The purpose of this study was to investigate the communicative strategies used by two effective first grade teachers whose students came from lower SES communities marked by a high incidence of school failure. One school was in Akko, Israel and one was in New Jersey in the US. In both settings, the teachers taught lessons in a language that was not the home language of the students. In Akko, the teacher taught using formal Arabic while the children were familiar only with informal Arabic. In New Jersey, the teacher taught using English while the students were largely from Spanish-speaking homes. Findings suggested two major categories of communicative strategies employed by both teachers: Concretization of abstract concepts and Situational Language Use.