Date
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Time
10:00 AM - 10:50 AM
Location Name
RL 17
Name
Build First, Teach Later: Designing Lessons That Stick
Description
Flipping the sequence — experience first, vocabulary second — changes what students retain and how they engage. Using the ABC (Activity Before Content) and CBV (Construct Before Vocabulary) frameworks, participants experience an experience-first STEM lesson, then examine why it landed differently than a traditional opening. The session moves through three stages: live the lesson, name the framework, redesign your own. Participants take one upcoming lesson and rebuild the opening so students encounter the idea before they're told what it is. STEM examples land with the most force here — pattern recognition with data, reverse-engineering a build, predicting before measuring — but the framework transfers to any subject where students need to think before they're told. Leave with a redesigned opening, the ABC/CBV framework as a planning lens, and a clearer answer to the question every lesson should answer: when do my students actually do the thinking?
Speakers
Session Type
Traditional Workshop
Track
STEM/STEAM
Secondary Track
Project-, problem- and challenge-based learning
Primary Audience
Middle/High School
Secondary Audience
General Educators
Fall Conference Strands
Educate
MA DLCS Strands
Computational Thinking