Open Educational Resources

Open Up Resources Designs OER Curricula for High School Math, Middle School ELA

• By Sri Ravipati
• 08/08/17

Open Up Resources on Tuesday revealed plans to expand its core open educational resources (OER) curricula offerings. The education nonprofit is piloting two new, openly-licensed curricula for mathematics and English language arts (ELA) subjects.

First, Open Up Resources is working on a math curriculum for high school algebra 1, geometry and algebra 2 with Illustrative Mathematics, a nonprofit that shares carefully vetted math resources and offers guidance to school districts and others working to improve math education. Illustrative Mathematics was founded in 2011 by Bill McCallum, a noted mathematician, standards author and professor.

The high school math OER curriculum will be offered in digital and print, with unit and lesson plans available to teachers. Similar to the middle school version, it leverages mathematics language routines designed to support students with disabilities and English language learners. The high school math program will be piloted during the 2018-2019 school year and openly available for the 2019-2020 school year.  

In addition, Open Up Resources is working with the Louisiana Department of Education to design a middle school ELA curriculum that is an enhanced version of the digital Louisiana Guidebooks. “The Louisiana team will revise the curriculum by deepening its standards alignment, adding extensive differentiation supports for English language learners and below-benchmark readers, and expanding the writing construction opponent,” according to information from the nonprofit.

The revised middle school ELA curriculum will be piloted during the 2017-2018 school year and openly released for 2018-2019 adoption.

Open Up Resources has received more than $14 million from philanthropic organizations to partner with subject matter experts to develop its OER curricula. Both of the new courses are funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation, the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation and the Williams and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

“We want every child to have access to superb materials and every teacher to have access to the best professional learning opportunities,” Open Up Resources CEO Larry Singer said in a prepared statement. “By making our curricula freely available, Open Up resources allows districts to invest in their teachers without sacrificing instructional materials quality.”

Further information on piloting or implementing the curricula is available on the Open Up Resources site.