Fall 2026 CoTESOL Convention

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)

Research shows that students who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to not graduate on time, when compared to proficient readers. At the Boulder Public Library District, we aim to inspire a lifelong love of literacy in children through our Reading Buddies program.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11 Quality Standard III: Element B

Audience: Elementary Education (EE)

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)

A quasi-experimental study was conducted evaluating the effectiveness of shadowing (a pronunciation technique) on intermediate-level adult English language learners. Findings and implications of the research will be shared regarding changes in learners’ comprehensibility, fluency, and accentedness after 10 weeks of instruction.

Audience: Intensive English Program/Higher Education (IEP/HE); Adult Education (AE)

Using two Denver case studies, participants will be able to understand wholistic program elements crucial to success for secondary sife students.  Program design, high school trajectories, community engagement and leadership training will be discussed.  Participants will leave with concrete ideas for how to fine tune their current program to meet the urgent needs of our secondary students new to country.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.10 Quality Standard II; 5.10(2) ELEMENT B

Audience: Secondary Education (SE); Intensive English Program/Higher Education (IEP/HE); Socio-Political