NM PED 2026 Literacy and Humanities Summer Conference

Each year, students in grades 3–8 participate in the New Mexico Measures of Student Success and Achievement (NM-MSSA). As part of this assessment, students are required to complete an on-demand writing task. This session will demystify the writing prompt component by examining what students are asked to do and exploring how teachers can provide instruction that helps students develop effective strategies for crafting strong responses.

Participants will engage in activities and conversations that will allow them to develop action plans for how to better support students with on-demand writing.

Financial literacy is an essential life skill that should grow with students from early childhood through adulthood. This session showcases dynamic, free resources from the Federal Reserve designed to build economic knowledge and personal finance skills across grade levels.

Participants will explore classroom-ready resources and engaging activities that integrate easily into literacy, math, and career readiness instruction. Educators will leave with practical tools to help students build real-world financial understanding and make informed financial choices. Whether you are looking to enhance a math unit or find informational texts for literacy blocks, this session provides the high-quality materials needed to prepare students for a successful financial future.

In this session, you will explore real classroom scenarios involving AI use in civic learning, emphasizing that ethical decision-making around technology is an essential part of daily civic education. Together, we will analyze both effective and problematic uses of AI through a civic lens, focusing on the common good, transparency, bias awareness, and academic integrity.

Working in small groups, you will create a "Do’s and Don’ts of AI in Civic Education" guide tailored to your specific instructional context. This tool is designed for everyday classroom use rather than one-off conversations. You will also contribute to a shared resource bank of vetted prompts, discussion protocols, and student reflection tools that support ongoing civic thinking in an AI-rich world. By the end of the session, you will leave with a practical ethical AI checklist reflecting your local policies, sample AI-integrated civic lesson prompts, and student reflection templates for responsible use. You will learn how to help students practice critical evaluation and civic judgment, preparing them to engage responsibly in their communities and democracy on an ongoing basis.

In this session, you will examine real examples of misleading digital content that circulate in civic spaces and explore the everyday challenges to accuracy in a democracy. You will investigate issues such as mis- and disinformation, sponsored content, media bias, and conspiracy theories. Rather than relying on simple skepticism, you will model discipline-specific lateral reading strategies that support informed civic judgment.

You will learn how to evaluate and verify claims by cross-checking sources, tracing authorship and funding, and contextualizing information using targeted search operators. Working collaboratively, you will design a classroom-ready flowchart that guides students through a structured verification process which can be embedded across social studies units all year long. By the end of the session, you will have gained hands-on practice with digital literacy through live demonstrations and experienced applying search operators to authentic civic examples. You will leave with a customizable verification flowchart, an access link to iCivics digital literacy resources, and a deeper understanding of how to integrate civic reasoning into your daily instruction.

This session introduces educators to the wide range of literacy-rich resources available through the New Mexico History Museum. Museum educator Nancy Morris-Judd will highlight exhibits, digital materials, and educator supports that help bring New Mexico history to life in the classroom. Special emphasis will be placed on arts-integrated and experiential learning opportunities designed to deepen students’ historical understanding while strengthening critical literacy skills.

Participants will engage in two hands-on activities drawn directly from the museum’s education programs: the Human Timeline activity and "Snapshot: Exploring Historical Themes Through Tableau." Through these activities, attendees will explore how embodied learning, visual literacy, and creative expression can support reading, writing, and critical thinking across grade levels.

Participants will leave with ready-to-use strategies and a clearer understanding of how the New Mexico History Museum can support literacy instruction statewide.

By centering women as significant shapers of New Mexico’s history, the New Mexico Historic Women Marker Program offers free resources for scholars and educators. For all social studies teachers, including grades K–12, these curriculum unit plans present the voices and experiences of Southwest women as the creators and maintainers of culture and community.

Pull over for a moment and learn how to utilize this dynamic curriculum to teach about the women whose actions and influence helped shape our state’s history. Participants will explore ready-to-use lesson plans and primary sources that integrate seamlessly into existing social studies instruction, ensuring that the diverse perspectives of women are a fundamental part of the historical narrative in every classroom.

What does research tell us about effectively supporting students in grades 4–12, and how does this differ from early literacy instruction? While foundational principles of reading development remain consistent, older striving readers require distinct instructional approaches that address gaps in both foundational skills and language comprehension.

In this session, participants will engage with the research base through the lens of The Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines for Grades K–5 and the Reading Intervention Evaluation Guidelines for Grades 4–12. Together, these tools will be used to examine what works best for older readers who continue to need targeted support. Participants will explore key similarities and differences between early and adolescent literacy instruction and learn to identify high-impact, evidence-aligned practices for intervention.

The session will also provide practical, hands-on strategies to advance morphological and syntactic awareness that can be implemented in both intervention settings and content-area classrooms. Emphasis will be placed on one of the most consistently supported findings in the research: the importance of a coherent, schoolwide approach to literacy that ensures all educators share responsibility for advancing reading outcomes. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies and a clearer understanding of how to support older striving readers through aligned, system-level practices.