Fall 2026 CoTESOL Convention

This session explores how co-teachers can divide and conquer instruction by clearly defining roles and responsibilities. Participants will learn strategies to co-facilitate learning, provide real-time scaffolds, and assess student understanding. Emphasis is placed on maximizing each teacher’s expertise by defining complementary roles to support all learners effectively.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11(s) ELEMENT B

Audience: Elementary Education (EE); Secondary Education (SE); Content Area (CA)

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)

Learn about our co-teaching model which is laser-focused on three big goals:

1. Making sure multilingual learners have real access to grade-level content.
2. Supporting students in acquiring English through content learning—not separate from it.
3. Creating job-embedded professional learning that helps both content teachers and ML specialists grow as co-teachers.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.10 Quality Standard III Element A

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

Session One
This classroom-tested, slide-based routine builds students' automaticity for recalling tier 2 and tier 3 academic vocabulary through daily 10-minute practice. By developing automaticity in academic word recall, students transfer knowledge into long-term memory more effectively. The flexible format incorporates TPR, CLT, technology integration, formative assessment, collaborative student talk, and writing activities across all settings. Participants will strategize vocabulary selections and practice implementation using provided templates.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11 Quality Standard III Standard A

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

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

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)​​​​

Design your multilingual educational environment with belonging in mind - from the very beginning. Educators will explore a current project, unit, lesson, or initiative through Cherry Creek School District’s Transformational Equity Framework as a process for inquiry, ensuring every student and staff member is seen, valued, heard, and appreciated. This asset focused, inquiry-based approach is applicable to every role in education, and includes self-reflection, garnering multiple perspectives, and leaning into the beautiful identities present in our classrooms, schools, and districts.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.09 Quality Standard I; 5.09(1) ELEMENT A

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

Discover how to keep instruction rigorous through purposeful questioning! In this session, you’ll learn how to craft and revise questions to target essential information while maintaining the complexity of vocabulary and content. Explore classroom examples that show questioning in action, and design your own “questioning ladder” to support deeper thinking and meaningful student engagement.

Audience: Elementary Education (EE) and general audience

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)

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.09(2) ELEMENT B; 5.12(2) ELEMENT B

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