NM PED 2026 Literacy and Humanities Summer Conference

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are intended to strengthen instruction and improve student outcomes, yet many schools experience them as routine meetings rather than meaningful professional learning. In this session, you will explore how to transform PLCs into authentic spaces for reflection, collaboration, and instructional growth through the use of Critical Friends Group protocols.

You will learn how structured dialogue, inquiry-based protocols, and a culture of trust can move your meetings beyond updates and logistics toward deep professional learning focused on teaching and student success. The session highlights practical strategies for facilitating productive conversations, analyzing instructional practice, and creating PLC structures that are truly worth your time. Through examples and interactive discussion, you will leave with the tools to implement Critical Friends approaches in your own school, fostering a collaborative environment where educators challenge, support, and learn from one another to drive lasting instructional improvement.

It is time to lift your students’ speaking and listening skills to new heights. In this high-energy, hands-on session, you will focus on strengthening oral language development through dynamic, student-centered discourse strategies that get every learner talking, thinking, and engaging. You will not just hear about these strategies; you will experience them in action and feel their impact firsthand.

From structured partner talk to collaborative group discussions and whole-class dialogue, you will walk away with practical, ready-to-use tools that can be implemented immediately. With examples tailored for both elementary and secondary classrooms, you will leave equipped and inspired to help your students truly soar. You will gain the confidence to facilitate rich academic conversations that build background knowledge, sharpen critical thinking, and ensure every student has a voice in the learning process.

This session offers a professional development opportunity that puts more than a “creative twist” on restorative circles. Participants will learn the basics of restorative practices integrated with arts and mindfulness to create heartfelt, student-centered connections within the classroom community.

Because relationships are at the center of all restorative practices, this experiential workshop models safe, inclusive, and creative strategies for both staff and students. This highly interactive session is full of opportunities to learn, practice, and reflect, providing educators with actionable tools to foster a more connected and supportive learning environment.

Phonics Power Hour is an engaging and interactive session designed to strengthen students’ foundational reading skills through explicit, systematic phonics instruction. This presentation highlights how targeted practice with letter–sound relationships, blending, segmenting, and word building helps young learners become confident, fluent readers.

Participants will dive into the mechanics of word recognition, exploring how high-frequency practice and multisensory routines move students from sounding out individual letters to automatic word recognition. The session provides educators with a clear framework for delivering fast-paced, high-impact phonics lessons that maximize student engagement and retention. Attendees will leave with a suite of practical tools and instructional routines that can be implemented immediately to ensure every student masters the code necessary for reading success.

Professional Learning Communities can be powerful drivers of instructional improvement, but only when they are supported by clear leadership, purposeful structures, and a culture of trust. As a school leader, you play a critical role in shaping PLCs that are focused, collaborative, and worth your educators’ time. In this session, you will explore the leadership moves that help build and sustain strong PLCs, including how to incorporate structured dialogue through the use of protocols.

You will examine an example of what a year-long PLC cycle built around consistent Critical Friends Groups looks like, covering everything from establishing norms and trust to examining instructional dilemmas and analyzing student work. By engaging in reflective inquiry throughout the school year, you can move your teams beyond routine meetings and toward meaningful professional learning. You will leave with practical strategies and a sample PLC structure that supports meaningful collaboration, strengthens teacher practice, and creates sustainable systems for continuous instructional growth across your campus.

Strengthen student comprehension and content achievement through the power of intentional academic vocabulary instruction. In this session, you will explore Marzano’s Six-Step Process for teaching academic terms and examine how systematic vocabulary routines can be implemented across math, science, and social studies.

You will engage with practical strategies for selecting high-leverage Tier 3 vocabulary, supporting student discussion, and reinforcing learning through structured review activities and games. The session places special emphasis on using student vocabulary notebooks as a tool for building conceptual understanding, promoting equity for multilingual learners, and monitoring growth. Throughout the hour, you will collaborate to apply a menu of research-aligned practices and develop SMART coaching or classroom implementation goals. You will leave with a clear plan to support consistent, cross-disciplinary vocabulary instruction that ensures all students can access complex content.

In many literacy classrooms, implementing high-quality instructional materials with fidelity has come to mean using curriculum questions exactly as written. While well-intentioned, this practice often leads to one-size-fits-all instruction and superficial comprehension.

Drawing on research from SRI International, this session argues for a shift from implementation with fidelity to implementation with integrity, preserving the intent of high-quality materials while responding to how students actually build understanding from complex texts across grade levels.

Participants will examine examples of “before and after” questions, analyze how different questions shape comprehension, and collaboratively revise questions from existing instructional materials. The session will also introduce an AI-supported tool to help educators continue refining instructional questions beyond the session.

Participants will leave with:
1. Practical strategies for revising questions to deepen comprehension
2. Sample revised questions for implementation
3. Access to an AI-assisted question-revision tool