Homeschool · diploma track · built to California standards

The whole course, not a supplement.

These are full-year courses written on the assumption that they are the only instruction a student gets in the subject. Every idea is taught from the ground up, worked through on a real text, and then practiced, and every question has a full model answer, not a grade and a hint. Written work gets a rubric and a complete top-score response you can hold your own draft against.

Free to explore, any five lessons in every course, no account needed to start.

21 courses · all 21 open 1,421 lessons 16,380 practice questions 78 essay prompts with model responses

How these courses work. A course is divided into units, and each lesson runs the same way: the idea stated plainly, the key points as a numbered list with a note on where students lose marks, one extended worked example that reads an actual passage, then ten questions where the first five check recall and the last five ask for reasoning. Every unit closes with a ten-question review, and every course ends with six timed essay prompts. Nothing is summarized secondhand: the texts are quoted directly, and every one of them is public domain, so there is no reading list to buy. Coming: photograph a handwritten essay and have it read back against the rubric, with the paragraph that costs the marks pointed out.

English Language Arts

4 courses

English 9 OPEN

A full year on the California ELA standards for the grades 9 to 10 band, with a week-by-week reading schedule. Nine lessons on the tools of fiction, seven complete short stories, ten on poetry, Romeo and Juliet act by act, nonfiction and argument, then writing, research and language. Connell, Poe, Chopin, O. Henry, Jacobs, Maupassant, Dickinson, Frost, Hughes, Shakespeare, Douglass, Stanton and Lincoln. Every text is public domain, so the reading list costs nothing. 52 lessons, 580 practice questions, and six essay prompts in narrative, literary analysis and argument.

GRADE 9 DIPLOMA TRACK 52 LESSONS 580 QUESTIONS CA CCSS ELA 9-10 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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English 10 OPEN

World literature into rhetoric, on the same California standards band as English 9 at a higher level of demand, with a week-by-week reading schedule. Two epics and two Greek tragedies, a ten-lesson unit on how persuasion actually works, the satire and speeches that use it, Frankenstein read whole, and research and argument to close. Gilgamesh, Homer, Beowulf, Sophocles, Swift, Sojourner Truth, Patrick Henry, Lincoln, Douglass and Shelley, all in public domain texts and translations. 52 lessons, 580 practice questions, six essay prompts.

GRADE 10 DIPLOMA TRACK 52 LESSONS 580 QUESTIONS CA CCSS ELA 9-10 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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English 11 OPEN

American literature in order, because the order is the argument, with a week-by-week reading schedule for the whole year. Puritans and the Revolution, Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller, Whitman and Dickinson through the Civil War, the realists and naturalists, then The Great Gatsby across four lessons and the Harlem Renaissance in Hughes, McKay, Cullen and Toomer, closing on the documented research paper and MLA. Every text in the public domain. 52 lessons, 580 practice questions, six essay prompts including synthesis.

GRADE 11 DIPLOMA TRACK 52 LESSONS 580 QUESTIONS CA CCSS ELA 11-12 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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English 12 OPEN

A thousand years of British literature in six units, with a week-by-week reading schedule for the whole year. Each unit is anchored to the techniques its period invented: the alliterative line in Beowulf and the elegies, Chaucer's frame narrative, the sonnet and the soliloquy from Wyatt through Hamlet to Milton, the heroic couplet and the Romantic lyric, the dramatic monologue and the serialized novel, and modernist fragmentation in Yeats, Eliot, Conrad, Woolf, Joyce and the war poets. Closes with a documented comparative capstone. Every text in the public domain, including the translations. 52 lessons, 580 practice questions, six essay prompts.

GRADE 12 DIPLOMA TRACK 52 LESSONS 580 QUESTIONS CA CCSS ELA 11-12 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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History and Social Science

5 courses

Human Geography OPEN

Seven units covering the standard divisions of the discipline: spatial thinking and the three kinds of density, population and migration, culture, political geography, agriculture and rural land use, industry and development, and cities. California publishes no grade 9 standards, so this is built as the elective that year is meant for, anchored to the Analysis Skills strands. Every model is taught with its assumptions stated, a case that supports it and at least one case that does not, from von Thunen and Weber through Rostow, Christaller and Burgess. 75 lessons, 820 practice questions, six essay prompts.

GRADE 9 CA HSS ELECTIVE 75 LESSONS 820 QUESTIONS
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World History OPEN

Eleven units, one for each California standard from 10.1 to 10.11, taught through documents rather than summaries of them: the classical and Judeo-Christian roots of constitutional government, the democratic revolutions, industrialization, the new imperialism and the resistance to it, both world wars, the totalitarian regimes and the Holocaust, the Cold War, decolonization and globalization. Sources include Aristotle, Magna Carta, Locke, Sieyes, Toussaint Louverture, Adam Smith, the Sadler Committee, Marx, Naoroji, Menelik II, Owen, Keynes, Yeats, the Wannsee protocol, Kennan and the UN Charter. 76 lessons, 870 practice questions, six essay prompts.

GRADE 10 CA HSS 10.1-10.11 76 LESSONS 870 QUESTIONS
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United States History OPEN

Eleven units, one for each California standard from 11.1 to 11.11, built on document analysis and periodization: the founding and the Reconstruction amendments, industrialization and reform, religion in American life, the rise to world power, the Twenties, the Depression and New Deal, the Second World War, the postwar transformation, foreign policy since 1945, civil rights, and contemporary issues. Sources include the Virginia Declaration of Rights, Federalist 51, Plessy and Harlan, Taylor, Riis, Plunkitt, the Omaha Platform, Schenck, Ford, the Wagner Act, Korematsu, Brown and the Voting Rights Act. Designed to run alongside English 11. 75 lessons, 860 practice questions, six essay prompts.

GRADE 11 CA HSS 11.1-11.11 75 LESSONS 860 QUESTIONS
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Economics OPEN

A one-semester course with one lesson for each of the thirty numbered California sub-standards in 12.1 through 12.6: economic reasoning, the market economy across ten lessons on supply, demand, price signals, competition, profit and financial markets, the federal government's role including fiscal and monetary policy, the labor market, the aggregate measures, and international trade. Sources include Adam Smith, Ricardo, the Wagner Act, the Federal Reserve Act and the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Every model comes with a worked numeric example you can check line by line, its assumptions, and a case where it gets the answer wrong. 30 lessons, 360 practice questions, six essay prompts.

GRADE 12 CA HSS 12.1-12.6 ONE SEMESTER 30 LESSONS 360 QUESTIONS
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American Government OPEN

The other semester California requires in grade twelve, with a lesson for each of the fifty-two numbered sub-standards in Principles of American Democracy, 12.1 to 12.10: the thinkers behind the founding, the rights and obligations of citizens, civil society, the three branches, the Supreme Court's landmark interpretations, campaigns and elections, the levels of government, the media, political systems compared across the world, and the six tensions the standards name. Taught through documents read directly rather than summarized, since almost every source is public domain: the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, Locke, Montesquieu, Blackstone, Tocqueville, and the opinions of the Court in Marbury, McCulloch, Plessy, Brown and United States v. Nixon. 57 lessons, 670 practice questions, six essay prompts.

GRADE 12 CA HSS 12.1-12.10 ONE SEMESTER 57 LESSONS 670 QUESTIONS
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Science

4 courses

Biology: The Living Earth OPEN

Eleven units built on the California science standards for the Living Earth year, opening with how biology establishes anything at all: controls, sample size, correlation against causation. Then energy flow and trophic efficiency, population dynamics and carrying capacity, the carbon, nitrogen, water and phosphorus cycles, cells and membranes, photosynthesis and respiration, DNA to protein, mitosis and meiosis, inheritance, natural selection, and speciation and biodiversity on a changing planet. Every mechanism is taught with the evidence that established it, and the three errors that cost the most marks are named as they arise: teleology, imprecision and category confusion. 75 lessons, 860 practice questions, six writing tasks built on claim, evidence and reasoning, and a science writing reference that stays free.

GRADE 9 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 860 QUESTIONS CA NGSS 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Chemistry in the Earth System OPEN

Eleven units built on the California science standards for the grade 10 chemistry year, which folds Earth system content into the subject rather than leaving it in the beaker. Measurement and the evidence for atoms, the periodic table and bonding, the mole and stoichiometry, energy and the heat balance of the planet, gases, solutions, kinetics and equilibrium, and acids ending in the carbonate chemistry of an acidifying ocean. Every law is taught with the measurement that established it, from Lavoisier's sealed vessels to Mendeleev's predicted element, and every quantity is worked line by line, because a chemistry student who can state a law but cannot carry a calculation through has learned the wrong half. 75 lessons, 860 practice questions, six writing tasks built on claim, evidence and reasoning, and a science writing reference that stays free.

GRADE 10 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 860 QUESTIONS CA NGSS 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Physics of the Universe OPEN

Eleven units built on the California science standards for the grade 11 physics year, which follows the same laws outward from a ball thrown across a room to the mass of the Sun, the age of a rock and the composition of a star. Motion and force, momentum, gravitation and orbits, energy, heat and the second law, electric charge and circuits, magnetism and induction, waves and light, radiation and information, and a closing unit on the nucleus, the Sun and the origin of the elements. Nothing is asserted that can be derived, so every equation is shown coming from the one before it, every quantity carries its unit on every line, and the four errors that cost the most marks are named where they arise. 75 lessons, 860 practice questions, six writing tasks built on claim, evidence and reasoning, and a science writing reference that stays free.

GRADE 11 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 860 QUESTIONS CA NGSS 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Anatomy & Physiology OPEN

Eleven units covering the human body system by system, built as the third laboratory science for a student heading toward nursing, medicine, physical therapy or any other health field. The language of anatomy and homeostasis, tissues and skin, bone, muscle, neurons and the brain, the nerves and senses, hormones, blood and the heart, breathing and immunity, digestion and metabolism, and filtration through to reproduction and development. Anatomy is the most terminology-dense course in the catalog and the whole design answers that: no structure is ever introduced as a name on a list, every structure arrives attached to the job it does, and the sequences where the marks concentrate are drilled until a student can produce them in order without hesitation. 75 lessons, 860 practice questions, six writing tasks built on claim, evidence and reasoning, and a science writing reference that stays free.

GRADES 11-12 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 860 QUESTIONS LAB SCIENCE 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Mathematics

5 courses

Algebra 1 OPEN

Eleven units on the traditional California pathway, the first full year of the three that end in a diploma-track transcript. Expressions, units and the properties every later step cites; linear equations and inequalities; functions and function notation; lines and their graphs; systems solved three ways; sequences and exponential growth; polynomials and factoring; quadratic functions in all three forms; solving quadratics by factoring, roots, completing the square and the formula; radicals and rational expressions; and a closing unit on statistics and bivariate data. The design answers the one thing that sinks algebra students: every line follows from the line above it and the student is shown why, the four errors that cost the most marks are named where they arise, and no rule is stated without the derivation that makes it memorable. 75 lessons, 880 practice problems, a formula and theorem reference that stays free, and two cumulative reviews.

GRADES 8-9 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 880 QUESTIONS TRADITIONAL PATHWAY 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Geometry OPEN

Eleven units on the traditional California pathway, the second full year of the three that end in a diploma-track transcript. Foundations and the definitions a proof quotes; reasoning, conditionals and the two-column format; parallel and perpendicular lines with every converse stated separately; transformations, with congruence defined by rigid motion and the triangle criteria derived from it; congruent triangles and CPCTC; the four centers and the triangle inequalities; quadrilaterals and the hierarchy; similarity and the geometric mean; right triangles and trigonometry; circles; and a closing unit on area, surface area, volume and the square-cube law. The governing rule is that every claim names the theorem that licenses it, and the four errors that sink a proof are named where they arise: reading an unmarked fact off the picture, using the theorem being proved, confusing a statement with its converse, and writing a congruence whose letters do not correspond. 75 lessons, 880 practice problems, a formula and theorem reference that stays free, and two cumulative reviews.

GRADES 9-10 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 880 QUESTIONS TRADITIONAL PATHWAY 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Algebra 2 OPEN

Eleven units on the traditional California pathway, the third full year of the three that end in a diploma-track transcript and the course that decides whether calculus is reachable. Functions with transformations, composition and inverses; quadratic functions and the complex numbers that complete them; polynomial functions with division and the root theorems; rational expressions, equations and asymptotes; radicals and rational exponents; exponential functions and modeling; logarithms and the scales built on them; sequences and series through the binomial theorem; trigonometric functions from the unit circle; identities, equations and the inverse trigonometric functions; and a closing unit on statistics, sampling and what a study design can actually conclude. The governing rule is to name the family before you touch the problem, and the four errors that cost the most marks are named where they arise: canceling a term instead of a factor, skipping the check for extraneous roots, the linearity error in all five of its disguises, and losing the domain. 75 lessons, 880 practice problems, a formula reference that stays free, and two cumulative reviews.

GRADES 10-11 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 880 QUESTIONS TRADITIONAL PATHWAY 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Precalculus OPEN

Eleven units on the traditional California pathway, the fourth full year of the sequence and the last stop before calculus. Functions, transformations, composition and inverses; polynomial and rational functions with their zeros, asymptotes and inequalities; exponentials, logarithms and the models built on them; angles, the unit circle and the six trigonometric functions; graphing sinusoids and inverse trigonometry; identities and trigonometric equations; the laws of sines and cosines with bearings and area; vectors in two and three dimensions with work and projection; polar coordinates, complex numbers in polar form and parametric equations; conics, sequences and series through induction; and a closing unit on limits, continuity and the derivative as a limit. The governing rule is to name the family before you touch the problem, and the four errors that cost the most marks are named where they arise: canceling a term instead of a factor, skipping the check for extraneous roots, the linearity error in all its disguises, and losing the domain, which in trigonometry includes dividing away solutions. 75 lessons, 880 practice problems, a formula reference that stays free, and two cumulative reviews.

GRADES 11-12 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 880 QUESTIONS TRADITIONAL PATHWAY 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Financial Algebra OPEN

Eleven units that take the year from a first paycheck to a complete financial plan, built to be the student's whole course in personal finance. Hourly pay, salary, commission and the pay stub from gross to net; income tax with marginal brackets, deductions and credits; budgeting, checking and savings accounts; simple and compound interest, APR against APY, the rule of 72 and inflation; regular saving, present value, retirement accounts and the employer match; credit cards, minimum payments and credit scores; installment loans, amortization, extra payments, student loans and payday loans; the full cost of a car and of owning a home; insurance and expected value; investing, fees and recognizing fraud; and a closing unit on net worth, cash flow and assembling a plan. The governing rule is to name every number before you use it, what it measures and over what period, and the four errors that cost the most marks are named where they arise: the period mismatch, the wrong base, rounding too early, and answering a different question. Tax figures are teaching figures, stated in every problem. 75 lessons, 880 practice problems, a formula reference that stays free, and two cumulative reviews.

GRADES 11-12 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 880 QUESTIONS PERSONAL FINANCE 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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World Language

3 courses

Spanish 1 OPEN

Eleven units that take a beginner from the first greeting to a closing presentation about themselves, built to be the student's whole first year of Spanish. Greetings, the alphabet, accents and the inverted marks; nouns, articles and adjective agreement; ser, estar and subject pronouns; the present tense with its irregular and stem-changing verbs; school, likes and gustar; family, possession and the home; daily routines and reflexive verbs; food, shopping and numbers to one million; the town, directions, travel and weather; free time, health and a first look at the past tense; and a closing unit on the Spanish-speaking world. Instruction is in English and every example is in Spanish, in Latin American usage with Spain noted. The governing rule is to match, then check, and the five errors that cost the most marks are named where they arise: gender and number mismatch, English structure carried over, ser against estar, the wrong verb ending, and missing accents and inverted marks. 75 lessons, 880 practice problems, a grammar reference that stays free, and two cumulative reviews.

GRADES 9-12 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 880 QUESTIONS CA WORLD LANGUAGE 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Spanish 2 OPEN

Eleven units that take a student who has finished Spanish 1 from a quick review to a closing presentation about their own year, built to be the whole second year. The preterite in depth, with spelling changes, irregular stems and two pronouns; the imperfect and the choice between the two pasts; health and commands; travel, por and para, negative words and numbers to a thousand; the home, verbs of change, the reciprocal and the passive se; technology, jobs, interviews and the present perfect; the future, the conditional and si clauses; celebrations, the arts, adverbs and connected writing; and a closing unit on conversation, revision, comparing communities and Spanish in California. Instruction is in English and every example is in Spanish, in Latin American usage. The governing rule is frame, then form, and the five errors that cost the most marks are named where they arise: the wrong past tense, the wrong pronoun form or place, an irregular stem or accent, the wrong command form, and por against para. 75 lessons, 880 practice problems, a grammar reference that stays free, and two cumulative reviews.

GRADES 9-12 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 880 QUESTIONS CA WORLD LANGUAGE 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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Spanish 3 OPEN

Eleven units that take a student who has finished Spanish 2 through the year of the subjunctive, built to be the whole third year. A review of the second year; the present subjunctive and its irregular verbs; wishes, requests and advice; emotion, doubt and certainty; clauses of description and time; the imperfect subjunctive and the sequence of tenses; the conditional and si clauses; the perfect tenses; the passive, se and relative pronouns; reported speech, prepositions and register; and a closing unit on a short story, a poem, the Spanish-speaking world and a final presentation. Instruction is in English and every example is in Spanish, in Latin American usage. The governing rule is fact or reach, and the five errors that cost the most marks are named where they arise: the wrong mood, the wrong stem or spelling, the wrong tense sequence, que with one subject, and the wrong relative pronoun or preposition. 75 lessons, 880 practice problems, a grammar reference that stays free, and two cumulative reviews.

GRADES 10-12 DIPLOMA TRACK 75 LESSONS 880 QUESTIONS CA WORLD LANGUAGE 36-WEEK SCHEDULE
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The rest of mathematics, World Language and the other sciences

available now as support courses

Three courses on the High School track

The integrated pathway is already open, organized by topic with a full worked solution on every one of 1,080 practice problems. They are written as support rather than as full curricula, so a homeschooling family will need to supply the reading and the labs, but the method and the practice are all there. They are being rebuilt to diploma size one at a time, the way Biology, Chemistry, Physics of the Universe, Anatomy & Physiology, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Precalculus, Financial Algebra, Spanish 1, Spanish 2 and Spanish 3 already have been.

GRADES 8-12 3 COURSES 1,080 PROBLEMS
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