NM PED 2026 Literacy and Humanities Summer Conference

Strong literacy leadership is the foundation for academic success at the secondary level. In this dynamic workshop, you will explore the critical role of leaders in shaping school-wide literacy initiatives, fostering collaboration among educators, and supporting diverse student needs. You will dive into key focus areas, including building influence, leading intentionally, strategic planning, and modeling professional growth.

You will leave with practical tools to lead literacy initiatives with purpose, allowing you to elevate instructional practices and empower students to achieve their highest potential. Whether you are managing a department or leading an entire building, this session provides the framework needed to inspire your staff and create a sustainable culture of literacy. You will gain the clarity and confidence to drive meaningful change that directly impacts student outcomes across all content areas

Explicit vocabulary instruction is critical for your secondary students to access complex texts, express ideas effectively, and succeed across all disciplines. In this session, you will examine how AI-powered tools can enhance your vocabulary instruction by facilitating high-impact word selection, offering adaptive learning experiences, and strengthening the language networks of the reading brain.

You will explore research-based strategies for direct vocabulary instruction, including how to select and teach high-utility words, integrate structured routines, and foster word consciousness in your classroom. Through practical examples and interactive discussions, you will learn how to integrate AI tools to deepen student comprehension and build robust academic language networks. You will leave with actionable strategies to create a language-rich environment that accelerates literacy development for all your secondary students, ensuring they have the linguistic tools necessary for academic success.

TBA

Anticipation guides stimulate students' interest in a topic and set a purpose for reading by teaching them to make predictions, anticipate the text, and verify their findings. This powerful pre-reading strategy is particularly effective in the elementary classroom because it activates background knowledge, sparks curiosity, and establishes a clear focus for the reading task.

By presenting thought-provoking statements connected to key concepts in the text, teachers encourage students to predict, agree or disagree, and engage in meaningful discussion before reading begins. In this session, participants will learn how to create and implement effective anticipation guides, with a focus on intentionally embedding essential vocabulary and academic language into these statements to provide early exposure to critical terms in context.

As students revisit the guide during and after reading, they refine their thinking, deepen comprehension, and make stronger connections between new vocabulary and the text’s central ideas. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for designing these guides in their own classrooms, gaining tools to intentionally strengthen student vocabulary development and reading comprehension through purposeful pre-reading engagement.

As New Mexico districts work to strengthen literacy outcomes statewide, you are increasingly called upon to move beyond simple adoption toward coherent, sustainable implementation. While you may have already made significant investments in evidence-based literacy materials and professional learning, the challenge often lies in translating those tools into consistent, high-quality classroom practice.

In this session, you will focus on the specific leadership actions that support coherent literacy implementation and sustained improvement. You will explore how alignment among curriculum, professional learning, coaching, and assessment directly influences instructional quality and student outcomes. Drawing on classroom, district, and national implementation experience, you will identify common challenges that emerge during literacy shifts and the leadership moves necessary to address them. You will leave with a practical framework for assessing implementation coherence and identifying high-leverage strategies that strengthen literacy systems across your schools.

Secondary readers deserve instruction that builds skill, confidence, and understanding rather than more time spent in isolated programs. In this session, you will reframe intervention as high-quality, evidence-based instruction that belongs in every classroom. You will explore how explicit and systematic teaching in word recognition, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension ensures that all students can access grade-level texts.

Grounded in the science of reading and adolescent literacy research, this session provides practical strategies for you to deliver instruction that transforms reading outcomes. You will work toward key learning targets, including understanding how to integrate intervention practices into Tier 1 instruction and learning to distinguish between intervention as a physical place and intervention as effective teaching. You will leave equipped to translate research into practice, improving reading comprehension outcomes and building a culture of literacy that empowers every student in your school.

This session dives into the Road to Reading for English Learners model, a framework that treats oral language development and differentiated linguistic scaffolds as fundamental components of instructional design rather than optional add-ons. You will examine the systematic integration of language acquisition and reading strategies to ensure that literacy instruction is both accessible and rigorous.

Throughout the session, you will explore concrete examples of how to improve language and literacy instruction for all students with a specific focus on the unique needs of English Learners. You will learn how to design lessons that prioritize linguistic support without sacrificing grade-level content. You will leave with a clear understanding of the Road to Reading framework and a set of practical tools to help your English Learners thrive as they build both language proficiency and deep reading skills.