ELA & SLA Core Curriculum for Grades 6–12
Understanding builds when learning connects.
Inquiry by Design is an ELA and SLA curriculum for grades 6-12, built so knowledge, language, and thinking develop together, from the first lesson to the last.
How does understanding actually build?
This is about more than curriculum. It’s about how all children learn.
For decades, the education industry has responded to the complexity of teaching by adding more: more platforms, more programs, more resources.
The promise was support. The reality? More complexity for teachers and more fragmented learning for students.
Reading became a set of isolated skills. Literature gave way to passages. Language development moved out of context. Curriculum became fragmented, and teachers became responsible for connecting the pieces into a coherent learning experience.
The burden didn’t appear overnight. It accumulated.
Instead of asking how do we deliver more content, we asked how does understanding actually build?
When students return to meaningful ideas, and when reading, writing, discussion, language, and knowledge intentionally build on one another across a lesson, a unit, and a school year, they don’t just encounter ideas. They develop them, challenge them, and make them their own.
That’s what Connected by Design means.
Every lesson is intentionally structured so the next one builds on it, with integrated supports woven throughout the experience. Connection isn’t something teachers have to create. It’s designed into the curriculum from the start, creating space for sustained reading, thoughtful discussion, purposeful writing, and deep engagement with ideas.
Open the book. Guide the discussion. Respond to students. Help understanding build.
Our approach
We didn't add more.
We designed it to stand alone.
Every decision starts with the same question: Will this help understanding build?
Real reading, real thinking.
Not reading as a checklist of skills, but reading as the experience that builds knowledge, develops language, and sharpens thinking all at once. Real texts. Real engagement. Everything else grows from there.
Real reading, real thinking.
Not reading as a checklist of skills, but reading as the experience that builds knowledge, develops language, and sharpens thinking all at once. Real texts. Real engagement. Everything else grows from there.
Connected by design.
Reading, writing, discussion, and language development are integrated into every lesson, so teachers don’t have to assemble the pieces. Each lesson does that work, building understanding through connected ideas. This isn’t just standards aligned; it’s built so standards connect and knowledge builds across the entire curriculum.
Built for everyone.
Sentence frames, scaffolded supports, and language-development tools are embedded in the curriculum, not fragmented into separate tracks, including built-in support for multilingual learners and students still building academic language. Every student engages with rigorous, meaningful work, with the support they need already there.
Open the book. Teach the lesson.
Sentence frames, scaffolded supports, and language-development tools are embedded in the curriculum, not fragmented into separate tracks, including built-in support for multilingual learners and students still building academic language. Every student engages with rigorous, meaningful work, with the support they need already there.
The curriculum holds so teachers can focus on the students in front of them. And understanding can keep building.
Four programs. One Connected Approach.
Middle School English Language Arts
High School English Language Arts
Middle and High School Spanish Language Arts
Middle School English Language Development
What teachers and leaders say about Inquiry by Design
