Text Development for an Open‐Access Elementary Science Curriculum: Five Principles for Supporting the Use of Science Text

ABSTRACT Integrating science and literacy in elementary education enhances student learning. Curriculum materials play a key role in providing teachers with resources and texts that support this integration. This paper presents five principles for using science texts to support science and literacy learning in elementary classrooms. The paper describes how these principles were applied to create over 200 texts for a free, open‐access science curriculum. We emphasize how teachers can put these principles into practice to support elementary literacy and science learning. Two years of field testing with over 550 teachers and 20,000 elementary students across nine states demonstrated the feasibility of using these texts within the OpenSciEd Elementary curriculum. Teachers reported that the texts embedded within the curriculum deepened students' scientific knowledge, expanded students' vocabulary, and helped students connect their science learning to real‐world contexts.