Riverside Learning - Creating Lessons That Engage Students in Deeper Learning

What does it take to move students beyond simply completing an assignment and toward thinking deeply, asking meaningful questions, making connections, and applying what they have learned?

Designed for educators serving students in Grades 5–12, this professional learning session explores how to create instructional experiences that engage students in deeper learning. Participants will examine how lesson design can move beyond surface-level tasks to create opportunities for students to think critically, collaborate, investigate, create, and apply their learning in meaningful ways.

We will explore practical strategies for designing lessons that spark curiosity, promote active participation, and lead to deeper conceptual understanding. Participants will consider how the questions we ask, the tasks we design, the texts and resources we provide, and the opportunities we create for students to explain their thinking can fundamentally shape the depth of learning that occurs.

The session will focus on helping educators design learning experiences that give students greater voice, choice, and ownership while maintaining appropriate rigor and clear learning goals. Participants will explore ways to move from lessons where students are primarily doing the work to lessons where students are doing the thinking.

Participants will leave with practical strategies for:

Designing lessons that move beyond recall and surface-level tasks
Creating learning experiences that spark curiosity and inquiry
Increasing meaningful student participation and engagement
Developing questions and tasks that promote critical thinking
Helping students make connections across concepts, texts, and disciplines
Creating opportunities for students to explain, defend, apply, and extend their thinking
Building greater student ownership, voice, and agency
Designing lessons that lead to deeper and more transferable understanding

Ultimately, this workshop is about rethinking what students are asked to do during a lesson—and intentionally designing experiences that invite them to think more deeply, engage more actively, and understand more meaningfully.

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Lisa Kaminski

Lisa Kaminski brings more than 30 years of experience in public education to Riverside Learning, with expertise spanning ELA, literacy, instructional leadership, curriculum development, evidence-based writing, and professional learning. Most recently, Lisa served as the Director of Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development for Westport Community Schools, where she led district-wide curriculum, instruction, and professional learning initiatives.

Lisa’s career includes roles as an ELA/Reading Department Coordinator, Humanities Literacy Coach, classroom teacher, and district administrator. Her areas of expertise include evidence-based writing, document-based teaching and learning, close reading, project-based learning, literature circles, the Science of Reading, and student-centered instruction.

Her background makes her especially well suited to lead Student Writing in the Age of AI. Lisa has spent her career helping educators create opportunities for students to think critically, engage deeply with texts, use evidence, develop ideas, and communicate their thinking through authentic writing.

In this workshop for Grades 5–12 ELA and History/Social Studies educators, Lisa will connect those foundational writing practices to the realities of today’s AI-enabled classroom. Participants will explore ways to design writing experiences that preserve student voice, original thinking, intellectual ownership, and authentic engagement, while helping students use technology thoughtfully and responsibly.

With her combination of classroom experience, literacy expertise, and district-level instructional leadership, Lisa brings a practical perspective to an increasingly important question: How do we ensure that students are still doing the thinking—and finding their own voices—in the age of AI?