Pre-Conference Workshops - 2026 Annual Visible Learning® Conference

Teaching Reading Across the Day

This full-day, interactive, workshop led by author Jennifer Serravallo is based on her latest release with Corwin Books: Teaching Reading Across the Day. In this workshop, she’ll teach nine effective, predictable, research-based lesson structures participants can use whether teaching English language arts, science, or social studies in grades K-8. Through explanation, activities, and videos, attendees will learn the pacing and structures of each lesson type, as well as high-leverage, research-based practices that are important across all lesson types, such as building vocabulary and knowledge, incorporating responsiveness, making appropriate text choices, and keeping students highly engaged. Throughout, Jen will connect to the science of teaching reading–sharing key research studies and replicated findings–and also speaking to the art of teaching–honoring teachers’ craft and decision-making.

A Leader’s Guide to Creating the Optimal Culture and Climate for Learning Pre-Conference Workshop

Culture and climate are not “soft” elements of schooling; they are the conditions that determine whether learning thrives or stalls. In this interactive preconference, school and system leaders will engage in a deep dive into A Leader’s Guide to Creating the Optimal Culture and Climate for Learning, exploring how leadership actions, beliefs, and structures directly shape the learning environment for both adults and students.

Participants will examine the difference between culture and climate, why both matter, and how leaders move from surface-level initiatives to intentional, coherent systems that cultivate belonging, trust, efficacy, and academic excellence. Grounded in research and leadership practice, this session blends reflection, collaborative and practical tools leaders can immediately apply in their schools and districts.

Throughout the day, leaders will analyze their current conditions for learning, identify leverage points for change, and develop a personalized action plan for leading culture and climate with clarity, courage, and consistency. This preconference is designed for leaders ready to move beyond managing behavior and compliance toward creating environments where learning, identity, and collective responsibility flourish.

Teaching Students who Live in Poverty Pre-Conference Workshop

Students who live in poverty bring strength, resilience, and potential to our classrooms, but too often face systems that make belonging and success harder to achieve. In this session, educators will explore how to create learning environments where every student feels seen, supported, and challenged. Participants will learn how to foster belonging through relationship-centered practices, build coherence by connecting learning across lessons and experiences, and maintain high expectations with empathy and consistency. We’ll also dive into practical strategies for advancing achievement, including explicit teaching of academic vocabulary, chunking lessons to maximize engagement and understanding, and developing systems of support that promote access and success for all learners. This session combines research-based insights with ready-to-use classroom strategies that empower educators to move beyond barriers and help every student thrive.

Consequential Leadership Pre-Conference Workshop

This workshop develops leaders’ capacity to combine evidence, relationships, and deliberate action to influence teaching, learning, and school culture in powerful ways. Participants will explore how consequential leaders balance authority with empathy, build internal accountability, and use evidence to diagnose needs and guide decisions. By the end, leaders will walk away with concrete tools they can use immediately, including how to Nudge, COACH, and CORRECT effectively, along with strategies for using Strong and Weak Ties theory and as well as narrative to strengthen relationships, guide decisions, foster innovation, and take meaningful next steps as consequential leaders.

PLC+ Pre Conference

PLC+ provides educators with a practical and evidence-based framework focused on supporting the planning and implementation of both student and professional learning. Intricately tied to Visible Learning+, this framework has an emphasis on equity and activation, ensuring teacher teams answer the question of who benefited from the learning and who did not. The goal of PLCs should be to empower teachers to build agency and remove learning barriers in order to accelerate student learning in the classroom.

The PLC+ Pre Conference provides teachers and teacher leaders with space to engage in deep discussions, thoughtful and genuine reflection, and examine their impact on student learning. Attendees of this will walk away with a better understanding of the PLC+ framework -- its potential impact, the required steps for implementation, and how it builds individual and collective efficacy, as well as teacher credibility. Are you ready to introduce the PLC+ framework in your school?

Student-Centered Coaching: The Moves

Learn how to ensure that instructional coaching impacts teacher and student learning.

Student-Centered Coaching is an evidence-based model for instructional coaching. It moves away from coaching that’s centered around what teachers are or are not doing, and instead focuses on partnering with teachers to design instruction that targets student outcomes.

This session will align with the release of the second edition of Student-Centered Coaching: The Moves (Sweeney and Harris, 2026). Whether you are new to the work, or are looking to sharpen your existing skills, you'll be supported by the following ideas that will be shared in this session.

Teacher Clarity Pre-Con Workshop

Participant engagement strategies through collaborative conversations allows them to connect with the thinking of others, and synthesize understanding at a deeper level. Thinking and discussions are grounded on Clarity, the need for clarity in learning, and how to achieve clarity to put learning in the hands of students. The worked examples in The Teacher Clarity Playbook will provide the platform to gain a deeper understanding of how to plan with Clarity in each of the components of the planning template.

Pathways to Visible Learning Pre-Con Workshop

What works best in teaching and learning? What approaches, interventions, and strategies accelerate learning in your school or classroom? The answer to these two driving questions resulted in the creation of the Visible Learning database almost 30 years ago, providing a robust collection of what has the potential to accelerate student learning. However, the major message from what is now approximately 2,000 meta-analyses, from over 100,000 studies, with 273,000 effects and 320 influences, and includes over 300,000,000 students is: It is not what we teach or how we teach, but how we think about outreaching that matters most. So what and how should we think about our teaching? The answer: making learning visible. We must continuously make learning visible in our schools and classrooms so that we can evaluate the impact of our teaching on students’ learning. This type of deliberate thinking is known as evaluative thinking and is the focus of this action-packed, mind-blowing institute. Making learning visible and engaging in evaluative thinking helps ensure that each student makes at least one year’s worth of growth for each year of school. While the Visible Learning database provides a robust collection of what has the potential to work best in teaching and learning, moving from potential to impact requires us to move from deliberate thinking to engaging deliberate practices in our schools and classrooms that accelerate student learning. Join us for an amazing day of learning where we will move beyond Visible Learning as a ranking system or check list and towards a way of thinking about our role as evaluators of our impact. We will unpack the latest findings from the Visible Learning database so that we can engage in deliberate practices around what content, ideas, and skills we want our students to know, understand, and do. Making learning visible will allow you to identify what works best in teaching and learning and how to approach the implementation of what works best in your own school and classroom.

Student Engagement Pre-Con Workshop

Most teachers across the country have experienced struggles with student engagement or at the very least have wondered how they could get their students to take more ownership over their learning. This training provides teachers and instructional coaches with an understanding of engagement including the cognitive barriers to engagement. This session is designed to support teachers as they work to understand a students’ specific challenges and what approaches can be taken to target those specific challenges. As part of the session, we explore universal response opportunities, student-teacher relationships, collaborative conversations, teacher clarity and credibility, feedback, and how to increase students’ ownership of their learning.

Belonging First: Restorative Practices That Transform School Communities Pre-Conference Workshop

Restorative practices are an alternative to punitive approaches to classroom management. These practices humanize the schooling experience and allow individuals who cause harm to make amends. Restorative practices rely on strong relationships as well as clear systems and procedures to ensure that harm is addressed. The impact is increased equity for BIPOC students as well as a reduction in exclusionary practices such as suspension and expulsion. But as importantly, students change their behavior as they come to understand the impact that it has.

Lead Collectively: From Belief to Action to Impact Pre-Conference Workshop

Collective Leader Efficacy (CLE) is the belief that when leadership teams develop shared understanding, engage in joint work, and evaluate their evidence of impact, they can improve both student and adult learning.

The framework is built around a three-legged stool:

Shared Understanding – built on trust, clarity, and coherence. Teams slow down to ensure words like “equity,” “engagement,” or “accountability” are not just shared language but deeply understood concepts.
Joint Work – leaders collaborating in authentic, purposeful ways, not in silos or “contrived collaboration.” This involves establishing culture, networks, and systems that ensure collective responsibility.
Evidence of Impact – using multiple forms of data (demographic, perception, student learning, and processes) to reflect on what is working, what isn’t, and how leadership actions truly affect students and staff.

In this engaging pre-conference, Peter DeWitt and Michael Nelson will provide research and practical guidance of what leaders and educators can do to lead collectively.

Amp Up Your Math Program with the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Math Students Pre-Conference Workshop

Workshop Description: Join us for a lively day of learning that will equip you to amp up the effectiveness of your mathematics program. Based on her book Power Up Your Math Community: A 10-Month Practice-Based Professional Learning Guide, Holly Burwell will introduce you to the Eight Habits of Highly-Effective Math Students and show you how these habits elevate students’ mathematical understanding, identities, and agency:

• We expect math to make sense.

• We love challenging math problems.

• We learn from math mistakes.

• We talk about math.

• We represent math in different ways.

• We make math connections.

• We look for and use math patterns.

• We see ourselves as mathematicians.

Throughout the day, you’ll collaborate with others in hands-on activities and discussions to explore these habits and learn how to cultivate the habits in all students. You’ll walk away from this workshop energized and inspired about teaching and learning mathematics, with a personalized strategic plan for embedding the habits into your mathematics program and your own copy of Power Up Your Math Community.

The Art and Science of Teacher Coaching Pre-Conference Workshop

This full-day workshop is designed to strengthen the mindsets, moves, and habits of highly effective instructional coaches. Grounded in The Art and Science of Teacher Coaching, this session blends research, practical tools, and hands-on practice to deepen curiosity-driven conversations, build trust, give meaningful feedback, and sustain long-term impact. Participants will leave with clear strategies, ready-to-use protocols, and a sharpened coaching theory of action.