What Is EL Education Curriculum?

EL Education Curriculum is a comprehensive, standards-aligned K-12 language arts curriculum built on expeditionary learning principles. Originally developed by EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning) and now offered free through Open Up Resources, it emphasizes project-based learning, authentic texts, and character development through 'Crew' meetings rather than isolated skill worksheets.

This is not a textbook series. It is a knowledge-based curriculum that trades basal reader anthologies for complex texts students actually want to read.

The story starts in 1991. A team at Harvard Graduate School of Education partnered with Goldman Sachs to launch Expeditionary Learning, taking cues from Kurt Hahn’s Outward Bound. For decades, districts bought these materials through traditional publishers. That changed in 2017. EL Education teamed with Open Up Resources to release the entire curriculum as Open Educational Resources. You can now download every module for free.

Forget the basal reader hopping from a three-page fiction piece to a two-page nonfiction article. EL Education Curriculum spends three to four weeks on a single complex text. Your sixth graders read all of The Lightning Thief, not an excerpt. Fifth graders work through The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

The schedule is rigid in a good way. The ninety-minute literacy block splits into forty-five minutes of module lessons and forty-five minutes of additional literacy work. K-2 students get Foundational Skills. Grades 3-12 move into independent reading.

Some teachers think this expeditionary learning curriculum only works in high-performing suburban districts. That is false. The materials were built with Universal Design for Learning principles embedded in every lesson. Supports for multilingual learners appear in the margins. Students with IEPs access the same complex texts through built-in scaffolds. I have seen it work in Title I schools with diverse learners.

Expeditionary Learning Origins and Philosophy

To understand the EL curriculum, you need to know about Kurt Hahn. He founded Outward Bound in 1941, believing that challenge and compassion build character. Fifty years later, a Harvard Graduate School of Education design team led by Ron Berger adapted those wilderness principles for public school classrooms. They kept the motto: 'We are crew, not passengers.' That phrase is not decoration. It means every student has a job, and no one sits back while others work.

Expeditionary learning is not the same as the poster projects you remember from middle school. A true expedition lasts six to twelve weeks and weaves together social studies, science, and the arts. Students tackle real-world problems for authentic audiences.

Take the fourth-grade American Revolution expedition. Kids do not just fill out worksheets about the Boston Tea Party. They research primary sources, debate colonial perspectives, write persuasive broadsides, and culminate with a Colonial Fair for families and local historians. The work matters because someone real is watching.

This Expeditionary Learning philosophy shows up in the literacy blocks too. You are not just teaching reading strategies in isolation. You are guiding students through a sustained investigation of compelling content. The reading, writing, and discussion serve the expedition. That shift changes how kids show up to class. They become investigators, not worksheet completers.

The Open Up Resources Partnership

In 2017, EL Education made a move that shocked the publishing industry. They partnered with Open Up Resources to give the curriculum away. EL Education continues to write and revise the lessons, hiring actual classroom teachers to field-test revisions. Open Up Resources handles the digital platform and print distribution. It is a nonprofit marriage that puts content ahead of profit.

The licensing matters. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 means you can download, adapt, and share the materials. You can add your own slides or translate units for your multilingual learners. But you cannot sell what you make. The NC clause keeps commercial publishers from repackaging your tax-funded resources into a $120 textbook.

Here is the cost breakdown that gets principals interested. Digital access costs zero dollars through OER Commons or the Open Up Resources site. Print workbooks run twenty-eight to thirty-five dollars per student. Compare that to traditional publishers charging eighty to one hundred twenty dollars annually for their basals. For a school of five hundred students, that difference buys a part-time reading specialist.

I have downloaded the PDFs at midnight before a unit started. No purchase orders. No waiting for the textbook warehouse. If a student loses a workbook, I print another chapter. The flexibility changes your relationship with the material. You stop treating the teacher manual as scripture and start treating it as a starting point.

Core Curriculum Components and Lesson Skills

Every lesson in the el curriculum rests on four non-negotiable skills. First, Reading Closely using text-dependent questions. Second, Evidence-Based Writing using the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning framework. Third, Collaborative Discourse using protocols like Fishbowl. Fourth, Language Development using morphology routines that teach Greek and Latin roots in context.

The daily rhythm is predictable. You start with a short reading. Students discuss using the protocol. Then comes the Target Task: five to ten minutes of independent writing at the end of every lesson. You score it on a two-point rubric. Two means meets standard. One means partially meets. Zero means we need to confer tomorrow.

These are not fluffy exit tickets. The Target Task forces students to grapple with the text independently after the group work. You will see who truly understands the character's motivation and who was just echoing their partner. I grade these during lunch. It takes ten minutes to spot-check a class set, and I know exactly who needs small group intervention during the next literacy block.

How Does the EL Education Curriculum Structure Work?

The EL Education Curriculum uses a modular scope and sequence organized around 4-6 week 'modules' that build knowledge systematically. Each grade level completes 4 modules annually, with each module containing 1-3 units centered on a compelling topic or science/social studies theme, integrating reading, writing, speaking, and listening standards daily.

Think of it as four major units per year. Each one runs deep instead of wide.

You get four modules yearly. Each lasts six to eight weeks and breaks into three distinct units: Building Background Knowledge, Close Reading, and Writing or Performance. Your third graders might spend October in Module 1, studying how people overcome learning challenges. By December, they slide into Module 2, using that same resilience framework to explore simple machines. The knowledge sticks because it connects.

The daily block follows a rigid clock. Opening takes ten minutes for review and academic discourse. Work Time devours thirty minutes, split into two or three segments where you model a skill and students apply it immediately. Closing and Assessment lasts five minutes, ending with a Target Task that checks if they got it. No fluff. Every minute has a job.

The K-12 scope and sequence organization follows four major strands: The Human Experience, Science and the Natural World, Understanding the Past, and Critical Literacy. These spiral upward. Kindergarteners study water as a resource. Second graders return to it with erosion concepts. Fifth graders examine the water cycle through a global lens. By eighth grade, they analyze water rights debates using primary sources. Same topic, growing complexity.

K-12 Scope and Sequence Organization

The vertical alignment looks stark across grade bands. In kindergarten through second grade, you spend sixty minutes daily on Foundational Skills using the EL Education Skills Block. This is heavy phonics, decoding, and fluency work. The remaining time dips into module content, but those little ones need to crack the code first.

Grades three through eight flip the ratio. Here, one hundred percent of your literacy block goes to Knowledge Building through the modules. You are not pulling a separate reading anthology. You teach science and social studies through complex texts that meet grade-level standards. The el education curriculum assumes that background knowledge drives comprehension, so you dive deep into topics. You do not skim six different themes.

High school runs on semesters. Students complete four modules yearly, but each stretches longer with more independent research and seminar discussion. The pacing allows for genuine synthesis, not coverage.

Six Knowledge Strands spiral vertically through all levels: Stories of Human Rights, The Power of Reading, Science and Society, Resilience in the Natural World, Understanding Other Perspectives, and The Individual and Society. You will hit each strand multiple times before graduation, adding layers each year. Water offers a clear example. Kindergarteners explore local water sources through picture books. Second graders investigate how water shapes landforms. Fifth graders analyze freshwater distribution globally. Eighth graders debate water privatization using court documents. This is not repetition. It is intentional spiraling that prepares students for high school seminar discussions.

Module Design and Learning Expeditions

Each module follows a three-act structure. Act One builds background through read-alouds, vocabulary immersion, and hands-on experiences. Act Two brings the anchor text under microscope for close reading and evidence gathering. Act Three demands a Writing or Performance Task where students synthesize everything into original work.

Take seventh grade. Module 1 centers on Jamestown. Students read primary sources from colonists and the Powhatan Confederacy. They analyze maps and census data from 1610. By Act Three, they write historical narratives from the Powhatan perspective, using textual evidence to voice a story rarely centered in standard textbooks. This is expeditionary learning in action—content becomes personal.

Grade 7 Module 1 illustrates the arc perfectly. Students begin by building vocabulary around colonization and perspective. They read excerpts from John Smith's journals alongside Powhatan oral histories. The anchor text might be a novel like Blood on the River or a collection of primary documents, depending on your edition. By the final week, they compose original historical fiction written from the Indigenous viewpoint, backed by evidence from the module's documents. This is not a book report. It is historical inquiry with literary craft.

The text set remains consistent across modules. You get one anchor text, typically a grade-level novel or meaty primary source collection. Three to five supporting informational texts provide context. Two or three primary source documents offer contradictory viewpoints. One or two science or social studies articles round out the real-world connections. You are not supplementing with random worksheets. Every text serves the central question.

During Act Two, you model annotation strategies directly on the anchor text. Students practice the same lesson skills in pairs before tackling independent research. The shift from guided to independent happens within the same lesson, not across weeks. This knowledge-based curriculum design means your students read like historians and scientists. They do not hunt for main ideas in isolation. They build expertise, then communicate it. The project-based learning happens naturally because students care about the content—they have spent weeks living inside it.

Assessment and Crew Integration

The assessment system runs on three tiers. Daily Target Tasks act as formative checks—exit tickets, brief constructed responses, or discussion protocols that reveal who needs reteaching tomorrow. Mid-Unit Assessments diagnose standards mastery halfway through, usually with selected response items and short writing. End-of-Unit Assessments demand summative on-demand writing plus selected response questions that mirror state tests.

These assessments are standards-aligned but contextual. A fifth grader writes about the rainforest ecosystem using evidence from the module texts, not a generic prompt. You see what they learned about science and writing simultaneously. The complex texts they read become the source material for their own arguments.

Then there is Crew. These crew meetings run parallel to academics, typically thirty minutes daily or three times weekly. Crew focuses on Habits of Character: Respect, Responsibility, Integrity, Courage, and Compassion. You use community-building protocols like Greetings and Appreciations to start meetings, followed by Active Listening Circles where students practice paraphrasing before responding. Crew integration and community building happens here, not during your literacy block.

Keep the boundary clear. Crew meetings build the social-emotional foundation so your academic modules can demand rigorous thinking. Students take risks in their writing because they practiced courage in morning circle. They collaborate on research because they learned active listening in Crew. The el learning curriculum treats both as essential, but never confuses them.

You track character growth in Crew using the same intentionality you bring to academic data. Students set goals around the habits, reflect weekly, and celebrate growth during closing circles. This mirrors the assessment cycle in the academic modules, creating parallel structures for learning.

Why Choose EL Education Curriculum Over Traditional Programs?

EL Education Curriculum outperforms traditional programs through its integrated knowledge-building approach and focus on authentic work. Unlike fragmented basal readers, it uses complex, grade-level texts for all learners while embedding social-emotional learning through Crew structures. Research indicates significant gains in reading comprehension when implemented with fidelity compared to district-developed materials.

You deserve a curriculum that treats kids as thinkers, not test-takers. This program demands more from you upfront but returns it in student engagement.

Most basal programs like HMH Into Reading rely on leveled texts that limit struggling readers to below-grade-level content. They assess with multiple choice questions that check recall, not thinking. You pay around $85 per student yearly for those workbooks. You cannot change the sequence or swap texts.

EL Education Curriculum uses complex texts for everyone, assesses through writing and speaking, and costs nothing through el open up resources. You gain full freedom to adapt the expeditionary learning modules to your local context. CKLA sits in the middle with domain-based sequences at roughly $60 per student, mixing workbooks with some complex texts, but offering limited customization compared to the OER model.

John Hattie's Visible Learning research identifies collective teacher efficacy as the top influence on student achievement, with an effect size of 1.57. EL builds this through protocol-based discussions that require you to collaborate with colleagues during lesson internalization. You analyze student work together using structured protocols. This practice creates the high-impact conditions where teachers believe they can reach every child.

This curriculum fails in schools demanding 100% scripted direct instruction without student discourse. You need protected time for the 90-minute literacy block; splitting it for pull-out interventions breaks the flow. You also need storage space for module-specific trade book sets, often 30 or more books per classroom. Without these conditions, do not adopt it.

Academic Achievement and Equity Research

Research indicates that schools implementing EL Education Curriculum with fidelity for three or more years show measurable gains in reading comprehension compared to district averages. The Johns Hopkins University implementation study from 2018 tracked these patterns across diverse settings. You see the strongest results when teachers complete the full professional development sequence and protect the instructional minutes. This academic achievement and equity research supports what veteran teachers notice: kids actually understand what they read instead of just decoding words. The gap between your highest and lowest performers narrows because everyone builds background knowledge together.

The all learners design philosophy sets this apart from remedial approaches. You avoid giving struggling readers below-grade-level texts. EL provides multiple entry points into grade-level complex texts. You might chunk the reading into smaller sections for some students. You might use graphic organizers to track arguments. You might use read-alouds to level the playing field while keeping the cognitive demand high. Every student grapples with the same rich content; the support changes, not the text. You no longer need three different versions of the same article cluttering your desk.

This approach shifts your role from manager of ability groups to facilitator of thinking. You stop sorting kids into bins labeled by reading levels. You start planning how to make grade-level text accessible through scaffolds that you gradually remove. The results show up in standardized test data, but more importantly, in classroom discussions where formerly silent students contribute evidence from the text. That is the equity built into this knowledge-based curriculum. When your special education students and English learners discuss the same primary sources as your gifted students, you know the design is working.

These gains hold steady across state lines because the curriculum is standards-aligned by design. You are not cramming test prep into a separate block. The reading, writing, and speaking standards live inside the expedition content.

Real-World Application Components

The expeditionary learning model means your students produce work that matters outside classroom walls. In Water Is Life, fifth graders test local water quality and present findings to the city council. In Becoming Visible, eighth graders record immigrant oral history podcasts for StoryCorps publication. In Power of the Printed Word, eleventh graders create research journals on First Amendment cases that local attorneys review. These are not hypothetical assignments. The city council actually expects your data. StoryCorps actually publishes the audio. Attorneys actually use the research.

Every module requires at least two interactions with outside experts via video conference, fieldwork, or guest speakers. You might Skype with a hydrologist during the water module. You might visit a print shop for the First Amendment study. These are not enrichment activities tacked on at the end. They provide the information students need to complete their work. You coordinate the logistics, but the curriculum provides the contact templates and question frames.

The final presentation goes to an authentic audience beyond you. Parents show up, but so do community members, professionals, and other students. Your kids defend their research using evidence from the complex texts they studied. They answer hard questions from adults who know the subject matter. This is project-based learning with actual stakes. The feedback comes from engineers, historians, and artists, not just your red pen.

When my eighth graders presented their StoryCorps podcasts to local historians last year, one student cried. She had interviewed her grandmother about immigrating from Vietnam. The historians asked follow-up questions she had not anticipated. She went back to the text to find more context. That is the difference between a diorama that gets thrown in the trash and work that lives in the world. You remember why you teach when you see kids become historians.

Teacher Support and Professional Development Model

You cannot implement this curriculum without support, and EL offers three tiers of professional development. The intensive three-day EL Education Institutes cost $450 per person and provide the foundation you need for year one. You can access free webinars through open up resources el education that cover basics, but these lack the depth for troubleshooting classroom management during student discussions. Schools with funding often purchase embedded coaching contracts ranging from $8,000 to $15,000 per school year for ongoing classroom support.

The Teach Now video library saves you during prep time. You watch master teachers facilitate specific lessons, like Grade 4 Module 2 Unit 1 Lesson 5 on point of view. You see actual student discourse and pacing, not staged performances with obedient children. You notice how the teacher waits through the silence. You hear the exact questions that restart a stalled discussion.

This professional development model respects your time as a working teacher. You study the videos the night before you teach the lesson. You attend the institute during summer break so you are ready for August. The coaching happens in your room while students are present, not in a distant conference center. You get feedback on your actual crew meetings and literacy instruction, not theoretical scenarios.

The investment pays off in decreased planning time once you internalize the protocols. Year one feels heavy because you are learning the content alongside the students. Year two you know the arc of the module. By year three you adapt the expedition to feature local issues while keeping the standards-aligned assessments intact. That progression requires the upfront training, but returns your evenings to you.

Implementation Strategies for EL Education Curriculum

Switching to this el education curriculum requires more than ordering teacher manuals. You need a roadmap that accounts for the shock of complex texts, the space demands of module libraries, and the cultural shift from worksheets to expeditions. Most failed adoptions crash against the same rocks: skipped crew meetings, missing print materials, and modules taught out of sequence. Avoid those, and you avoid the chaos that makes teachers beg for their old textbooks back. The difference between a thriving implementation and a frustrated faculty often comes down to the eight weeks of preparation before students arrive.

Pre-Implementation Planning and Readiness

Start eight weeks before day one with a materials inventory that goes beyond checking boxes. Verify your 1:1 device access immediately. If third graders share Chromebooks, order the print workbooks at $28 per student. Do not assume kids can read complex texts online at home. You also need storage for roughly 120 trade books per classroom—four modules, thirty books each. That is two full bookshelves minimum. Measure your walls.

Budget reality looks like this: the el education open up resources digital platform costs nothing, which feels like a win until you price the trade books at $150 to $300 per classroom. Add the optional workbooks if you have device equity issues. Then reserve $2,000 to $5,000 for initial professional development, depending on whether you bring trainers on-site or travel to them. Do not skimp here. Teachers need to see the phased curriculum rollout approach modeled by experts, not interpreted from PDFs.

Build your implementation team now. You need a literacy coach at half-time minimum—this person cannot be the principal doing double duty. Recruit one teacher leader per grade level who will pilot lessons before colleagues teach them. Get your principal to commit publicly to non-negotiable schedules: you cannot teach this el curriculum in a 45-minute block. You need 90 uninterrupted minutes. Protect that time like a budget line item. Cancel assemblies that encroach on it.

Draft parent communication explaining the shift from traditional homework to long-term projects. Parents will panic when nightly worksheets stop coming home. Send a letter in late July showing examples of the culminating tasks—perhaps the polystyrene ban letter or the rainforest biodiversity presentation. Explain that reading happens nightly, but it looks like independent research or revising an infographic, not a spelling list. Transparency now prevents angry emails in October when the first project comes due.

Phased Curriculum Rollout Approach

Run this rollout in three distinct phases. Phase one covers your eight-week preparation: materials audit, team selection, and the go/no-go decision point where you verify readiness or delay launch. Phase two selects your pilot grade. Choose grade three or grade seven. These sit in the middle—complex enough to test the rigor of standards-aligned texts, but not so advanced that content knowledge gaps destroy teacher morale. Run the go/no-go meeting at week six with hard criteria: Are materials staged? Is the literacy block scheduled? Do teachers have the print workbooks? If not, wait.

Phase three brings full implementation with peer observation cycles. But here is the critical scope decision for year one: pick either grades K through two or grades six through eight. Never both. K-2 teachers need intensive training on foundational skills and phonics integration within the knowledge-based curriculum. Middle school teachers need protocols for close reading and evidence-based discussion. These require different coaching currencies, and splitting your PD budget across both guarantees shallow implementation of expeditionary learning principles.

Begin with Unit Zero. Spend the first two weeks teaching classroom routines and Habits of Character. Administer running records and on-demand writing samples. Most importantly, establish your crew structure before touching module content. I watched a school skip this last year. By October, they had no community protocols and students melted down during the first challenging text. Crew meetings three times weekly for thirty minutes are not filler. They are the social-emotional foundation that makes the academic risk-taking possible.

Long-Term Sustainability and Continuous Improvement

Create a fidelity monitoring checklist that goes deeper than completion rates. Verify teachers run all four modules in full sequence—skipping weeks destroys the knowledge-based curriculum architecture. Confirm crew happens three times weekly for thirty minutes. Check that Target Tasks get collected and reviewed within forty-eight hours. Walkthroughs should show student-to-student discourse in at least eighty percent of lessons. If teachers are lecturing, you are not doing expeditionary learning.

Watch for the three critical failure modes. First, never skip crew to save time. Second, ensure print materials exist for homework. Students without home devices face equity gaps when project-based learning requires research outside school hours. Third, never teach modules out of order. The vocabulary and background knowledge spiral intentionally. Breaking the sequence leaves kids lost when they hit grade-level complex texts.

Prepare for the Implementation Dip. It hits months six through nine of year two. The novelty fades, but mastery has not arrived yet. Teachers feel exhausted by the planning load and begin cutting corners on crew meetings or skipping the heavy cognitive lift of complex texts.

Counter this with continuous improvement of instructional practice through video-based peer coaching. Use the EL Education Looking at Student Work protocol. Film a fifteen-minute discussion segment, watch it as a team during PLC time, and name one specific instructional move to try tomorrow. This keeps momentum alive when the work gets hard. Schools that sustain the el curriculum past year three all share this habit of peer observation. It transforms isolated struggle into shared problem-solving.

The Bigger Picture on El Education Curriculum

You have a decision to make. The EL Education curriculum asks more of you than a standard textbook series. You will plan expeditionary learning modules that stretch across weeks. You will hunt for complex texts that match your specific kids, not just the generic recommendations. You will wrestle with projects that sometimes fail. But you will also watch students actually care about what they are learning. That trade-off is real.

Start with one expedition if you are hesitant. Buy the modules for one grade, not the whole school. Test whether knowledge-based curriculum fits your context before you rebuild your entire year. The standards-aligned work is already done. The heavy lifting is in the delivery, not the documentation. You still have to show up and teach.

Good teaching is good teaching. EL Education just gives you better materials to do it with. If your district handed you thin workbooks and expects miracles, this is your upgrade. Just make sure you actually use it.