Now more than ever, the need for OER English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum is high and a lot of schools are looking for low-cost alternatives. In June, CommonLit launched a free, openly licensed ELA curriculum with the hope of transforming the lives of teachers forever! This project was three years in the making and CommonLit 360 became a free, digital curriculum that is the first of its kind. The curriculum is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was created for students in grades 6-10 which features 6 units per grade. It is made up of rich and engaging texts that are a mix of Creative Commons, public domain, and third-party licensed texts.
As teachers begin to explore CommonLit 360 and figure out ways to implement it into their classrooms this upcoming school year, CommonLit is standing by ready to support teachers and help them make the most of their time in the classroom. This presentation will cover how we developed CommonLit 360, the high demand for open ed-tech tools in the pandemic, the need for using mixed content for this project, and how we continue to inform educators and administrators about the value of OER in the K-12 community.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Understand persistent opportunity gaps in K-12 education, and how they've been exacerbated by pandemic school closures
- Learn about the history and mission of our educational nonprofit organization
- Learn why access to OER ELA curriculum is especially important today
- Understand the strategic ways that CommonLit contributes to the OER landscape
- Understand how we continue to inform our community about the value of OER
