Open Educational Resources

Utah's Open Textbook Projects

Effective resources are available to provide Utah teachers, students, and parents with materials that support the Utah Core Standards, instruction, and teaching. These resources are created by groups of content and teaching experts, including university faculty, district and school specialists, teachers, and The Utah State Board of Education staff.

Science | Secondary English Language Arts | Secondary Mathematics | Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice Student Manual
OER Web Collections | OER Gems | Additional Resources
Science

OER textbooks are available for K-12 and align to the Science with Engineering Education (SEEd) Standards.

The Utah Science Open Educational Resources (OER) textbook project was started to bring Utah teachers together to create a resource that aligns to Utah core science standards. The Utah Science OER textbooks are not intended to be curriculum as they do not include labs, assessments, or a teacher guide with answers. They are intended as a reference material for students with content to support teachers’ classroom instruction and help make sense of science concepts found in standards.

The OER textbooks are available in digital formats for free under a creative commons license. These digital documents can be used and adjusted to support teacher and student needs. They can be loaded onto student electronic devices or printed in their entirety or as individual pages through school or district printing services. Formatted OER textbooks are also available to purchase in bulk at a low cost using a state printing contract.

New for 2022
The OER textbooks were revised in the spring of 2022. Currently, the revised versions are only available in English. Revised textbooks in other languages are yet to be translated.

2022 Utah OER Books – PDF Files
To provide teachers with a formatting version of each textbook, PDF versions of the printed books are available for a free download. These files can be used to print the books in-house if districts and charters have a better system for printing or they can be loaded on student machines.

Important Note: The OER Textbook Project works very hard to ensure that only materials with an open "creative common" license are used. After a copy is made, it is the responsibility of that person to assure that any content, pictures, illustrations, diagrams, etc. added to the adapted books are free of a private copyright license. The person who adapts the textbook is solely responsible for consequences regarding breaking regulations with these copyrights.

K-12 Science with Engineering Education (SEEd) Standards 2020-22

World Language Translations

Chinese Books

French Books

German Books

Portuguese Books

Russian Books

Coming Soon
5th Grade
Coming Soon
6th Grade

Spanish Books

Creative Commons License

 

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Secondary English Language Arts

The Utah Core Standards support student access to increased non-fiction/informational text to ensure that all students are prepared to meet the reading and cognitive demands of college and careers. These Open Texts provide access to grade-leveled and grade-appropriate readings and learning tasks to support the Core by providing a wide range of informational and literary non-fiction texts. These texts have been assessed by teacher teams for text complexity by using both quantitative lexile level and qualitative criteria.

Close Reading Rubrics
Grade 6Grade 7Grade 8Grades 9 & 10Grades 11 & 12

Argumentative Writing Rubrics
Grade 6Grade 7Grade 8Grades 9 & 10Grades 11 & 12

Sample Student Performance Assessments
Grade 7Grade 9 & 10Grades 11 & 12 Grades 11 & 12

Presidential Writings Project
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Note: The second edition of the Grade Band 9-10 and 11-12 digital books will be aligned to the new assessment system with sample performance tasks.

 

Creative Commons License

 

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Secondary Mathematics

Utah started Online Educational Resources in mathematics in 2011 when Utah adopted the integrated model for high school mathematics. This model is used throughout the world and provides students with the opportunity in high school to learn and use topics in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and analysis in connected and relevant ways; it promotes a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. The Mathematics Vision Project was instituted to share real-world tasks to support teachers and students. The integrated model also follows the flow of standards in the earlier grades where students make connections between concepts such as number, geometry, and algebraic thinking and reasoning. The Utah Middle School Math Project was created to support teachers and students in the middle grades. Throughout the years, the programs have been maintained on the UEN site as well as on the respective websites.

Creative Commons License

 

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Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice Student Manual

USBE developed this law enforcement and criminal justice student manual in cooperation with the Unified Police of Greater Salt Lake.

 

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For more information about Utah's Open Educational Resources, please contact the USBE content area specialist for that subject.

  

OER Web Collections

CK-12
The CK-12 Foundation pairs high quality content with the latest technologies for free.
Curriki
A community for teaching or studying: Create, share, and explore high quality K- 12 content.
Digital Learning Department, Washington Department of Public Instruction
Materials produced by the Washington OER Project.
Edutopia
Online repositories, curriculum-sharing websites, lesson plans and activities, and open alternatives to textbooks.
Engage NY
Materials for grades Pre-K to 12 in both Mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA).
#GoOpen
The U.S. Office of Educational Technology initiative for districts to replace textbooks with openly licensed digital materials.
Gooru
Find millions of open and free resources, collections, and courses in Gooru’s catalog.
HippoCampus
Free educational resources for middle, high school and college students and instructors.
Open Educational Resources (IOER)
IOER provides you with open, standards-aligned educational and career content.
Illinois Learning Registry
The learning registry is a new approach to capturing, connecting and sharing data about learning resources available online.
Merlot
Collection of online teaching and learning materials and faculty-developed services.
OER Commons
Find free to use learning and teaching content from diverse content providers from around the world.
Online and Distance Learning
Annotated list of websites with OER (Open Educational Resources) for education teaching materials.
OpenEd
Free Online K-12 Resource library organized by grade, subject, standard and textbook.
Opensource.com
A comprehensive listing of many helpful, accessible, amazing open education resources.
OpenStax CNX
Educational material in small modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports or other academic assignments.
OpenWashington
A site designed to help you understand the OER movement and find OER resources.
Orange Grove
The repository provides an environment for educators to search for, use, remix, share, and contribute educational resources.
Smithsonian Learning Lab
Rich digital materials—more than a million images, recordings, and texts.
Unbound Ed
Free, standards-aligned resources and immersive training for teachers and school leaders.

 

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OER Gems

Google Expeditions Pioneer Program
With Expeditions, teachers can take students on immersive, virtual journeys.
Loyal Books
Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads
Pixabay
Over 580,000 free photos, vectors and art illustrations

 

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Additional Resources

Creative Commons Licenses
Tools to give everyone a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work.
Learning Registry Community Projects
Have you built a utility or extended core or done something cool for Learning Registry? List it on this page.
National Archives
The National Arhives provide educators and students with opportunities to teach with and learn from primary sources documents.

 

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