Online courses directory (22)

This course is designed to prepare Saylor’s consulting educators to build K-12 subject courses that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects and Mathematics.  You will begin this course by gaining an overview of what the set of Common Core State Standards is, why Saylor is focused on developing courses around the Common Core State Standards, and the main benchmarks for ensuring that a course is compliant with the Common Core State Standards.  In unit 2 of this course, you will look at the Common Core State Standards in detail and identify key takeaways from them.  In unit 3 of this course, you will explore how to develop content that meets the Common Core State Standards and how to integrate the standards through the development of learning assignments based on specific texts and activities.  In unit 4 of this course, you will take a look at the different assessment strategies often used for Common Core…

Geography is the study of the physical features of the Earth and its atmosphere including landscape development, weather and climate, and geologic concepts as well as the influence of human activity including cultural, economic, and political activity on those physical features.  Geography students, as they study the many aspects of our physically and culturally diverse world, tend to become more adept at tasks that require both spatial and critical thinking skills. World Regional Geography covers the basic elements noted above but within a regional context.  Ultimately, World Regional Geography is concerned with the physical and human characteristics that make the regions of our world distinctive.  As you progress through the course, the units will discuss each major world region in detail, placing particular emphasis on cultural and societal structures.  Regions will be discussed within a global framework in the hope that you will gain a better comprehension of how the world map is being defined a…

Sixth-grade Language Arts marks a turning point for you in your academic career. After developing and practicing the skills necessary to develop a strong foundation for your success at the elementary level, you are now ready to embark on the next step in your journey as a reader and writer. Based on the Common Core State Standards, this course will help you grow as a reader and writer of both literary and informational text. You will read a number of complex, thematically related narratives, short stories, extended informational texts, and nonfiction articles. You will learn to analyze these varied texts, to identify key ideas and details, to compare and contrast major text elements, and to distinguish between those claims supported by evidence and those that are not. You will then try your hand at writing your own arguments and supporting them with research-based evidence, and you will work to improve your writing by taking it through the steps of the writing process. In your own life, these reading and wr…

Eighth-grade English Language Arts will provide you with a strong foundation for high school. Grounded in Common Core State Standards, the content of this course emphasizes critical reading, writing, and thinking. You will read and analyze high-quality literary and informational texts. You will write original texts in multiple genres. Language and its conventions will be emphasized throughout, and opportunities to examine the spoken word will be provided as well. Whether you choose to pursue higher education or the world of work, or both, you will be expected to have certain basic skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening. While you probably won’t be expected to write a poem on command, you will have to be able to express yourself clearly when you write and speak. This course includes challenging material which will help you build the skills you need to begin high school. As you progress through your remaining years as a student, you will continue to add and build upon the skills and knowledge yo…

English II is the second in a sequence of English courses for high school students. These courses seek to give you the necessary reading, writing, thinking, and research skills to find success in college or the workplace. As the second course, English II challenges you to look deeper within a text for its meaning and provide thoughtful, analytical, and persuasive responses. You will be expected to build literary analysis from the texts as well as outside sources of knowledge. You will first learn to dissect a text for varied levels of meaning, how to interpret this meaning with a critical eye, and how to look beyond the text for its relevance. You will then be expected to read a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts of different lengths, complexities, and genres, and respond to them through questions, annotations, independent research, and essay writing. Texts and assignments will gradually increase in rigor, challenging you to improve the efficacy and complexity of your analysis and writing skills. Bec…

English III, American Literature, explores the literature of America from the narratives of the early colonists to the foundational documents of our forefathers, and the literature of our modern times. In English III, you will gain a firm grasp of the various literary periods throughout American history as well as the ability to analyze different genres and styles of notable American authors. As you progress through the course, you will gain an appreciation for American literature and an understanding of how the literature of the day acted as a reflection of the historical period from which it evolved. This course will also give you the opportunity to hone your own writing skills as you identify the characteristics of effective writing for a variety of different purposes and audiences.

Eighth-grade English Language Arts will provide you with a strong foundation for high school. Grounded in Common Core State Standards, the content of this course emphasizes critical reading, writing, and thinking. You will read and analyze high-quality literary and informational texts. You will write original texts in multiple genres. Language and its conventions will be emphasized throughout, and opportunities to examine the spoken word will be provided as well. Whether you choose to pursue higher education or the world of work, or both, you will be expected to have certain basic skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening. While you probably won

English II is the second in a sequence of English courses for high school students. These courses seek to give you the necessary reading, writing, thinking, and research skills to find success in college or the workplace. As the second course, English II challenges you to look deeper within a text for its meaning and provide thoughtful, analytical, and persuasive responses. You will be expected to build literary analysis from the texts as well as outside sources of knowledge. You will first learn to dissect a text for varied levels of meaning, how to interpret this meaning with a critical eye, and how to look beyond the text for its relevance. You will then be expected to read a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts of different lengths, complexities, and genres, and respond to them through questions, annotations, independent research, and essay writing. Texts and assignments will gradually increase in rigor, challenging you to improve the efficacy and complexity of your analysis and writing skills. Bec…

English III, American Literature, explores the literature of America from the narratives of the early colonists to the foundational documents of our forefathers, and the literature of our modern times. In English III, you will gain a firm grasp of the various literary periods throughout American history as well as the ability to analyze different genres and styles of notable American authors. As you progress through the course, you will gain an appreciation for American literature and an understanding of how the literature of the day acted as a reflection of the historical period from which it evolved. This course will also give you the opportunity to hone your own writing skills as you identify the characteristics of effective writing for a variety of different purposes and audiences.

Eighth-grade English Language Arts will provide you with a strong foundation for high school. Grounded in Common Core State Standards, the content of this course emphasizes critical reading, writing, and thinking. You will read and analyze high-quality literary and informational texts. You will write original texts in multiple genres. Language and its conventions will be emphasized throughout, and opportunities to examine the spoken word will be provided as well. Whether you choose to pursue higher education or the world of work, or both, you will be expected to have certain basic skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening. While you probably won

People sometimes think that math is just about number crunching. However, that’s not always the case. Patterns and letters (called variables) are used in math to help represent real-life situations. In addition to learning about variables, parts of this course will help you see a side of math you might not have even realized is out there. This course includes six units. Topics covered include multiplication and division of fractions, ratio reasoning, unit rates, expressions, equations, area, surface area, volume, and statistics. As you work through the six units, you will notice that some of the material builds on your prior knowledge, while some of the concepts will be new ideas that will serve as building blocks for your future math career. In unit 1, you will build on your current understanding of fractions, multiplication, and division to understand why the procedures for multiplying and dividing fractions make sense. The number system in its basic sense is probably already familiar to you. During…

Numbers are everywhere. When we are shopping we are faced with decimals. In our cooking, we work with fractions. When it comes to the stock market, we can see positives and negatives. In this course, we will we focus on these rational numbers and understanding the operations when working with them. This course includes five units with rational numbers used throughout. In Unit 1, we will build on our skills with integers, decimals, and fractions, with a focus on the properties that are at the heart of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. These skills are used to help build an understanding of proportional relationships through ratios, rates, and scale drawings, and similar figures in Unit 2. Variables will join the rational numbers in Unit 3 so that real-life mathematical problems can be expressed and solved. Mathematical reasoning will continue to grow in this unit as simple equations and inequalities are used to model different real-life scenarios. Two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes…

Algebra is incorporated into a lot of daily activities even when you don’t realize you are using it. Whether you are planning a vacation, deciding on a job, shopping, building something, planning a party, monitoring your heartbeat, or dieting, algebra can help you get a job done or make successful decisions. This course includes 10 units that will help you in this endeavor. This course is a continuation of the development of concepts and problem-solving methods learned in pre-algebra courses. Topics in this course include expressions, functions, equations and inequalities, exponentials, quadratics, piecewise and absolute value functions, systems, and statistics. The purpose of this course is to build a strong algebra background that is needed to be successful in the upper level mathematics courses, as well as to gain the logic needed to solve real-world applications. In Unit 1, you will build on your skills with activities that will help with the modeling and graphing in all future units. You will also…

Geometry comes from the Greek roots geo-, meaning Earth, and metron, meaning measure. Thus, geometry literally means the process of measuring the Earth. In a more mathematical sense, this course looks at geometric figures that we see in everyday life to understand the patterns in their attributes and how their measures relate to these patterns. It expands on the basic geometric concepts learned in previous math courses, through the applications of these concepts in new contexts. You will learn to develop formal proofs that support patterns and rules of geometric figures previously investigated, including congruent and similar figures, triangles, quadrilaterals, and circles. From here, the course expands on your knowledge about triangles and the Pythagorean theorem, introducing trigonometry of both right triangles and general triangles. The course will help you develop links between the attributes of two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures; help you develop formulas for calculating the volume of prisms…

The purpose of this course is to familiarize you with the fundamentals of algebraic expressions, including adding, multiplying, factoring, and simplifying; solving equations and inequalities; performing operations on functions; and performing graphing and basic functional analysis. This course is intended to extend your knowledge beyond the foundational information learned in Algebra I and prepare you for more advanced topics, leading toward trigonometry and calculus. Among the benefits that you will gain from learning the material contained here are adding tools for critical thinking, improving skill sets for use in the sciences, and improving your competitiveness in preparation for college applications. A strong understanding of mathematics is critical toward earning scholarships and gaining admission to many top universities, and the knowledge gained here will help in that regard.

Mathematics comes together in this course. You enter precalculus with an abundant array of experience in mathematics, and this course offers an opportunity to make connections among the big ideas you encountered earlier. It also assists you in developing fluency with the tools used in learning calculus. The focus of this course is the concept of function - it’s with functions that mathematicians and scientists can model the world and make leaps of invention, sending rockets to far planets, determining the future size of populations, and finding the amount of earth to be moved when creating new roads. The unit begins by defining and exploring certain attributes of functions and continues with specific kinds of functions - linear, polynomial, rational, logarithmic, and exponential. In addition to precalculus being important for many fields, the subject is obviously designed to prepare you for calculus, which is the mathematics of things that are changing. Calculus allows us to find areas of strangely curv…

Calculus AB is primarily concerned with developing your understanding of the concepts of calculus and providing you with its methods and applications. The course emphasizes a multi-representational approach to calculus, with concepts, results, and problems being expressed graphically, numerically, analytically, and verbally. Broad concepts and widely applicable methods are also emphasized. The focus of the course is neither manipulation nor memorization of an extensive taxonomy of functions, curves, theorems, or problem types, but rather, the course uses the unifying themes of derivatives, integrals, limits, approximation, and applications and modeling to become a cohesive whole. The course is a yearlong high school mathematics course designed to prepare you to write and pass the AP Calculus AB test in May. Passing the test can result in one semester of college credit in mathematics.

Welcome to the amazing world of statistics! You might be thinking that the topic is just about a bunch of charts, graphs, and odd-looking formulas, but in fact, it is a fascinating and challenging field of study. In this course, we will indeed study those charts and graphs, and yes, that array of complex formulas. But beyond those tools, we will find an entire new way of thinking, a new way of approaching and understanding the world around us. We will learn why taking aspirin helps lower the risk and severity of a heart attack; how researchers have determined that the more friends you have on a social networking site, the more likely you are to have fewer friends in real life; and how political pollsters almost always know the outcome of an election even before the polls open. The course is divided into 10 units of study. The first two units are devoted to simple statistical calculations and graphical representations of data. Most of this material will be familiar to you from previous math or science course…

Calculus AB is primarily concerned with developing your understanding of the concepts of calculus and providing you with its methods and applications. The course emphasizes a multi-representational approach to calculus, with concepts, results, and problems being expressed graphically, numerically, analytically, and verbally. Broad concepts and widely applicable methods are also emphasized. The focus of the course is neither manipulation nor memorization of an extensive taxonomy of functions, curves, theorems, or problem types, but rather, the course uses the unifying themes of derivatives, integrals, limits, approximation, and applications and modeling to become a cohesive whole. The course is a yearlong high school mathematics course designed to prepare you to write and pass the AP Calculus AB test in May. Passing the test can result in one semester of college credit in mathematics.

Geometry comes from the Greek roots geo-, meaning Earth, and metron, meaning measure. Thus, geometry literally means the process of measuring the Earth. In a more mathematical sense, this course looks at geometric figures that we see in everyday life to understand the patterns in their attributes and how their measures relate to these patterns. It expands on the basic geometric concepts learned in previous math courses, through the applications of these concepts in new contexts. You will learn to develop formal proofs that support patterns and rules of geometric figures previously investigated, including congruent and similar figures, triangles, quadrilaterals, and circles. From here, the course expands on your knowledge about triangles and the Pythagorean theorem, introducing trigonometry of both right triangles and general triangles. The course will help you develop links between the attributes of two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures; help you develop formulas for calculating the volume of prisms…