The Burlington School District has experienced a sharp increase in the number English language learners (ELLs) in its schools over the past several years, as have many schools across the country. As is typical in U.S. schools, Burlington offered newly arriving students pullout instruction to meet their linguistic and academic needs. Yet even with…

This article discusses the combination of two professional development strategies--lesson study and the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)--which gave teachers in Freeport Public Schools, a district on Long Island, New York, new tools for improving instruction for ELLs in mainstream classrooms. The unique combination of the two…