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Resources
Coursework
Looking for our own course offerings? — See here.
High school credits & requirements
Building your high school curriculum
The link below is a useful resource for building your college-prep high school curriculum. It leads to a page from the workbook for Homeschooling the College-Bound Student, our workshop for parents homeschooling through the high school years.
This page gives an overview of courses needed for 1) completing high school, and 2) gaining college admission:
High school requirements by state (not homeschooling requirements)
For schools, the requirements for high school graduation vary from state to state. In case you're interested in seeing the requirements for schools in your state, you may find these pages interesting—you can navigate to requirements for most states:
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The remaining resources on this page are grouped under these headings (scroll down or click to jump to that section):
Please note: Inclusion of a resource in the lists below does not constitute our endorsement of that resource. These resources are provided here for informational purposes; you must assess each resource's fit with your own educational values and your student's goals.
Colleges look for applicants who have taken challenging courses in a wide variety of areas. The most selective schools are more inclined to consider students who have taken AP, college-level, and honors courses during high school.
To determine whether AP credits will be accepted at colleges your student is applying to, use the College Board's search engine here: AP Credit Policy.
- CLEP (College-level Examination Program). This site contains methods to study for various CLEP exams including suggestions for study material.
- Blue Tent Online. Blue Tent offers year-long AP and honors-level courses in math, science, and English. Some courses have a live component; others are asynchronous.
- PA Homeschoolers. This vendor offers a wide range of year-long and semester-long AP classes.
- Scholars Online. Scholars Online offers college preparatory courses in classical languages, history, literature, mathematics, science, and composition. Students who start with our introductory programs during their junior high school years may take up to six years of Latin or Greek, five years of mathematics, six years of literature, six years of science, and five years of composition. The vendor provides Advanced Placement courses and has a Christian worldview.
- Thinkwell. This vendor offers on-line lectures on a variety of courses for grades 7+, including: Pre-algebra, Algebra I, & II, Trigonometry/Precalculus, AP Calculus, AP Chemistry, AP Biology, AP Physics, AP Government, Economics and Public Speaking. Self-paced and self-administered through video lecture and exercises. Thinkwell offers AP content but not AP-compliant in Math, Science, Economics.
- HS College-Bound Online Courses. Live interaction/Live instruction. In these courses, students interact in real time via microphone with the teacher and other students: they ask questions, volunteer their insights and observations, and engage in a variety of activities. Among the course offerings:
ONLINE SCIENCE
ONLINE MATH
ONLINE WRITING
ONLINE LITERATURE
Many of the best universities in the world are now offering access to courses for free. Your student can learn from the best professors by being a non-matriculating student. Credit is not given, but your student can still learn a tremendous amount while taking part in college classes. Each site breaks down offerings by subject and/or category.
- 12 Dozen Places To Educate Yourself Online For Free. This blog has links to many open courseware sites.
- Open Courseware Consortium. OCW is a worldwide community of hundreds of higher education institutions and other organizations committed to advancing open education. This page enables you to search their listings.
- Coursera. Coursera is an education company that partners with universities and other organizations to offer free online courses. This is their homepage.
- edX. EdX offers interactive online classes and MOOCs from the world's best universities, with online courses from MITx, HarvardX, BerkeleyX, UTx and many other universities. Topics include biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, finance, electronics, engineering, food and nutrition, history, humanities, law, literature, math, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, science, statistics and more. EdX is a non-profit online initiative created by founding partners Harvard and MIT.
The resources below may prove useful for building a college-prep high school curriculum. Many vendors offer entire high school curricula. Again, please note that inclusion here does not constitute our endorsement of the resource.
- Ambleside On-Line. Ambleside online offers for free a complete college-prep curriculum, much of it Honors-level, with recommended booklists and weekly schedules — all with the aim of being true to the high literary standards of Charlotte Mason. CM was a turn-of-the-century educator who believed in teaching in a holistic manner (mind, body, spirit) and believed in using living books — primary sources — books like biographies, first-person accounts, and such. The site offers curriculum recommendations through grade 12. Their lists use as many free online books as possible; all you pay is the cost of texts not available for free.
- Brigham Young University. At this writing, their high school courses are $270 per half credit and will transfer to most high schools. Courses include foreign language, math, science, humanities & language arts.
- Derek Owens Online. High school and honors-level math and science:
- pre-algebra
- algebra 1 & 2
- geometry
- pre-calculus & calculus
- physical science
- physics
Self-paced online classes that include lecture, note-taking sheets, and homework. Student goes at own pace and may therefore complete each course as quickly as is convenient for the student. High-quality content, yet very economical at $58 per month. Appropriate for STEM students as well as non-STEM types. Each course may be high school level or Honors level (with additional higher-level problems assigned). Nice feature: printed note-taking book with fill-ins to accompany lectures: $20 per book, two books per year.
- Easy Peasy All-in-One High School. A free college-prep curriculum of suggested resources for homeschooling high school. Parents submit materials that employ a variety of free sources. Some parent build resources such as tracking sheets for grades, syllabi, etc. Course subjects include sciences, maths, some foreign language, humanities.
- Khan Academy. The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. There are 700+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, and finance which have been recorded by Salman Khan.
- Lone Pine Classical School — Latin & Greek. Lone Pine Classical School offers online Latin 100-400, AP (Advanced Placement) Latin, and Greek courses to homeschoolers.
- Laurel Springs. College prep and Honors courses; a selection of electives and AP courses. Laurel Springs offers online and text-based curriculum options. See their webpage for details.
- Lukeion Latin & ancient history. Courses in Latin, Greek and Ancient History. A rigorous college-prep program.
- Memoria Press. The Online Academy is designed primarily for home school families interested in a classical Christian liberal arts education. Classes are offered in the Latin, Logic, & Rhetoric, Classical & Christian Studies, English Studies, Math & Science Studies. Format includes weekly on-line instruction, self-instructive course assignments, quizzes using learning software. Grades are generated and logged. Based on the principle of mastery learning, our system allows your student to take the tests as many times as needed to understand the material. The software flags the student's errors and requires them to be corrected, helping your student to learn from his mistakes.
- NROC (National Repository of Online Classes). A library of high-quality online course content for students and faculty in higher education, high school and Advanced Placement. Subjects include: Algebra, Algebra (Spanish), American Government, Biology, Calculus, Calculus (Spanish), Environmental Science, Physics, Psychology, Religion, Statistics, US History.
- HSLDA Curriculum Recommendations. HSLDA lists some of the most popular Christian curriculum vendors.
This section catalogs resources focusing not on core topics like English or math but on skills essential to effective studies — like time management, taking good notes, preparing for a test, mind mapping, and so on.
- Reading assessment — an easy-to-use tool that quickly gives you a rough estimate of your student's reading level.
 The Scheduling Challenge. Many students have a rough time with the task of scheduling their classes, assignments, due dates, etc., and especially their study time. — What it all adds up to is a planning and organizational challenge they have no experience with. And then, once they've created a schedule, actually using it is yet another challenge: sticking to a schedule often requires entirely new habits and much greater discipline than our teens are accustomed to.
Below are a few resources from our workshop Homeschooling the College-Bound Student — resources we use to help parents and students understand this challenge:
- Study Strategies, UT Austin. A free site with information on time management, critical reading skills, writing tips, test taking skills.
- Effective Study. This site offers guidance on a number of study & organization skills, including sustained concentration, memorization, productivity & time management, reading, test taking, and writing.
- How to Become a Superstar Student, from The Teaching Company. Cost: $200–220. Topics include understanding and maximizing your learning style, note-taking, organizing, time management, testing, and more.
 HS College-Bound series on study skills: "Digging in." We've published a series of newsletter articles on important study skills:
- What Close Reading Actually Means. A great source with several links on the topic of close reading.
- Close Reading:
How to Mark a Book. Essay by Mortimer Adler, edited by Roy Speed.
Just add yourself to our contact list here.
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Online Writing
Two semesters of online classes
Two classes per week
Traditional approaches to writing are often wrongheaded — students, for instance, are routinely asked to write essays before they've actually read any. Students in this course, by contrast, read closely and analyze dozens of essays by outstanding writers — and then begin to write their own. In addition to enhancing students' appreciation of the essay form, the aim here is twofold: 1) Students learn to write clear, correct English prose. 2) They learn to control in their writing the logical flow of their ideas.
Note: This course serves as a precursor to our course Essay Writing & Appreciation.
Prerequisites: Students in this course should have a strong command of English fundamentals — i.e., grammar, usage, and punctuation.
Shakespeare Intensives
Ten online classes
These online sessions provide an in-depth study of this play as well as the historical, cultural, and literary background needed to bring the play to life. As one of our College-Bound Intensives, this course is designed to take students to an advanced level of reading comprehension and analysis, enabling them to:
- tackle sophisticated material across the spectrum of the college curriculum;
- dissect difficult passages included in standardized tests.
For my daughter, the most helpful part of taking this class was reading through parts of the play, line by line, with Roy's guidance every step of the way. Through this experience, she has begun to understand how to read Shakespeare and has been inspired by him to read many of Shakespeare's plays on her own.
Vicki B.
Ten online classes
For students, Hamlet can seem daunting — it's Shakespeare's longest play, with dark themes, complex ideas, and difficult verse. This course reveals the play's deepest secrets in a series of online sessions. It's an in-depth study of the play some consider Shakespeare's greatest.
Prerequisites: Students should already have considerable familiarity with Shakespeare. Our own College-Bound Intensive on Romeo & Juliet is ideal preparation for this course.
Training for parents
Online series
This program addresses the principal concerns parents have about homeschooling through high school — everything you need to know about the high school curriculum and credits, standardized tests, transcripts and record-keeping, applying to college, pursuing scholarships, and more.
I feel so much better prepared and excited in this journey of college preparation for my twin daughters.
Jenny C.
Terrific. Full of information. The materials were so thorough. I now have a plan of action. Also, this workshop is inclusive: No matter what type of homeschooler you are, you will understand better how to prepare your student for college and present him or her in the best light.
Homeschooling mom
To ask a question about the program
or to register, contact Diane Speed:
Tel. 203.942.6155
Email: dspeed@salientcomm.com
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