The 8 SIOP® Components and 30 Features: A Complete Guide for K-12 Teachers

The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP®) is a research-based framework that gives K-12 teachers a clear system for making academic content accessible — and comprehensible — for English Learners and every learner in the room. Developed by Echevarria, Vogt, and Short, SIOP organizes effective teaching into 8 components and 30 features that span planning, delivering, and reflecting on lessons.

With 8 components and 30 features, the SIOP® Framework covers all aspects of designing, delivering, and reflecting on a lesson.  TESOL Trainers can provide K-12 professional development on SIOP that gives a broad overview of the framework and its components.  TESOL Trainers also offers in-depth teacher training on all 30 SIOP features.

The SIOP framework comprises eight categories of 30 features (sometimes called objectives) that instructors should strive to meet when planning, teaching, and reflecting on learning.  Teachers use this framework to ensure they do all they can to support every learner in their classroom.  

For example, the first component, Lesson Preparation, is an excellent guide for planning to ensure students have the content and language support they need.  The component on Lesson Delivery challenges teachers to keep students engaged 90-100% of the time.  This is something that teachers can prepare for, observe, and reflect on as they develop an understanding of SIOP and an ability to use it to improve teaching and learning in their classroom contexts.

Sheltered Instruction supports all teachers and all learners.  The SIOP framework helps raise teachers' awareness as to what they are doing to help their students and what else they can do to set them up for success.  

Frameworks like SIOP® are most powerful when embedded in effective K–12 staff development that supports consistent practice across classrooms.

Below is a complete list of the 8 SIOP Components and 30 SIOP Features.  For a more in-depth look at each of the components, follow the links below:

1. Lesson Preparation — Build a foundation with clear content and language objectives, supplementary materials, and meaningful activities that integrate language with content.
2. Building Background — Connect new learning to students' prior experiences, link past concepts to new ones, and emphasize key vocabulary — because new learning sticks best when it has something to anchor to.
3. Comprehensible Input — Use appropriate speech, clear task explanations, and a variety of techniques (visuals, modeling, gestures) to make content comprehensible at every proficiency level — because if students can't understand the input, they can't engage with the content.
4. Strategies — Give students opportunities to use learning strategies and scaffold consistently across the lesson — the difference between students who rent learning and students who own it.
5. Interaction — Provide a volume and variety of opportunities for student interaction, use group configurations that support both language and content objectives, and create wait time so every student has space to participate.
6. Practice & Application — Use hands-on materials and activities that integrate all four language domains (speaking, listening, reading, writing) so students apply what they're learning and get the chance to show what they know.
7. Lesson Delivery — Engage students 90–100% of the time and pace lessons appropriately to student ability — the difference between going through or growing through a lesson.
8. Review & Evaluation — Provide a comprehensive review of key vocabulary and consistent feedback on student output, so learners walk away with greater confidence and competence.

These 8 components hint at the focus of the features that make up each category.   As you can see from the list below, Lesson Preparation has 6 features; all of the other SIOP components have 3 or 4 features.  Perhaps that shows how important lesson preparation is to lesson execution.  If you examine all of the features, you may notice a number of things:

• Language plays just as an important role as content does.
• Everything should lead towards the learning objectives.
• Integrating the four domains of language is mentioned twice.
• It's not just the what that is important; it's also the how.
• It's critical to give students a volume & variety of meaningful activities.

John Kongsvik and his team of trainers can provide your teachers with a range of supportive tools to help them understand the SIOP® framework and how to use it to improve teaching and learning.  In addition to our interactive training sessions, we offer small-group support sessions and peer-coaching components that assist teachers as they consciously strive to change their teaching practices. 

We work with schools and districts to design a professional development program that will transform the way teachers teach and learners learn.  Whether you want one workshop or ten training sessions, we can help create something that meets your needs and those of your educators. Let us know what you're looking for; we can provide it.

TESOL Trainers' SIOP training helps teachers understand how we are all language teachers and gives them strategies they can use to set all of their students up with the language they need to be college and career ready.

TESOL Trainers' SIOP professional development for K-12 educators will help teachers engage their students meaningfully 90-100% of the time with the language, the content, and one another.  Teachers leave with scores of SIOP strategies they can implement the next day in their classrooms.

Did you know that TESOL Trainers offers short and long-term professional development on SIOP?  We offer multi-year professional development support and peer coaching to ensure educators successfully implement 90-100% of SIOP strategies in their classrooms.  Changing one's teaching practices requires more than attending one workshop.  Many teachers need additional support to assist them in the transformation.  TESOL Trainers empowers educators with an understanding of the cycle of change and how to manage it successfully.

If you want to see what TESOL Trainers' approach to K-12 professional development looks like, take our virtual PD on SIOP now!