Learning is active and social. For deep learning to occur, instruction needs to access and connect to prior knowledge and give learners choices and responsibilities in their own learning experience. This session is designed to explore how people learn, and to model how to prepare lessons and activities that are sequenced in ways that help learners engage with a topic or concept, and build their understanding. Lessons that are highly effective tend to follow a pattern, and in this session we identify that “learning cycle” pattern, so teachers can use it to make thoughtful instructional decisions. It’s worth spending some time becoming familiar with this model, because it can be challenging to apply well, yet can be a transformative backbone for activity planning and instructional decisions. The learning cycle is a research-based instructional model that focuses on ordering phases of an activity to support learning. The model presented in this session is based on a five-phase cycle: invitation, exploration, concept invention, application, and reflection. The session itself is also based on the learning cycle model, so participants can experience the model at the same time as they are learning about it.