Fall 2026 CoTESOL Convention

This session will focus on research, strategies, and resources available to empower your ML and Newcomer students.  One resource available is SIOP®, approved by CDE and listed an approved provider on the advisory list.  Research will also be shared from noted reading researcher Freddie Hiebert on ways to increase reading achievement. Jim Cummins and Jana Echevarria, a SIOP® author, will discuss their research and strategies via video clips. Resources authored by this noted researchers will also be shared.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11 Quality Standard III. Element B

Audience: Elementary Education (EE); Intensive English Program/Higher Education (IEP/HE); Content Area (CA); Secondary Education (SE); Teacher Education/Action Research (TE/AR)

Comprehensible Input (CI) makes learning feel natural—and fun. This energizing session offers strategies that help educators reduce learner stress, increase participation, and spark long-term language retention through visuals, gestures, and meaningful context. Comprehensible Input (CI) makes learning feel natural—and fun. This energizing session offers strategies that help educators reduce learner stress, increase participation, and spark long-term language retention through visuals, gestures, and meaningful context.

Audience: Adult Education (AE)

Discover how structured conversations around visuals can boost students’ academic language. Thoughtfully designed visual aids help create spaces where learners actively engage and express understanding leading to deeper learning. In this interactive session, you’ll take part in a lesson simulation that models how to pair visuals with discussion questions and sentence stems to spark curiosity and support all learners.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11(2) ELEMENT A

Audience: Elementary Education (EE); Secondary Education (SE); Educational Technology (TECH)

Multilingual students face the dual challenges of adjusting to a new country and navigating an unfamiliar school system, often carrying unacknowledged trauma from their past or their journey to the U.S. For students with interrupted education and trauma-affected backgrounds, these experiences create both hurdles and opportunities. This session equips educators with actionable, low-prep strategies to support resilience and improve language output among marginalized students. Attendees will gain a practical methodology focused on the "how" to make a tangible difference in their classrooms.

Objectives
● Participants will evaluate techniques that support the learners who are missing years of formal education and also have experienced trauma.
● Participants will leave the session with actionable strategies that can be implemented immediately.
● Participants will create a short list of techniques that they feel prepared to implement.

Audience: Elementary Education

Join us to explore our Confidence and Connections relationship-based (and volunteer taught!) curriculum and learn about the many resources available through the Intercambio Network, too! From live webinars and networking calls to program tools and our extensive online teacher training, the Network offers everything you need to make your English-language learning program even more successful. Whether you’re already an Intercambio partner or one of our Network Members OR you'd like to explore our innovative and effective curriculum, this session is for you!

Audience: Adult Education (AE)

In this session, National Geographic Learning (NGL) will present ideas to engage middle and high school newcomers with the basic academic language and literacy skills they need. Attendees will gain practical strategies from NGL programs they can use right away to support students’ needs—from learning the alphabet to mastering content-area vocabulary.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11(2) ELEMENT B

Audience: Secondary Education (SE)

This session will present specific steps and approaches to integrating English Learners into the general education classroom successfully. Ways to support teachers in this process will be explored, along with providing suggestions on how to effectively work with parents of ESOL students.  The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model will be presented to provide a map by which educators can use to plan, teach, reflect, observe and evaluate these approaches.  Question and Answer periods will be embedded and handouts will be distributed.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11 Quality Standard III Standard A

Audience: Elementary Education (EE); Secondary Education (SE)​​​​

Help learners find their voice—literally. This workshop delivers fun, practical pronunciation tools that improve clarity, reduce stress, and boost learner confidence. Attendees will walk away with games, visuals, and methods to make sound instruction part of any lesson. Help learners find their voice—literally. This workshop delivers fun, practical pronunciation tools that improve clarity, reduce stress, and boost learner confidence. Attendees will walk away with games, visuals, and methods to make sound instruction part of any lesson.

Audience: Adult Education (AE)

Would you like to teach more effectively while preparing less? The presenter guides participants through the new editions of the classic Zero Prep series and demonstrates activities that easily adapt for language content and level, incorporate all four skills, include variations for classroom and online delivery, and require no preparation!

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11. Quality standard III. Element A

Audience: Elementary Education (EE); Secondary Education (SE); Content Area (CA); Adult Education (AE); Intensive English Program/Higher Education (IEP/HE)