According to Echevarria, Vogt, & Short (2008, p. 6), “each year the United States becomes more ethnically and linguistically diverse, with more than 90 percent of recent immigrants coming from non-English speaking countries.” With this high percent of non-English speaking immigrants with various background, educational attainment, and cultural experiences entering U.S. teachers will face the challenge of educating many of these children. Unfortunately, many teachers are not meeting the challenge because both state and federal government require all students satisfy high standards and meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. It is obvious that a one-size-fits-all canopy cannot be placed over these children. With a focus on meeting requirements of NCLB, many of the non-English speaking students "lagged significantly behind that of their language-majority peers" (Echevarria et al., 2008, p. 6). Therefore, these children will only succeed in school and be productive in the U.S. society is if they are exposed to educational opportunities that focus on their language acquisition. Against this background, Sheltered Instruction is introduced.

Sheltered instruction is “an approach that can extend the time students have for getting language support services while giving them a jump-start on their content subjects” (Echevarria et al., 2008, p. 13). This approach targets second language students and all other students. According to Short & Echevarria, 2004 (as cited in Echevarria, 2004), it involves cooperative learning, connections to student experiences, targeted vocabulary development, slower speech, visuals and demonstrations, adapted text and supplementary material. However, numerous variations existed in the application of Sheltered Instruction, thus over time with numerous research, changes were implemented to the Sheltered