This qualitative research study examined how two novice secondary teachers drew on preservice preparation to teach language demands of their content area to bilingual learners in urban high schools in a city in the northeastern United States. Data sources included videotaped class observations, lesson plans and teaching materials, and semistructured interviews to elicit participants' perspectives on how they taught language. Findings suggest that participants integrated significant components of language teaching into content instruction, such as explicit vocabulary instruction and group activities organized around structured interactions with classmates and texts, but did not consistently teach language. The implication is that novice teachers need more guidance to identify and teach linguistic features of content tasks and texts. Accordingly, this article proposes a genre‐based framework to teach language illustrated with classroom scenarios that demonstrate how linguistic analysis and cognitive scaffolds can be incorporated into brief targeted activities that support both language and conceptual development. Although recommendations are based on history genres, implications of this analysis may be relevant to a broad group of researchers, teacher educators, and teachers focused on promoting disciplinary literacy in secondary content classes for bilingual learners.