Moving Beyond Memorization Through Active Play – There’s a Game for Any Age!

Forget the era of rote memorization! As student attention spans shift, we need to evolve our teaching to recapture students’ imagination and curiosity. Join me as I explore how gamification and hands-on activities can spark genuine engagement and create lasting impact over simple repetition. My professional background has been a rich and diverse experience. Having graduated from a bachelor’s degree in science (Chemistry/Pharmacology), I followed my passion for Chemistry and went on to obtain Honours and PhD degrees in Inorganic Chemistry. As a postgraduate, I worked as a Research Associate at Monash University (Australia) and then as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cologne (Germany). I then worked as an Evaluation Services Officer at Swinburne University (Australia) as part of the Strategic Planning and Quality team. As much as I enjoyed research, I also enjoyed the teaching and instructional aspect of academic life. For that reason, I obtained a Graduate Diploma in Education (Applied Learning) to pursue a career in teaching. Now, with over fifteen years teaching experience at both secondary and tertiary level, I have been exposed to a range of students in various teaching environments (and countries!), which has ultimately diversified and honed my teaching skills and expertise. My teaching philosophy is centered on the inquiry-based learning approach. That is, by acting as a facilitator to learning and allowing students to draw on their existing knowledge and skills, the learning process is maximised. Students are thus active ‘partners’ in the learning process rather than recipients of knowledge. My belief is that if we can make students’ learning a memorable experience that arouses enough curiosity and determination to succeed, then we truly set the stage for effective and long-term learning. For it is always the journey that we take that is more memorable than the actual destination. This session was one of the most empowering workshops that I have ever done and I leave the session with extremely useful and relevant tools to use going forward. Thanks so much to Sally for leading us in the session so positively. Absolutely brilliant information, empowering us with many tools and skills to takeaway and work on. My colleague and I leave full of positive energy about how to approach the challenges of our admin roles. The best P.D. I have attended in living memory!” I loved every minute of this engaging, interesting and informative PD. And I have been teaching for 40+ years! Keep up the fantastic PD opportunities! Very professional and well-researched workshops and conferences. Passionate & Authentic Speakers – Meaningful Strategies “Strategies to Thrive as a Year Level Co-ordinator by Sally Learey” Sally was insightful and helped me to make clear connections to every day behaviours / emotions that I will need to recognise in my position. It really reiterated why I applied for this position in the first place as I think that of