High School Curriculum

Students will explore the interconnections between art, culture, and historical context using critical analysis through the critical lenses of artistic expression, cultural awareness, and purpose. Using a defined art historical skill set and reflective learning, students will analyze relationships across cultures with a global lens. The examination of how people have responded to and communicated their experiences through art will enable students to think conceptually about art ranging from prehistoric to contemporary. Students will be active participants, engaging with art and its context as they read, research, and collaborate to learn about art, artists, art-making, and responses to and interpretations of art.

This course is designed to provide a college-level experience and prepare students for the AP® exam. Students will be provided with a foundation for developing an understanding for biological concepts through scientific inquiry, investigations, interactive experiences, higher-order thinking, real-world applications, writing analytical essays, statistical analysis, interpreting and collecting data. The key big ideas of the AP® Biology course are system interactions, evolution, energetics, information storage, and transmission. Students will participate in a variety of engaging activities that enhance their mastery of biology concepts.

AP® Calculus AB is designed to be the equivalent of a first-term college calculus course devoted to topics in differential and integral calculus. The course focuses on students’ understanding of calculus concepts and provides experience with methods and applications. Through the use of big ideas of calculus (e.g., modeling change, approximation and limits, and analysis of functions), each course becomes a cohesive whole, rather than a collection of unrelated topics. Both AP® Calculus courses require students to use definitions and theorems to build arguments and justify conclusions. The courses feature a multi-representational approach to calculus, with concepts, results, and problems expressed graphically, numerically, analytically, and verbally. Exploring connections among these representations builds an understanding of how calculus applies limits to develop important ideas, definitions, formulas, and theorems. A sustained emphasis on clear communication of methods, reasoning, justifications, and conclusions is essential.

AP® Calculus BC is designed to be the equivalent to both first and second-term college calculus courses. AP® Calculus BC applies the content and skills learned in AP® Calculus AB to parametrically defined curves, polar curves, and vector-valued functions; develops additional integration techniques and applications; and introduces the topics of sequences and series. The course focuses on students’ understanding of calculus concepts and provides experience with methods and applications. Through the use of big ideas of calculus (e.g., modeling change, approximation and limits, and analysis of functions), each course becomes a cohesive whole, rather than a collection of unrelated topics. Both AP® Calculus courses require students to use definitions and theorems to build arguments and justify conclusions. The courses feature a multi-representational approach to calculus, with concepts, results, and problems expressed graphically, numerically, analytically, and verbally. Exploring connections among these representations builds an understanding of how calculus applies limits to develop important ideas, definitions, formulas, and theorems. A sustained emphasis on clear communication of methods, reasoning, justifications, and conclusions is essential.

The AP® Chemistry course provides students with a college-level foundation to support future advanced course work in chemistry. Students cultivate their understanding of chemistry through inquiry-based investigations, as they explore topics such as: atomic structure, intermolecular forces and bonding, chemical reactions, kinetics, thermodynamics, and equilibrium. Created by the AP® Chemistry Development Committee, the course curriculum is compatible with many Chemistry courses in colleges and universities.

The AP® Computer Science A course is equivalent to the first term of a college-level computer science course. The course involves developing the skills to write programs or part of programs to correctly solve specific problems. AP® Computer Science A also emphasizes the design issues that make programs understandable, adaptable, and when appropriate, reusable. At the same time, the development of useful computer programs and classes is used as a context for introducing other important concepts in computer science, including the development and analysis of algorithms, the development and use of fundamental data structures, and the study of standard algorithms and typical applications. In addition, an understanding of the basic hardware and software components of computer systems and the responsible use of these systems are integral parts of the course.

This course provides high school students with college-level instruction in analyzing and writing various texts. The course covers topics in language and rhetoric as well as expository and persuasive writing. Students become skilled readers of prose written in various periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts. The study of texts from both the reader and writer perspectives develops an understanding of the function, effect, and purpose behind the choices writers make, leading students to improve their own composition skills. This course will effectively prepare students for the AP® Exam and learning beyond the exam by enabling them to read, analyze, and write about complex texts.

This course provides high school students with college-level instruction in active, close reading and analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of carefully selected works of literary merit, students learn to consider how a work’s style, figurative language, theme, and other literary elements contribute to its cultural significance. The approach to analyzing prose and poetry allows students to establish connections, make observations about textual details, and sharpen their understanding of these nuances through their own writing. This course will effectively prepare students for the AP® Exam and learning beyond the exam by enabling them to read, analyze, and write about complex texts.

With the current changes in global climate, rising sea levels, and warming oceans, it is important for students to discover the state of Earth’s systems and the consequences of human activities. AP® Environmental Science provides students with a global view of their world and their role in it. It examines the scientific principles and concepts required to understand the interrelationships between ocean, land, and atmosphere that guide the natural world and allow Earth to be a planet suitable for life. Laboratory activities within the course support their learning of these relationships through reflective, hands-on, or virtual experiences. In addition, students identify and analyze environmental problems that are natural and human-made, determining their own ecological footprint in the world to discover how their activities affect the world around them. They evaluate the relative risks associated with environmental problems and examine alternative solutions, such as clean energy, sustainable practices, and conservation, for resolving or preventing future environmental problems.

AP® European History is designed to be the equivalent of a two-semester introductory college or university European history course. In AP® European History students investigate significant events, individuals, developments, and processes in four historical periods from approximately 1450 to the present. Students develop and use the same skills, practices, and methods employed by historians: analyzing historical evidence; contextualization; comparison; causation; change and continuity over time; and argument development. The course also provides six themes that students explore throughout the course in order to make connections among historical developments in different times and places: interaction of Europe and the world; poverty and prosperity; objective knowledge and subjective visions; states and other institutions of power; individual and society; and national and European identity.