Tuition-Free Online Middle School in West Virginia

ENGLISH 6A

In this course, students will read and analyze informational texts. These texts take various forms, including biographies, personal accounts of events, instructional documents, film reviews, and persuasive letters. The course’s reading selections demonstrate ways to understand explicit and implicit information, central ideas, key details, and claims and arguments, among other ideas and concepts. Over the course, students will read the novel The Road by Jack London. They will also examine informational texts to better their understanding of the science behind sunsets, the lives of several important historical figures, the history of the Olympics, and the process of flotation used by archaeologists, among other topics.

ENGLISH 6B

In this course, students will focus on learning reading skills based on literary texts. The texts come from several genres, including novels, excerpts from short stories, poems, and plays. The course’s reading selections demonstrate ways to understand explicit and implicit information, themes, characters, plot, poetic techniques, and figurative language, among other ideas and concepts. Students will read the entire novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum and read a portion of it in almost every lesson throughout the course. They will read excerpts from the novels Little Women and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and stories and plays about challenging situations, getting caught doing something wrong, finding something unexpected, and why the crocodile has a wide mouth. Additionally, students will read poems from famous poets, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg, to name a few. Students will also watch several videos of well-known poems read aloud.

MATH 6A

In this course, students will build on previously learned concepts like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. They will deepen their knowledge of arithmetic with fractions and work with decimals and negative numbers. They will apply these new skills to help solve real-world problems using statistics, ratios, unit conversions, and geometry and expand their ability to write and evaluate expressions involving new concepts like variables and exponents. Students will also begin working with equations and learn how to solve them.

MATH 6B

In this course, students will build on previously learned concepts, like positive and negative integers and fractions, to learn about rational numbers and how to compare them. They will find the distance between points on the number line and in the coordinate plane and then solve geometry problems involving these concepts. They will study the relationships between variables and how to represent them in various ways. They will learn about ratios and unit rates and then use them to solve real-world problems. Students will also work with data and discover multiple ways to display data and how to describe data mathematically.

SCIENCE 6A

This course focuses mainly on plants and animals. The course begins with an introduction to cells. The course then discusses the organization hierarchy by discussing tissues, organs, and organ systems. Once students learn what makes up organisms, they will examine their interactions. The course will also cover the growth of plants and animals and what factors affect their development. Students will then track the life cycles of plants and animals and find out how they reproduce.

SCIENCE 6B

Second Semester: This semester begins with an introduction to energy and matter and different types of energy and energy transformations. Students focus on natural cycles, the effect of the sun on ocean and air currents, various types of pollution, and the impact of greenhouse gases on the Earth’s climate. This semester uses many creative and interactive assets, including virtual labs and review games, to immerse students in a 21st-century online learning environment.

SOCIAL STUDIES 6A

Sixth grade students will study the beginning of early civilizations through the Gupta dynasty. Students will learn the geographical, social, economic, and political foundations of early civilizations progressing through the Gupta dynasty. They will analyze the shift from nomadic societies to agricultural societies. Students will study the development of civilizations, including the areas of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ancient Israel, and India. The study of these civilizations will include the impact of geography, early history, cultural development, and economic change. The geographic focus will be studying physical and political features, economic growth and resources, and migration patterns. This class will conclude with the Gupta dynasty.

SOCIAL STUDIES 6B

Second Semester: Students explore the geographic, political, economic, and cultural development of Ancient Greece, Rome, and China. The course examines the birth and spread of Judaism, Christianity, Taoism, and Confucianism. Students apply historical thinking skills to understand the implications of ancient literature, art, and philosophy on later Western culture.

• Physical Ed – Semester
• Health – Semester
• Digital Citizenship – Semester
• Music – Semester

ENGLISH 7A

In this course, students will read and analyze informational texts. These texts take various forms, including biographies, personal accounts of events, presidential speeches, and persuasive letters. The reading selections demonstrate ways to understand explicit and implicit information, central ideas and key details, and claims and arguments, among other ideas and concepts. Students will read the biography The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. They will study informational texts of significant historical figures, such as Jane Goodall and Zora Neale Hurston. They will learn about distant places such as Dubai, the Galápagos Islands, and the Hoover Dam. Additionally, they will explore the similarities between country music and hip-hop, among other topics.

ENGLISH 7B

In this course, students learn reading skills based on literary texts. The texts come from various genres and include a novel, and excerpts from novels, short stories, poems, and plays. The course’s reading selections demonstrate ways to understand explicit and implicit information, themes, characters, plot, poetic and dramatic techniques, and figurative language, among other ideas and concepts. Students will read the entire novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, covering a portion of it in almost every lesson throughout the course. They will read excerpts from the novel Black Beauty and a passage from Grimm’s “The Golden Bird” fairy tale. Students will read stories and plays about challenging situations, discovering alternate realities, and robot rebellions. They will witness powerful historical events and people via film and audio and compare how those portrayals differ from written text. Additionally, students will read poems from famous poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and William Wordsworth, to name a few.

MATH 7A

Students begin this course by learning to add and multiply rational numbers using number lines, rules, and properties. Then, they focus on proportional relationships in tables, diagrams, graphs, equations, and verbal descriptions. They will learn how to solve problems by finding and comparing unit rates. Students will learn to rewrite expressions using properties and write and solve simple linear equations using different methods. The course covers probability and statistics, where students will interpret and calculate simple probabilities and learn about populations and samples. The final topic is geometry, where they learn to solve problems about scale drawing, circles, and angle relationships and draw some geometric shapes.

MATH 7B

In this course, students will subtract and divide rational numbers using number lines, rules, and properties and apply strategies to perform four operations. They will study and interpret proportional relationships, write equivalent expressions and explain their relationships, and write and solve linear equations and inequalities to solve real-world problems that involve rational numbers. Next, they’ll compare two data sets of random samples using their center values and variability measures and make conclusions about their populations. Finally, students will progress into geometry topics and work on problems that involve the area, surface area, volume, and cross-sections of two- or three-dimensional objects.

SCIENCE 7A

Science 7 (1 of 2) focuses on science concepts from chemistry, biology, and ecology. Science 7 (1 of 2) explores the relationship between matter and energy. Next, the course examines chemical reactions. Students will then use their knowledge of matter, energy, and chemical reactions to build on their understanding of cellular respiration and photosynthesis. Students will explore the world of synthetic materials and learn about their production and impact on society.

SCIENCE 7B

Science 7 (2 of 2) focuses on science concepts from ecology and geology. Science 7 (2 of 2) begins by exploring the ecosystem’s interactions between and among organisms. Next, the course examines different types of rocks, the rock cycle, and Earth’s resources. Students can then use their knowledge of Earth’s processes to better understand how natural hazard events and severe weather events occur. Students will then learn how technology can assist in natural hazard events and discover other benefits of technology. Finally, students will track some of Earth’s changes through time.

SOCIAL STUDIES 7A

This seventh-grade course explores Europe, Africa, and Asia’s social, cultural, and technological changes in AD 500–1789. After reviewing the ancient world and how archaeologists and historians uncover the past, students study the history and geography of great civilizations developing concurrently throughout the world during medieval and early modern times. These include the Roman Empire, the early Muslim empires, and empires in Africa, the Americas, and East Asia.

SOCIAL STUDIES 7B

In this second segment of the course, students study the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Age of Exploration, examining the growing economic interaction among civilizations. Students learn about the exchange of ideas, beliefs, technologies, and commodities. They will learn about the resulting growth of Enlightenment philosophy and the new examination of the concepts of reason and authority, the natural rights of human beings and the divine right of kings, experimentalism in science, and the dogma of belief. Finally, students assess the political forces let loose by the Enlightenment, particularly the rise of democratic ideas, and they learn about the continuing influence of these ideas in the modern world.

• Physical Education – Semester
• Health – Semester
• Digital Art and Design – Semester
• Career Exploration 1 – Semester

ENGLISH 8A

This course teaches students to read and analyze literary and informational texts. These texts will come from several genres and many sources, including short stories, novels, myths, poems, magazine articles, and autobiographies. The course instructs students to analyze written works for explicit and implicit information, themes, central ideas, and figurative language. Students will read the novel The Call of the Wild and short stories such as “The Lottery,” “A Sound of Thunder,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” They examine informational texts to better their understanding of the Yukon, the Klondike Gold Rush, dog sledding, and wolves. The course covers grammar basics, usage, and punctuation, including phrases and clauses, sentence structures, ellipses, dashes, and commas. Students will analyze fictional narrative elements to plan, create, write, revise, and edit their fictional narrative. Numerous infographics and videos help build on the instruction.

ENGLISH 8B

This course teaches reading skills based on literary and informational texts. These texts come from several genres and many sources, including short stories, novels, poems, Internet articles, and political speeches. The course’s reading selections demonstrate ways to understand explicit and implicit information, theme, central idea, and figurative language, among other ideas and concepts. Students will read parts of the novels Fahrenheit 451, Hatchet, and Black Beauty, as well as short stories such as “How the World Was Saved,” “Harrison Bergeron,” and “All Summer in a Day.” They will analyze informational texts to improve their understanding of global warming and its impact on Earth, the fast-food industry’s influence on our lives, the extensive use of corn in our food, and the relationship between sleep and learning capabilities, among other topics. Students will learn grammar basics, usage, punctuation, and informational and argument writing. They will master techniques that help them better appreciate texts and writing. Numerous infographics and videos help build on the instruction.

MATH 8A

In this course, students begin with algebra fundamentals. They compare, order, and perform operations on rational and irrational numbers; use inverse operations to solve for a variable in one- and two-step equations; write and solve two-step equations from contextual situations; and analyze properties of functions, focusing on linear functions. The following study area includes working with very large and very small numbers. Students will solve expressions with powers of a common base, convert numbers to and from scientific notation, and perform operations using scientific notation. The last topic covered is geometry, where students will execute rigid transformations on figures and demonstrate the congruence of figures through a series of rigid transformations.

MATH 8B

This course builds upon the areas covered in Math 8A. After reviewing how to solve one- and two-step equations, they will learn multi-step equations and proportions. Students will apply their knowledge of proportional relationships to geometry to perform transformations on figures and prove the similarity of figures through a series of rigid transformations and dilations. Students will further their understanding of linear relationships by recognizing and contrasting the characteristics of lines and their equations. They will learn how to solve systems of linear equations using graphs, substitution, and elimination. The course enhances algebraic skills by applying them to statistics for analyzing and interpreting patterns in bivariate data. Finally, students will explore and analyze three-dimensional shapes, including cylinders, cones, and spheres.

SCIENCE 8A

Science 8 (1 of 2) focuses on life science concepts of biology, ecology, and environmental science. Students will explore the nature of science and have engineering and technology practices threaded throughout the course. Students begin with an introduction to scientific processes. Then, they study cells, heredity, evolution, ecology, and genetic technology.

SCIENCE 8B

In Science 8 (2 of 2), students will focus on physical science concepts, including topics from physics and space science. They will explore the history of science and highlight influential scientists who laid the groundwork for the fields students are about to discover. Students will start with physics—one of the more interactive sciences seen in action in the world. They will then explore concepts of velocity and acceleration and dive into forces and Newton’s laws of motion. Students will also explore space, including the solar system, planets, and the Moon.

WV History

• Physical Education – Semester
• Health – Semester
• Career Exploration 2 – Semester
• STEM- Semester