique landscape and community, place-based education, into their curriculum, everyday instruction, and state standards. This session bridges theory and practice, offering ready-to-adapt strategies that can engage students in any setting. Take home practical wisdom from Wyoming educators who have turned their community and place into their teaching assets.

Teaching research comes with a combination of challenges for middle school students. Most do not have experience in research topics. The trail cameras offer a way for the students to focus on a research topic that is very general or very specific to one animal. In this activity the students worked as a research team. Each class period were a team. They had no choice, this experience helps them understand how to navigate collaborations as a group. This unit was about teaching them how to develop research questions. The second year (Spring 2025) is about teaching them to develop a measurement tool. What is quantitative and qualitative research? Can trail cameras research be a qualitative study? How does the Arapaho and Shoshone lens help you understand western research science methods?
In this session I will share the Wind River Reservation through the lens of the trail cameras and how my students interpret the 100,000+ photos they collected.

While many sessions discuss student motivation and engagement in theory, we focus on actionable, research-backed strategies that teachers can implement immediately in their classrooms. This session equips educators with specific tools, lesson ideas, and classroom management tips that they can use on Monday morning.

This session will outline a new intervention that has been trialed within a district in various classrooms that has helped reduced behaviors 80% on average within a short time period.

Hitting Upper Elementary Next Generation Science Standards with use of phenomena and solving real world problems. And, helping 3rd-5th grade students reach proficiency and beyond in mathematics with a couple of supplemental staple tactics. This session essentially consists of two mini-sessions rolled into one. The first part of the session will highlight one 5th grade teacher’s learning and growth from participating with a four university consortium (including UWYO) called STEM STRONG for the last two years. The second part of the session is geared toward sharing some powerful strategies picked up from 25 years in the classroom to help students become better accomplished mathematicians.

The three dimensions (3Ds) of science teaching and learning (practices, big ideas, and content) clearly engage our students in relevant and transferable learning, but assessing 3D learning is complex and challenging. In this session, you will explore two science assessment examples to consider a research-based and 3D approach to assessment rubric development. You will have time to consider and discuss how these rubrics could be used and adapted to your needs and your district assessment expectations while fully assessing the 3Ds of the Wyoming Science Content & Performance Standards. You will walk away with two examples of high-quality assessment and rubric examples for science, as well as ideas for how to bring similar work into your setting.

Packing the West is designed to inspire in students a curiosity about the history of the American West, an appreciation of its literature, and the desire to explore these areas further. They will learn about historical topics by watching students like themselves meet historical characters in a series of short videos. They have an opportunity to learn more through a series of classroom activities, and independent reading as teachers can utilize packets of supplemental curricula materials for each topic.

This session will be presented by one of the creators of the programs. If scheduling allows one of the student actors who brings the stories to life also will be involved.