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Search every subject world, from Preschool to Grade 12. The first five courses of every subject path are free.

12 courses

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English · Grade 11

American Literature in Historical Context

Learners travel through three centuries of American writing in short, public-domain excerpts: Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Willa Cather and Langston Hughes. They connect each text to its moment, analyze how history shapes theme and style, test the limits of tidy “movement” labels, and ask what these voices mean now. Walt Whitman's elegy for Lincoln serves as the unseen text in the quiz.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 140 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

English · Grade 11

Rhetorical Analysis and Audience

Learners analyze how great American speakers adapt to their audiences. They study Frederick Douglass's 1852 address “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” to see how a speaker can honor and confront the same listeners, and Patrick Henry's 1775 call to arms (as reconstructed decades later by William Wirt) to trace how a speech escalates. They learn to write rhetorical analysis that explains choices, effects and purpose rather than spotting devices.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 140 min
  • Quiz: 10 questions
Free starter

English · Grade 11

Argument, Evidence and Warrants

Learners take arguments apart with the Toulmin model: claim, grounds, warrant, backing, qualifier and rebuttal. They uncover the unstated assumptions (warrants) that connect evidence to claims, test whether audiences would accept them, and use these tools on two foundational American texts: the Declaration of Independence and Federalist No. 51. They finish by building their own argument with a qualified claim and explicit reasoning.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 140 min
  • Quiz: 10 questions
Free starter

English · Grade 11

Compare Perspectives and Traditions

Learners compare American voices that answered the same questions differently. They weigh Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta address against W. E. B. Du Bois's response in The Souls of Black Folk, trace how the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments reworks the Declaration of Independence, consider Zitkala-Ša's account of a boarding school, and synthesize these perspectives in writing. An optional Going further lesson weighs two readings of Phillis Wheatley's “On Being Brought from Africa to America.”

  • 5 lessons
  • About 145 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

English · Grade 11

Close Reading across Genres

Learners practice close reading in three genres: poetry by Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman; fiction in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”; and argumentative prose in Henry David Thoreau's “Civil Disobedience.” They analyze diction, imagery, sound, syntax and narration, and compare how genre shapes these moves. The quiz turns to Macbeth's “To-morrow” speech and an essay sentence by Emerson. An optional Going further lesson weighs two invented critics' readings of Gilman's story.

  • 5 lessons
  • About 140 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

English · Grade 11

Research and Source Synthesis

Learners research a contested policy the way scholars do. Using an invented source set about a district's proposed four-day school week, they build a synthesis matrix, evaluate each source's methods and possible bias, write paragraphs that put sources in conversation and weigh conflicting evidence, and integrate and cite multiple sources in MLA style, including how to quote a famous speech that survives only in a later reconstruction.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 145 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

English · Grade 11

Compose and Revise Sustained Arguments

Learners build full-length arguments. Working on the question of whether high schools should replace some final exams with portfolios, they craft complex claims with qualifiers and stakes, choose classical, Rogerian or problem-solution organization to fit an audience, weave counterarguments through a sustained line of reasoning, and revise using reverse outlines and targeted checks for coherence, evidence and style.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 150 min
  • Quiz: 10 questions

English · Grade 11

Style, Voice and Linguistic Choices

Learners study language as a set of choices that change with audience and history. They analyze voice, including the vernacular voice of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn; shape periodic, cumulative and balanced sentences and deliberate fragments; learn why usage “rules” such as split infinitives and less/fewer are conventions with histories, and how to resolve contested usage; and practice hyphenation and shifts of register. They finish with a style imitation and an explanation of their choices.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 135 min
  • Quiz: 10 questions

English · Grade 11

Media, Public Discourse and Credibility

Learners become skeptical, fair-minded readers of public information. They distinguish news, analysis, opinion, sponsored content and satire; analyze how framing, selection and omission shape a story; evaluate statistics, including relative versus absolute risk, base rates and misleading averages; and verify claims by tracing them to their sources, while learning the signals and limits of spotting AI-generated media. Mark Twain's observation that opinions follow interests frames the course.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 140 min
  • Quiz: 10 questions

English · Grade 11

Collaborative Discussion and Presentation

Learners study discussion and presentation at an advanced level using Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865). They pose questions that probe reasoning and assumptions, synthesize a group's competing views and resolve apparent contradictions, evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning and rhetoric, and plan a presentation with a distinct perspective and purposeful, accessible digital media. Speaking practice is optional and unscored.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 135 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

English · Grade 11

Independent Reading and Critical Response

Learners build habits for sustained independent reading of complex texts, write critical responses that interpret and evaluate rather than summarize or merely react, apply five critical lenses (formalist, historical, reader-response, feminist and economic), and treat narrator reliability as an interpretive question. Short excerpts come from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) and two works by Herman Melville. An optional honors-style lesson weighs two competing readings of Nick Carraway's claim to honesty.

  • 5 lessons
  • About 140 min
  • Quiz: 10 questions

English · Grade 11

A Research and Rhetoric Portfolio

The Grade 11 capstone. Learners write a full rhetorical analysis of a passage from Susan B. Anthony's 1873 speech defending her vote, with a brief comparison to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; build a researched argument that synthesizes invented sources on lowering the voting age for local elections, with accurate MLA-style citations; revise both pieces from specific feedback; and curate a portfolio with a reflective introduction that shows growth with evidence.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 150 min
  • Quiz: 10 questions