Latino English learners (ELs) come to elementary classrooms with many English-Spanish cognates in their listening, speaking, reading, and writing vocabularies. Cognates are words that are orthographically, semantically, and syntactically similar in two languages because of a shared etymology. Some cognates are identical in both English and Spanish, as in the case of "hospital/hospital". Other cognates, such as "cat/gato", are not as obvious. Teachers can use the rich linguistic backgrounds Latino ELs bring to their classes to scaffold the learning of using-the-context strategies. Teachers can show their Latino ELs to use English-Spanish cognates to guess at the meanings of unknown words, thereby increasing both comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. The authors offer teaching tips about cognates and describe resources that can help teachers incorporate cognates into their instruction. (Contains 2 figures.)