Choosing OER Project: Big History
OER Project: Big History is a course with a little bit of everything. From the Big Bang to the future, Big History helps students investigate the story of the Universe, Earth, life, and humanity within a framework that connects all knowledge.
Built especially for middle school—and still a strong fit for many junior-high and early-high-school classrooms—Big History brings science and history together so students can ask huge questions, make connections across disciplines, and build the skills they need to understand how knowledge fits together. Students explore 13.8 billion years of history while practicing claim testing, causation, reading, writing, inquiry, sourcing, and thinking across scales.
OER Project: Big History Curriculum Adoption
OER Project: Big History is built for curious students, flexible classrooms, and implementation in a variety of contexts. The course is standards-aligned, inquiry-driven, and designed to help students build skills through content as they connect science, history, geography, and literacy. Throughout the course, students ask big questions, work with evidence, test claims, make arguments, and see how the past helps them understand the present and imagine the future. Flexible from tip to tail, Big History works as a full course or as a library of supplemental resources for middle-school, junior-high, and early-high-school classrooms—all online, free, open source, and classroom-ready. Have questions about fit, adoption, or implementation? Reach us at team@oerproject.com or set up time to talk with us.
Guides to Choosing OER Project: Big History
Ready to explore? Get your bearings with the Big History Course Guide. Visit the Standards Alignment page to see how Big History connects to classroom standards, including C3, Common Core, and state frameworks. Explore Teacher Course Plans to see how both middle-school and high-school teachers use the curriculum in their own contexts—including what they love, what they adapt, and what they add. Review the Activity Placement guide to understand how key historical thinking skills appear, repeat, and deepen across the course. And when practical questions pop up, the Big History FAQ is there with quick answers about access, flexibility, implementation, and support.
- Big History Course Guide—A clear overview of the course approach, structure, learning objectives, and materials.
- Standards Alignment—Search for your state and see how Big History aligns with your state’s standards.
- Teacher Course Plan: Big History for Middle School—See how a Big History middle-school teacher uses the course in context, including what they love, adapt, and add.
- Teacher Course Plan: Big History for High School—Teaching older students? Check out a Big History high-school teacher’s plan for success.
- Big History Writing Placement—Locate all the writing activities in the course including those that focus on claim and paragraph writing, and longer assessments such as DBQs.
- Big History FAQ—Answers to common questions about alignment, access, implementation, and support.