In later units, students examine the effects of territorial expansion, the Civil War, and the rise of industrialization as they assess the outcomes of economic trends and the connections between culture and government. As the course draws to a close, students focus their studies on the causes of cultural and political change in the modern age. Throughout the course, students learn the importance of cultural diversity while examining history from different perspectives. Rigorous reading and writing activities carefully address Common Core literacy standards and guide students toward the development of critical thinking and communication skills.

Throughout the course students make connections between geometry and algebra as they: use graphs to solve polynomial, rational, exponential, and logarithmic inequalities; perform operations with complex numbers and vectors; use coordinate algebra to derive equations of ellipses and hyperbolas; and find limits of functions. The standards of mathematical practice are embedded throughout the course as students apply mathematical concepts in modeling situations, make sense of problem situations, solve novel problems, reason abstractly, and think critically.

As students refine and expand their algebraic skills, they will draw analogies between the operations and field properties of real numbers and those of complex numbers and algebraic expressions. Process standards are embedded throughout the course, as students solve novel problems, reason abstractly, and think critically.

Students at this level show an understanding of interrelationships between organisms and the environment, recognize patterns in systems, and expand their knowledge of cellular dimensions of living systems.

Students use their knowledge of proportional reasoning and dilations to develop a formal definition for similarity of figures. They apply their understanding of similarity to defining trigonometric ratios and radian measure. Students also make algebraic connections as they use coordinate algebra to verify properties of figures in the coordinate plane and write equations of parabolas and circles. Throughout the course, students investigate properties of figures, make conjectures, and prove theorems. Students demonstrate their reasoning by completing proofs in a variety of formats. The standards of mathematical practice are embedded throughout the course as students apply geometric concepts in modeling situations, make sense of problem situations, solve novel problems, reason abstractly, and think critically.

Students develop a deeper understanding of how translations, rotations, reflections, and dilations of distances and angles affect congruency and similarity. Students also develop rules of exponents and use them to simplify exponential expressions. Students extend rules of exponents as they perform operations with numbers in scientific notation. Estimating and comparing square roots of non-perfect squares to perfect squares exposes students to irrational numbers and lays the foundation for applications such as the Pythagorean Theorem, distance, and volume.

Quantitative reasoning is a common thread throughout the course as students learn how they can use algebra to represent quantities and the relationships among those quantities in a variety of ways. Standards of mathematical practice and process are embedded throughout the course, as students make sense of problem situations, solve novel problems, reason abstractly, and think critically.

Students also routinely write responses to texts they have read, and use more extensive, process-based lessons to produce full-length essays in narrative, informative, analytical, and argumentative formats. In this full-year course, students develop a mastery of reading, writing, and language arts skills.

You will read a range of classic texts including the ancient epic Gilgamesh, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. You will study short but complex texts, including essays by Jonathan Swift and Mary Wollstonecraft, and influential speeches by Queen Elizabeth I and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Contemporary texts by Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and Chinua Achebe round out the course.

Interwoven in the lessons across two semesters are tasks that encourage students to strengthen their oral language skills and produce creative, coherent writing. Students will read a range of short but complex texts, including works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Martin Luther King, Jr., F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sandra Cisneros, Amy Tan, and Dave Eggers.