NM PED 2026 Literacy and Humanities Summer Conference

Foundational literacy is often reduced to "cracking the code," yet a child’s oral language proficiency is a strong predictor of long-term reading success. Hulme and Snowling’s recent model, the Reading is Language Model (2025), expands on the Simple View of Reading to demonstrate that language is the primary contributor and the basis of all literacy learning, including both word learning and comprehension. This session explores an expanded definition of foundational skills, positioning oral language, specifically vocabulary depth, syntactic complexity, and frequent peer-to-peer speaking, as the essential building block for later reading comprehension.

In this interactive session, participants will gain an understanding of the role of language as the "glue" for foundational skills. You will discover practical ways to integrate robust oral language development into daily foundational routines, ensuring students are not just decoding words, but are building the linguistic wealth necessary for true comprehension.