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

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History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 8

Goals, Resources and Opportunity Costs

Every financial decision starts with limited resources and competing goals. Through fictional teenagers' choices, learners distinguish needs from wants, write SMART goals and calculate the saving needed to reach them, measure opportunity costs in money and time, think at the margin, and learn to ignore sunk costs. The elective uses fictional people and numbers and never gives personal financial advice.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 110 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 8

Income, Work and Taxes in Fictional Cases

How does work turn into income, and income into take-home pay? With fictional workers, learners compare hourly, salary and other pay, calculate overtime under the federal rule, convert salaries to hourly rates, trace gross pay to net pay through payroll taxes and a fictional withholding table, apply a fictional progressive tax table (marginal versus average rates), and weigh career choices using human capital and total compensation. No real tax filing advice is given.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 115 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 8

Budgets, Cash Flow and Tradeoffs

A budget is a plan for money before it is spent. Using fictional young adults, learners build a monthly budget from net income, separate fixed from variable expenses, follow cash flow through the month to catch shortfalls, plan for irregular income and emergencies, test one common rule of thumb (50/30/20) and its limits, and adjust a budget when circumstances change.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 115 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 8

Saving, Compounding and Inflation

Why does starting early matter, and why can money sitting still lose value? Learners calculate simple interest (I = Prt) and compound growth (A = P(1 + r/n)^nt), estimate doubling time with the rule of 72, compare short and long time horizons, measure inflation's effect on purchasing power, approximate real returns, and learn how deposit insurance protects bank and credit union deposits. All accounts and rates are fictional, and no products are recommended.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 120 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 8

Borrowing, Interest and Credit Concepts

Borrowing lets people buy now and pay later, at a price. With fictional loans and cards, learners calculate interest and total cost, see why paying only a small fixed amount on a credit card can take years, follow how loan payments split between interest and principal, compare offers by APR and total cost, learn the factor categories behind credit reports and scores, and recognize red flags of high-cost and predatory lending. No lenders or products are recommended.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 125 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 8

Consumer Decisions and Fraud Awareness

Smart buying and staying safe from scams. Learners compare unit prices, recognize marketing tactics designed to speed up spending, calculate the yearly cost of subscriptions, read key contract terms, and learn the common patterns of scams (phishing, impostors, advance-fee and prize scams) and their red flags: pressure, secrecy and unusual payment methods. They practise a safe response: stop, verify through official channels, tell a trusted adult, and report.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 120 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 8

Risk, Insurance and Diversification Concepts

Life involves risks: accidents, illness, lost property and investments that fall in value. Learners calculate expected loss, compare strategies for managing risk (avoid, reduce, keep, transfer), see how insurance pools risk, work out costs under a fictional health plan (premium, deductible, copay, coinsurance and out-of-pocket maximum), and explore why diversification and time horizon matter when investing. Everything is fictional and conceptual; no insurance or investment advice is given.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 125 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 8

A Financial Decision-Making Project

The elective's capstone. Learners work through a fictional household's year: Carmen and her brother Luis share an apartment and must balance their budget, build an emergency fund, decide how to finance a used car, and choose between two health plans. They calculate each piece, state their assumptions, weigh trade-offs, and write a recommendation memo that presents options fairly. Everything is fictional; nothing is personal financial advice.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 150 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

US History through Questions and Evidence

Learners open the year of US history by practicing the core moves of historical thinking on one big question: how did American attitudes toward foreign alliances and world power change from Washington to NATO? They source documents with the HIPP method, trace continuity and change over time, debate turning points and periodization, and write an evidence-based argument.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 120 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Scientific Questions about Behavior

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Learners see how it became a science, turn everyday questions into testable ones, write hypotheses with operational definitions, distinguish theories from hypotheses and falsifiable from unfalsifiable claims, recognize how intuition and hindsight bias mislead us, and explain one behavior (teenagers' late sleep timing) at biological, psychological and social-cultural levels. The elective is about research literacy, not diagnosis or therapy.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 115 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Indigenous Peoples, Colonization and Exchange

Learners begin US history long before 1607, with the diverse societies of Native North America. They compare Spanish, French, Dutch and English colonial projects, analyze encounters through Indigenous diplomacy, alliances and resistance (from the Powhatan Confederacy to the Pueblo Revolt and Metacom's War), and trace how English colonies moved from indentured servitude to hereditary, race-based slavery.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 125 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Research Methods and Ethics

How do psychologists gather trustworthy evidence, and how do they protect the people they study? Learners compare case studies, naturalistic observation and surveys (including sampling), interpret correlations without assuming causation, design experiments with independent and dependent variables, random assignment, control groups, placebos and double-blind procedures, and judge validity and reliability. They then study research ethics: informed consent, protection from harm, confidentiality, deception and debriefing, ethics review boards, the Belmont Report's principles, and the historical cases that made these rules necessary.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Revolution, Constitutions and Political Debate

Learners analyze the imperial crisis that turned British subjects into revolutionaries, the hard choices the war forced on Patriots, Loyalists, enslaved people and Native nations, the great debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the Constitution, and the bitter conflict between Hamilton and Jefferson that produced the first political parties and, in 1800, a peaceful transfer of power.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 130 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Biological Foundations and Limits of Models

How does the brain produce behavior, and how do we know? Learners trace how neurons communicate (action potentials and neurotransmitters), map the nervous system and major brain structures, and examine the evidence behind brain claims: famous case studies (Phineas Gage and Henry Molaison) and how retellings changed them, EEG and fMRI and their limits (including the multiple-comparisons problem), plasticity, and heritability as a population statistic. Throughout, they ask how all models simplify. No medical or clinical content is included.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Sensation, Perception and Cognition

Our senses collect information, but our brains construct what we experience and think. Learners study transduction, thresholds and Weber's law; bottom-up and top-down processing, grouping principles and illusions; selective attention, inattentional blindness and change blindness; and the mental shortcuts (availability, anchoring, representativeness) and confirmation bias that shape judgment. They connect classic studies to everyday reasoning and to evaluating evidence.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Expansion, Slavery and Sectional Conflict

Learners analyze how cotton and the market revolution bound North and South together while expanding slavery, examine Manifest Destiny and the Mexican–American War from US and Mexican perspectives, trace how the question of slavery in the territories destroyed political compromise between 1846 and 1860, and evaluate the causes of secession using the words of participants.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 130 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Civil War, Emancipation and Reconstruction

Learners trace how a war to preserve the Union became a war that destroyed slavery, through the actions of enslaved people, soldiers, Congress and Lincoln. They read Lincoln's own words on the war's meaning, analyze the political struggles, achievements and violent overthrow of Reconstruction, and compare how historians from the Dunning School to W. E. B. Du Bois and later scholars have interpreted the era.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Learning and Memory

How do we learn from experience, and why do memories fade or change? Learners analyze classical conditioning (Pavlov), operant conditioning (reinforcement, punishment and schedules), and observational learning (Bandura), then study memory as encoding, storage and retrieval: working memory, the forgetting curve (Ebbinghaus), the testing effect and spacing (Roediger and Karpicke), and the reconstructive nature of memory shown by Loftus and Palmer's 'smashed' versus 'hit' study. Examples are everyday and nonclinical.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Industry, Migration and Reform

From the 1870s to 1920, conflict among corporations, workers and farmers reshaped American politics. Learners analyze the Gilded Age economy and its battles, the 'new immigration' and nativist backlash, the Populist challenge and the Progressive reforms that expanded the federal government's role, and the struggle for women's suffrage, while evaluating who gained from reform and who was left out.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 130 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Development and Social Context

How do people develop, and how do other people shape what we do? Learners compare Piaget's stage theory and its critiques with Vygotsky's social view of learning, examine attachment research (Harlow's monkey studies and their ethics, Ainsworth's Strange Situation) and Erikson's psychosocial stages, then study social influence: Asch's conformity experiments, variations of Milgram's obedience studies, and the bystander effect, including how the story of Kitty Genovese was later corrected. They close by asking how culture and 'WEIRD' samples limit what psychology knows. The course describes research; it does not classify learners.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

The United States in Global Conflicts

Learners analyze key US decisions for war from 1917 to 1964, the recurring tension between national security and civil liberties (from the Espionage Act to Japanese American incarceration and McCarthyism), how historians have argued about the atomic bomb and the origins of the Cold War, and competing explanations for why the Cold War ended.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Evaluate Psychological Claims

Psychology attracts popular myths and eye-catching headlines. Learners test common claims (the '10% of the brain' myth, matching teaching to 'learning styles', 'left-brained' and 'right-brained' personalities) against evidence, study the replication crisis and the reforms it prompted (preregistration, larger samples, open data), calculate and interpret effect sizes, and build a checklist for judging media reports of psychological studies.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

A Nonclinical Research-Literacy Project

The psychology elective's capstone. Learners design (but do not run) a study on a harmless, nonclinical question, write a hypothesis with operational definitions, choose an experimental design, complete an ethics review checklist, analyze a provided fictional dataset (means, difference and effect size), identify limits, and write a plain-language summary. The model question asks whether a short end-of-class quiz improves vocabulary recall compared with rereading. No mental-health topics and no questionnaires about learners are involved.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 155 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Rights Movements and Social Change

Learners analyze how the Black freedom struggle combined a long legal campaign with mass direct action and voter registration to win the landmark laws of 1964 and 1965, examine the strategic debates within the movement, and trace how women, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, people with disabilities and LGBTQ Americans adapted its strategies. The focus is on historical strategies, institutions and evidence, not on present-day policy positions.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Economy, Technology and Institutions

Learners examine how economic crises and new technologies reshaped American institutions: competing explanations of the Great Depression, the New Deal and its critics, postwar federal programs and research that built the highway, suburban and computer age, deindustrialization and the 2008 financial crisis. They read economic data closely and compare how institutions responded to crises eighty years apart.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Contemporary Historical Questions

How can historians write about events that are still within living memory? Learners examine why sources for the recent past emerge slowly, how memory differs from history, how oral historians gather testimony ethically, and how born-digital sources change research. They apply these methods to the end of the Cold War, the September 11 attacks and their aftermath, and the digital revolution, analyzing evidence and perspectives without taking sides on current policy debates.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 130 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

Compare Primary and Secondary Sources

Historians argue with one another, and their interpretations change. Learners study historiography through two classic American debates, Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis and Charles Beard's economic interpretation of the Constitution, and the historians who challenged them. They learn to dissect a secondary argument (thesis, evidence, citations, scope), evaluate how well evidence supports a claim, and compare two interpretations of the same event.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 11

An Independent US History Investigation

The capstone of Grade 11. Learners design and carry out an independent investigation of a US history question: they write a proposal, search archives and digitized collections using period vocabulary, build an annotated bibliography, position a thesis among historians' interpretations, outline with counterarguments, and write a cited investigation that acknowledges its limits. A worked model on the Chicago Defender and the Great Migration shows each stage.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 160 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Constitutional Principles and Institutions

Learners study the principles built into the US Constitution (popular sovereignty, limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, rule of law and judicial review) through the text of Articles I–III, V and VI, Federalist No. 51 and Marbury v. Madison. They calculate the supermajorities the Constitution requires and evaluate how its institutions divide and limit power.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Rights, Liberties and Civic Responsibilities

Learners distinguish civil liberties from civil rights, trace how the Bill of Rights came to limit the states through incorporation, and analyze landmark Supreme Court cases on speech, the press and criminal justice (Schenck, Brandenburg, Tinker, New York Times v. United States, Gideon, Miranda and Mapp). They apply the Court's tests to fictional scenarios and consider the responsibilities that accompany rights, such as jury service and informed voting.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Government Powers and Public Policy

Where does government power come from, and how does it become policy? Learners classify enumerated, implied, reserved and concurrent powers, read McCulloch v. Maryland and trace the commerce clause from Gibbons v. Ogden to United States v. Lopez. They follow a bill through Congress and a regulation through notice-and-comment rulemaking, map the policy cycle and the roles of interest groups, and analyze a fictional policy proposal by its stakeholders, evidence and trade-offs without taking sides.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Citizenship, Media and Evidence

Citizens need reliable information to govern themselves. Learners distinguish news, opinion, analysis and advertising; practise lateral reading with the SIFT moves; interpret polls using sample size and margin of error; examine how recommendation algorithms shape what people see; recognize common patterns of misinformation; and study press freedom and responsibility, including New York Times v. Sullivan. All examples are fictional and politically neutral.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Microeconomic Choices, Markets and Incentives

Learners use the core tools of microeconomics on fictional markets: scarcity, opportunity cost and the production possibilities frontier; marginal benefit and marginal cost; supply, demand and equilibrium (plotted on a graph); shifts versus movements along a curve; price elasticity; price ceilings and floors; and externalities with the policy tools used to address them. Policy questions are analyzed by their trade-offs, not settled for the learner.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Macroeconomic Measures and Policy Debates

How do we measure a whole economy, and what can government do when it falters? Learners calculate GDP by the expenditure approach, convert nominal to real values, compute per-capita output, unemployment, labor force participation and CPI inflation from fictional data, and trace the business cycle. They compare fiscal and monetary policy tools and the arguments of several schools of economic thought, without being told which school is right.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Public Finance and Global Economic Connections

How do governments raise and spend money, and how do nations trade? Using fictional tax tables and countries, learners calculate taxes under progressive, proportional and regressive systems, distinguish marginal from average rates, separate deficits from debt, and examine the main categories of federal spending. They then calculate comparative advantage, analyze who gains and loses from a tariff, convert currencies and interpret trade balances, presenting the trade-offs that lead people to different policy views.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Research, Deliberation and Civic Action

How do citizens work on shared problems in their own communities? Using the fictional town of Millbrook, learners identify which level of government decides an issue, map stakeholders by interest and influence, separate positions from underlying interests, practise the norms of deliberation, follow how public comment works at local meetings, and evaluate action plans that use lawful, respectful forms of participation. The course teaches methods, not which side to take.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Compare Political and Economic Systems

Learners compare how countries organize power and economies: democratic and authoritarian regimes; presidential (United States), parliamentary (United Kingdom) and semi-presidential (France) systems; unitary, federal and confederal structures; plurality, proportional and mixed electoral systems (Germany); and market, command and mixed economies. They calculate how electoral rules turn votes into seats and analyze the trade-offs each design makes, rather than ranking systems.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Evaluate Arguments and Conflicting Evidence

Public debates are full of arguments built on evidence of uneven quality. Learners dissect arguments with the Toulmin model, identify common fallacies, distinguish causal from correlational evidence, judge study quality, catch misleading statistics (relative versus absolute risk, percent versus percentage points, truncated graphs), and practise steelmanning. They apply these tools to a fictional city's debate over speed cameras near schools, where three studies disagree.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

Personal Finance and Consumer Decisions

A compact survey of the financial documents and decisions young adults meet first. With fictional people and numbers, learners read a pay stub, interpret a loan disclosure (APR, finance charge, total of payments), check lease and contract terms, compare warranties and return policies, calculate total cost of ownership and use present value to compare offers that pay at different times. The Personal Finance and Economics elective covers these topics in more depth.

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

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 12

A Civic or Economic Research Capstone

The Grade 12 capstone. Learners choose a civic or economic question, design an evidence and data plan using public sources, analyze options against explicit criteria (effectiveness, cost, equity, feasibility, legality), and write a policy memo that presents trade-offs, counterarguments and limits. A fictional model on a city's library hours shows each stage. Learners may recommend an option or present a decision framework; no position is prescribed.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 160 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions