View our new 2024-2027 Strategic Plan
English Unlocked
English Unlocked is an accessible, student-centered, English language literacy curriculum aligned with the College and Career Readiness Standards for English Language Arts, specifically designed for adult learners. Each of the four curriculum levels were written by teachers, for teachers, and developed with student collaboration to create a comprehensive educational experience.
All books in the curriculum are sold as digital files to be downloaded and printed.
English Unlocked takes a student centered approach
- Unit topics were informed by listening sessions with adult learners and reflect their lives and interests.
-
Stories are authored by adult learners in Minnesota.
-
Students and teachers focus on learning reading and language skills rather than activity instructions.
-
Images are chosen to represent diverse life experiences.
-
Students have opportunities to talk and write about their own experiences and expertise.
-
This curriculum has been piloted in Literacy Minnesota learning centers and learners have provided their feedback.
Each of the four curriculum levels holds roughly six months of lessons if teaching for 8 hours a week.
“A newer volunteer of mine was just telling her friend (a brand new prospective volunteer) that she loves the new curriculum. They knew each other from teaching in schools years ago and so they know a lot about teaching, and [the new volunteer] was just gushing about how great it is to use, and that she really loved the design with a teacher facing page so clearly displayed and full of useful suggestions and input.”
- Christian P., Literacy Minnesota Learning Center Coordinator
CURRICULUM LEVELS
BEGINNING LITERACY
BEGINNING
INTERMEDIATE
ADVANCED
ENGLISH UNLOCKED PHONICS WORKBOOKS
The workbooks are focused on phonemic awareness, decoding skills and letter formation.
Stay tuned for Phonics Workbook 5 coming soon!
"We’re learning about point of view and influence"
“I like it because the stories are a little bit easy to understand but has new words that we can learn. We’re learning about point of view and influence, which is new for us, and we want to know more about that.” - Literacy Minnesota Open Door Learning Center student
LEVELS AND PRICING
Buy single-level curriculum, a combination of levels or the full package
Download a printable flyer with details and pricing to share!
$150 per curriculum level
Purchase a single level of curriculum or a combination of levels!
Each single level purchase gives you one (1) login to materials for that level.
Please allow for two (2) business days for login information to be emailed. An email will be sent prompting registered users to create a login to access the purchased materials. Logins will remain valid for 12 months from purchase date.
The curriculum is stored in an online secured file system monitored by Literacy Minnesota. File links are secured and cannot be shared digitally. The English Unlocked curriculum may be downloaded for use by registered users. The curriculum is copyrighted.
You will have login access for 12 months after the files are shared with you.
To be invoiced for larger multi-site purchases or if you have issues with logging in, please email us at englishunlocked@literacymn.org.
$600 per teaching site
Have access to the full curriculum - Beginning Literacy, Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced
with Phonics Workbooks 1 and 2 included for FREE!
This package includes four (4) logins PER teaching site.
Literacy Minnesota must be contacted about additional logins.
Get 10% off the full curriculum if you purchase the full package for 2 or more sites with discount code UNLOCKED.
Please allow for two (2) business days for login information to be emailed. An email will be sent prompting registered users to create a login to access the purchased materials. Logins will remain valid for 12 months from purchase date.
The curriculum is stored in an online secured file system monitored by Literacy Minnesota. File links are secured and cannot be shared digitally. The English Unlocked curriculum may be downloaded for use by registered users. The curriculum is copyrighted.
You will have login access for 12 months after the files are shared with you.
To be invoiced for larger multi-site purchases or if you have issues with logging in, please email us at englishunlocked@literacymn.org.
$30 per workbook
Check out the English Unlocked Phonics Workbooks 1, 2, 3 and 4 today!
Stay tuned for the release of Phonics Workbook 5 soon.
Each workbook purchase gives you one (1) login to materials for that level.
Please allow for two (2) business days for login information to be emailed. An email will be sent prompting registered users to create a login to access the purchased materials. Logins will remain valid for 12 months from purchase date.
The curriculum is stored in an online secured file system monitored by Literacy Minnesota. File links are secured and cannot be shared digitally. The English Unlocked curriculum may be downloaded for use by registered users. The curriculum is copyrighted.
You will have login access for 12 months after the files are shared with you.
To be invoiced for larger multi-site purchases or if you have issues with logging in, please email us at englishunlocked@literacymn.org.
FAQs
Literacy Minnesota works to build a more equitable society by making quality literacy education available to all. Our new ESL curriculum, English Unlocked, introduces a more accessible, comprehensive experience for teachers and learners alike. The curriculum contains four levels (beginning literacy, beginning, intermediate and advanced) with 9-12 units each. The English Unlocked curriculum team will periodically update lessons, based on learner and teacher feedback.
The English Unlocked curriculum was written by experienced Adult Basic Education instructors to support adult ESL learners. It is aligned with the College and Career Readiness Standards for English Language Arts. The curriculum supports teachers and volunteers, regardless of experience, by providing detailed, easy-to-navigate lesson plans. Every lesson plan includes detailed suggestions to make the activities easier or more challenging, depending on the needs of the students.
- All student handouts are included and can be copied at the beginning of the unit and given to the students as a complete unit packet.
- Lessons include opportunities for learners to review.
- Units have a side-by-side layout; there is one page of teacher instructions per student page.
- Unit objectives are clear and measurable.
- Ongoing level objectives may signal a students’ readiness for the next level.
- Lessons are flexible and allow teachers and learners to determine the pace.
- Lessons follow a predictable structure that allows teachers and learners to focus on skills and content.
Please view the English Unlocked curriculum Level Chart for test score and reading level alignment.
The English Unlocked curriculum supports the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) for English Language Arts. Throughout all levels of the curriculum, learners practice reading and interpreting complex text, giving evidence, and building knowledge. View College and Career Readiness in English Unlocked for a more detailed description of the standards supported by the curriculum and the way those anchors were scaffolded for adult ESL learners in the target levels.
Reading and Interpreting Complex Texts
Students need to read text that has the right level of complexity so the text will challenge them to grow their reading abilities, but without being so complex that students are frustrated. The goal is productive struggle. English Unlocked texts are measured to ensure that the text is at the right level for students, while being of high interest and when possible, authored by adult learners.
Giving Evidence
The CCR standards ask students to give evidence from text to support answers to questions. English Unlocked curriculum questions are carefully chosen and sequenced so the process of rereading and answering builds students’ comprehension of a text. Students are expected to interact with a text multiple times so they can find and use information from the text in their writing, answers, and in class discussions.
Building Knowledge
Students build knowledge through the process of rereading texts and answering (either in writing or through discussion) carefully crafted questions that ask them to dig deeper and deeper into the meaning of the text. This is different from learning directly from the teacher. Beginning readers build their knowledge through reading picture stories, listening, and discussions. Beginning language learners will continue to use pictures,
In our pilot classrooms, one unit for beginning literacy through intermediate took approximately 2 weeks to complete for classes meeting 8 hours per week. One Advanced unit took approximately 3 weeks to complete for classes meeting 8 hours per week. Of course, this is dependent upon how frequently a class meets and specific learner levels. Lessons are purposefully meant to be adaptable in order to be paced at the learning level that best matches specific learner needs and to meet different program structures.
We value feedback from instructors and students! Teachers are encouraged to provide feedback through our English Unlocked Teacher Feedback Form. We appreciate your feedback. Our curriculum team will review feedback periodically and make revisions.
We also have an English Unlocked Student Feedback Form to capture valuable learner perspective on the lessons. Please consider supporting learners to provide their feedback. To facilitate your class providing feedback, we have developed Lesson Ideas available in the English Unlocked Guiding Documents Folder .
Yes! Please email us at englishunlocked@literacymn.org and provide the following information: What are you purchasing and how many? Name, title, organization name, address, phone and email address.
English Unlocked was developed because of our former curriculum no longer met the more rigorous standards for adult education. While we are no longer updating the former curriculum, search the Educator Resources Library to find free teaching ideas.
Have questions?
Contact englishunlocked@literacymn.org with questions and for more information.