Inquiry-based
English Language Arts for high school
A high school English Language Arts curriculum built for the questions that matter most.
Inquiry by Design's High School ELA curriculum is built on the same connected design as our Middle School program — reading, writing, discussion, and language development working together in every lesson — but the questions students are asking have grown. Where middle school students explore identity, family, and community, high school students turn outward: examining the systems — economic, historical, ecological, cultural — that shape and constrain lives, and developing the critical and rhetorical tools to analyze how language, argument, and authorial choice work in the world.
Each course of study is organized around five units built on challenging, grade-appropriate texts and spiraling cycles of reading, writing, and collaborative discussion. Students move beyond interpreting texts and begin evaluating them. They consider what experiences an author brings to a piece, whose voices may be absent, and how every authorial choice reflects an intention and an audience. The result is a curriculum that builds authentic intellectual sophistication alongside the literacy skills students need in their professional and educational lives.
Key Features:
The foundational design of Inquiry by Design’s High School courses builds intellectual sophistication through:
Elevated Text Sets
Challenging, culturally rich texts — spanning argument, narrative, journalism, and literary nonfiction — that anchor deep discussion and develop students’ ability to read closely, evaluate critically, and write from meaningful understanding.
Responsive Instruction
Flexible, inquiry-based instructional resources for writing that allow teachers to fluidly address students’ demonstrated needs within the classroom.
Rhetoric & Authentic Writing
Students move from analyzing texts as arguments to seeing rhetorical choice everywhere — in journalism, history, literature, and their own writing. Research units ask students to blend genres purposefully, mirroring the kinds of communication that matter in college and careers.
Student Agency
As students progress, so do the structures for discussion and expression. From teacher-facilitated seminars to student-led Socratic discussions and independent small groups, students develop the skills to lead intellectual conversations, and to use language not just as a vehicle for ideas, but as a tool for persuasion, rhythm, and artistic expression.
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A curriculum that grows with your students.
From the first unit of ninth grade to the last of twelfth, Inquiry by Design's High School ELA is designed to compound: building knowledge, deepening sophistication, and developing students who can read the world critically and communicate their thinking with clarity and purpose. Experience what connected, print-first ELA looks like at the high school level.