Digital teaching has become an alternative way to replace the conventional learning process in COVID pandemic time. Educators explore different language achievement strategies to assist students on the way to academic success. One of the approaches the teachers can benefit from significantly is instructional modal -- the Sheltered Instructional Observational Protocol (SIOP). This study aims to determine the effectiveness of SIOP instructional strategies in this digital teaching of EFL students. The study was conducted at the undergraduate level for English language learners in the Faculty of Philology, V.O. Sukhomlynskyi National University of Mykolaiv, Ukraine. The researchers conducted the study in the first semester of 2020. The contribution of this study is to evaluate experience of teachers in instructional strategies and to assess their effectiveness in digital teaching. The study analyzes the responses of twenty-five teachers and 63 students to the SIOP-based survey. A descriptive statistical method was used to test the validation. The results of the research show that EFL learners are not satisfied with activities to apply language and content knowledge. The results justified that teachers need to establish active online communication with their students. The study presents some recommendations for EFL teachers to improve their professional skills by adopting the specific components of SIOP and mastering their instructional strategies in digital learning. The implementation of the SIOP Model in digital teaching could bring appropriate and meaningful resources for high school teachers as a tool for them to grow professionally in COVID pandemic time.