Each of our units comes with an 8-week pacing guide. We provide this as a suggested timeline which would allow you to do a deep dive into four books per school year. However, we strongly encourage you to adjust the units to meet the needs of you and your kids. We believe you know your kids best, and our units are easy to adapt in order to work at the pace that is appropriate for your family.

We’ve built an English language art curriculum that counts for a reading and writing credit. Additionally, all of our units count towards a social science credit and some can count towards a history (Finding Your Voice - I Am Malala) or science (Exploring the American Food System - Folks, this Ain’t Normal) one as well.

Yes! Though our curriculum is currently built for middle and high school age students, we have had families buy units to use with children in elementary school. Since this became so popular after we released our Exploring the American Food System unit with Joel Salatin’s book we’ve actually created a document to provide suggestions on how to adapt our units based on age and skill level. This is available as a free download in the “shop” section.

We believe that books should be an experience and so we use what is called a text set: a comprehensive collection of resources designed to develop a central theme within a designated text. This includes an array of supplemental resources, such as fiction and non-fiction excerpts, short stories, poetry, music, art, relevant news articles, TED Talks, and so much more. Our text sets are the key to building a strong foundation for learning, as they work by enhancing background knowledge, fostering critical thinking skills, and improving reading comprehension.

YES! In fact, we have gotten excellent feedback from families who have struggled with other curriculums due to their child/children being reluctant readers, and have found that through the structure of our text sets, their students are engaged and thrive with our units. Read the testimonials here! We believe that reluctant readers thrive with our curriculum because the assignments focus on quality over quantity (eliminating busywork), are meaningful, and engaging due to the variety of learning styles incorporated throughout.

Unfortunately due to copyright laws we are unable to include a lot of the supplemental resources in our units. In addition we will often use videos and songs. In order to still utilize these teaching tools we include QR codes to provide direct links for your student if they have access to digital devices and are allowed to use them for school. Using QR codes provides some technology time but it doesn’t make for an entire day of screentime. We also include the links in our parent guides so parents who do not want their student using the codes can print off all of the available resources ahead of time.

Some families have chosen this route which is why we provide a digital parent guide for all of our units. In the digital guide you’ll have access to all of the QR code links we provide in the workbook. It will require you to do some prep work before the lesson, such as printing out an article ahead of time. In the case of videos or songs we suggest watching through them first and then deciding if you feel it is appropriate for your student.

Everything needed to complete the unit is contained within the workbook (QR codes are provided in the workbook for any resources that could not be printed due to copyright laws) and the workbook is structured in a way that allows the student to immediately open their workbook each day and begin. However, we do not consider this to be a hands-off curriculum for parents. There are assignments throughout the unit that will need to be graded, and we encourage you to review things such as the rubrics with your student before your student begins major assignments. We suggest reading through the entire parent guide before your student begins the unit.

Because our units are designed for middle and high school students, we do not incorporate grammar instruction into our units. If your student struggles with grammar, we suggest using a separate grammar curriculum.