Open Educational Resources

Open Up Resources, EL Education to Launch Free K–5 ELA Curriculum

• By Sri Ravipati
• 03/24/17

Open Up Resources, an education nonprofit, has partnered with EL Education, a K–12 curriculum author, to design its new K–5 English language arts (ELA) core program.

The full-course curriculum, authored by experts in ELA, comes with student and teacher materials; a reading list; a curriculum map; family resources and more. All materials will be openly licensed and free to download later this summer. The curriculum offers supports for English language learners and students with disabilities. Additionally, course materials have been “redesigned to be more visually engaging and user-friendly,” according to a recent news release. The program offers teacher supports as well, and districts can select from unit-level professional development opportunities for teachers or lead workshops using the curriculum.

The curriculum marks the second comprehensive curriculum from Open Up Resources, which piloted its middle school math curriculum last year (coming out soon for the 2017-18 school year), and the first time that EL Education is releasing a curriculum in both print and digital formats.

EL Education previously teamed up with EngageNY, an online library of Common Core standards-aligned curricula hosted by the New York State Education Department. Materials on EngageNY have been downloaded more than 45 million times, Education Week reported. Open Up Resources’ ELA core curriculum builds on the curriculum EL Education created for EngageNY — which has had more than 8 million downloads in 44 states.  

“EL Education is the exact kind of partner we look for,” said Open Up Resources CEO Larry Singer, in the release. “They have a proven track record of creating engaging curriculum that produces achievement gains — and their choice to release these excellent materials as OER demonstrates that our organizations have a shared equity mission. We believe that this type of collaboration will help unbind K–12 from the expensive and often poorly standards-aligned textbooks of traditional publishers.”

“Our goal in creating our open source literacy curriculum five years ago was to enable teachers beyond our school network to benefit from the rich and rigorous teaching and learning in the EL Education model,” said Scott Hartl, president and CEO of EL Education, in the release. “Fast-forward to today and 8 million downloads later, educators have confirmed we’re meeting a critical need in classrooms. Our collaboration with Open Up Resources expands the reach of our curriculum and our ability to help even more teachers and students across the country.”

To learn more, or to request samples of the curriculum ahead of its summer release, visit the Open Up Resources site.