This paper is a review of literature presenting instructional strategies—based on normative as well as empirical arguments—which have proven to be effective in envisioning what all teachers need to know and be able to do to teach English language arts (ELA) to English language learners (ELLs). The studies selected for review address what is particular to teaching ELA to ELLs. The paper is divided into two main sections: (a) teachers' linguistic practices and (b) teachers' pedagogical practices. In the first section, we report on the studies that analyze teachers' understanding of linguistics and present implications for their instruction of ELLs. Three areas of effective practice are emphasized based on the particular aspects of teaching ELA to ELLs. The first area is that teachers should recognize that literacy skills in ELLs' native languages might influence the ways in which ELLs process linguistic information in English. The second area highlights the argument that teachers should find ways to facilitate ELLs' mastery of academic vocabulary. The third area covers the significance of enhancing ELLs' metacognitive reading skills. In the second section, on teacher pedagogical practices, we discuss two broad pedagogical skills that emerge from both the normative and empirical studies reviewed and are closely related: (a) the teachers' ability to help ELLs construct meaning from the texts or speech represented in the ELA classroom and (b) the teachers' ability to engage ELLs in actively learning to read and write. The paper ends with a summary and a brief reflective statement on the limitations of the review of the literature.

This paper offers a chain of evidence collected to identify and verify the domain of teacher knowledge and skills required to teach ELLs content effectively in mathematics, science, reading/English language arts, and social studies. We initially assessed this domain through a review of literature and state standards for nonspecialized teacher certification. We developed a set of 67 evidence statements in 2 categories: pedagogical knowledge and linguistic knowledge.We conducted a national survey of practitioners and teacher educators to validate these statements, receiving 269 responses. A panel of 14 teacher educators and teachers further validated the statements by reaching consensus that the statements support the claims of the assessment under development. We found that the domain of knowledge necessary to teach ELLs in the content areas is insufficiently defined in the standards and literature. However, we identified that across the content areas, teachers should have knowledge and understanding of the register of the particular discipline. Beyond merely understanding the linguistic demands of a given discipline, teachers should also be able to raise ELLs' metalinguistic awareness of effective oral and written communication in the language of the content area.Also, teachers' use of multimodal instructional materials was deemed commonly essential in assessing teacher knowledge. Finally, we acknowledge that the chain of evidence collected in this line of research is a small step taken forward to understanding what should be assessed and how. With that, we offer future directions for research.