The Hocus Focus™ Professional Development Workshop is designed to provide general and special education teachers with the necessary tools and knowledge to explore the use of magic tricks in classroom instruction.

Through this workshop, Spencer first provides participants with the educational foundation for incorporating magic tricks by emphasizing the connection between Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning (2002) and the New Taxonomy (Marzano, 2007) and the means by which the concepts can integrate with core curriculums; then participants gain the necessary knowledge to implement the project into their classroom setting.

Course Objectives

After completing this workshop, the participants should be able to:

1. Understand the educational foundation for incorporating simple magic tricks into the learning process.

2. Understand and determine what Objectives and National Standards of Learning can be achieved by using simple magic tricks in the learning process.

3. Have the knowledge and tools to integrate simple magic tricks into the classroom setting.

4. Encourage students to learn simple magic tricks as a means to develop fine motor skills and to improve sequencing and task organization, frustration tolerance and task follow-through, reading comprehension and expression, and socialization and communication.

“Kevin was masterful with our area special education teachers.  Through this educational outreach, teachers saw their students rise to the challenge of critical thinking and problem solving, maintain their focus to give attention to detail, and stay with a task long enough to see the solution.  All teachers involved in this special workshop took valuable skills back to their classrooms. Kevin took the time to provide hands-on educational training — a unique resource that is a rich and meaningful learning tool to be embedded in daily routine of the classroom.”
-Charlotte Smelser, TRAHC Education Director, Texarkana, TX