UtSTA 2026 Resources

Summary

Your one-stop hub for everything we shared at the UtSTA Fall Conference

Welcome, UtSTA attendees! If you connected with Switch Classroom at our booth, joined one of our sessions, or caught founder Dr. Scott Tinker’s morning keynote, this page is for you.

Instead of scanning multiple QR codes or searching across the full Switch Classroom website, you’ll find everything we featured right here. Session resources, lesson links, and classroom-ready activities are all organized below so you can quickly access what you explored with us.

Workshop Sessions

Zap! Squish! Light It Up! Play-Doh Circuits for Grades 4-12

The session used Switch Classroom’s Introduction to Electricity lesson to make conductivity, resistance, open and closed circuits, and series versus parallel designs something students can hold in their hands. Find the full lesson and guides linked below.

Fuel for Thought: Teaching Energy Tradeoffs and Transformations

This session paired two of our most-used energy activities. Energy Sources Activity Stations had participants comparing coal, wind, solar, natural gas, and more through short videos and evidence sorting, then weighing the benefits and limitations of each source. Understanding Energy Transformations traced how energy changes form, from chemical to thermal, mechanical, and electromagnetic, on its way to the light switch. Both lessons are linked below.

Featured Lessons

Scroll to the bottom of this page for the full lessons and activity guides we featured at the conference:

Introduction to Electricity: The lesson behind our Play-Doh Circuits lab, with bell ringers, student and teacher guides, and exit tickets
Energy Sources Activity Stations: Station-based exploration of the sources that power the grid
Understanding Energy Transformations: Trace how energy changes form on its way from source to use
Science of the Electric Grid: How electricity travels from generation to the outlet

Bring Switch Classroom to Your School

We offer free professional development for schools and districts, including hands-on workshops like the ones you saw at UtSTA. If you’d like to set up a PD session or want help finding the right resources for your curriculum, contact us here.

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Keep Exploring

All Switch Classroom resources are free, classroom-tested, and designed for real classrooms.
Explore the full Resource Library, with hundreds of lessons and activities, here.

Thanks for spending part of your conference with us. We can’t wait to see how you bring these resources to life in your classroom!