SITA 2026

Often it seems we are battling kids to put away the games to get to learning, in this session I will introduce a number of games which are fun, engaging, and educational which can serve as transitions, bell-ringers, or discussion pieces to help you teach, review, and revisit important content topics within your classroom. This session is best suited for grades 6-12, but has distinct crossover for early grades when modeling and facilitating the games as teaching tools.

Educators often struggle to see how literacy and STEM can intersect, as these subjects are too often taught in isolation. Novel Engineering offers a framework for uniting the two by inviting learners to identify problems faced by characters in stories and design engineering solutions to address them. In this session, we will put Novel Engineering into practice by using a children’s book to inspire our own designed solutions, experiencing how this approach can help teachers create authentic, integrated learning opportunities that strengthen both literacy and problem-solving skills.

Just added today: I just received a box of publisher samples that I'll give away at this session.