The author collaborated with teachers and a English Language Learners (ELL) specialist at an elementary school that had a high percentage of ELLs, primarily from Spanish-speaking heritage, where teachers were in the early stages of exploring uses of English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards for English Language Development (ELD) (Oregon Department of Education, 2006). The teachers relied mostly on pull-out ELD instruction conducted by an ELL specialist in addition to Spanish/English dual language instruction by the classroom teachers. At the time, the author wondered whether the teachers had considered a different model to integrate ELD to provide a connected and coherent program for the students. She asked whether they were inclined to explore English forms and functions within the functional contexts of the subject areas, such as science or social studies, which is important to the development of academic language with ELLs (Schleppegrell, Achugar, & Oteiza, 2004). In social studies, which is the focus of this article, topics such as immigration, culture, and social activism seemed like a natural fit, not only for particular English functions (e.g., generalizing) and forms (e.g., modifying adjectives), but also for discussing the social realities of being an ethnic minority and non-dominant language group. In the part of the study reported here, questions considered included: (1) How did a teacher-researcher team plan lessons that moved beyond ELD and content to include social justice?; and (2) How did a teacher navigate the "messiness" of socially-relevant instruction with multiple objectives?