9th grade homeschool curriculum
A full curriculum, starting at your child's level, with lessons connected to their interests and progress you can see.
See the work in 9th grade
A variable is not a letter to memorize; it is a changing quantity that lets you test whether a system is fair.
- Lesson
- The Equation Behind a Fair Game Economy
- Goal
- Translate a real constraint into an equation, solve for an unknown, and explain what the result means in context.
- Project
- Balance the market stall
Your parent dashboard
- Today
- Each subject's lesson, and whether it's done
- Grades
- Every submission graded instantly, with written feedback, so you never grade
- Records
- Attendance log and learning summary, ready to export
- Documents
- Transcripts and state-aware compliance drafts, written for you and ready to sign
9th grade scope and sequence
Math13 units · 59 skills
Algebra 1: linear equations6 skills
- Solve a linear equation with variables on both sides
- Rewrite a formula for a chosen variable
- Graph a line from slope-intercept form
- Write a line from two points
- Interpret slope and intercept in a model
- Solve a linear inequality and graph the solution set
Systems and linear modeling5 skills
- Solve a system by substitution
- Solve a system by elimination
- Model break-even with a linear system
- Interpret a system solution in context
- Classify a system by number of solutions
Functions and function notation5 skills
- Identify domain and range from a graph
- Evaluate a function from notation
- Compare functions across table, graph, and equation
- Find average rate of change from a table
- Interpret zeros and intercepts in context
Exponents and radicals5 skills
- Simplify a radical expression
- Use rational exponents
- Apply exponent rules to algebraic expressions
- Rewrite an expression using structure
- Classify rational and irrational numbers
Polynomials and factoring5 skills
- Add and multiply polynomial expressions
- Factor a greatest common factor
- Factor a trinomial with leading coefficient one
- Factor a difference of squares
- Use factoring to solve a quadratic equation
Quadratic functions4 skills
- Graph a quadratic from vertex form
- Find zeros from a factored quadratic
- Complete the square for a simple quadratic
- Compare linear and quadratic growth
Exponential functions4 skills
- Write an exponential growth function
- Write an exponential decay function
- Compare exponential and linear change
- Interpret an exponential parameter in context
Statistics and residuals4 skills
- Fit a linear model to bivariate data
- Interpret correlation without claiming causation
- Use residuals to judge model fit
- Choose a model from a scatter plot
Sequences4 skills
- Write an arithmetic sequence rule
- Write a geometric sequence rule
- Compare recursive and explicit sequence forms
- Use a sequence to model repeated change
Mathematical reasoning4 skills
- Justify each step in an algebraic solution
- Find an error in a function model
- Explain why a factored form reveals zeros
- Compare two valid solution paths
Algebra 1 modeling project4 skills
- Select variables for a real-world model
- Build a linear or quadratic model from data
- State model limits and assumptions
- Use a model to recommend a decision
AP exam readiness4 skills
- Solve an Algebra I mixed function item with graph, table, and equation evidence
- Choose the best method for a timed linear, quadratic, or exponential item
- Explain why an Algebra I distractor answer fails
- Write a concise justification for a grade 9 modeling item
Math capstone5 skills
- Solve a multi-representation function problem
- Defend a system model with context
- Use factoring and graphing to analyze a quadratic
- Explain model limitations in writing
- Present a complete Algebra I argument
Reading6 units · 47 skills
Literary reading10 skills
- Identify theme from repeated details
- Explain character motivation
- Analyze how setting shapes conflict
- Interpret figurative language in context
- Compare narrator perspective
- Analyze symbolism
- Trace conflict development
- Compare character arcs
- Analyze theme development across a text
- Trace theme development across a chapter
Informational reading9 skills
- Identify central idea
- Trace an author's claim
- Distinguish evidence from commentary
- Summarize a section objectively
- Evaluate source credibility
- Identify text structure
- Evaluate evidence relevance
- Analyze author's assumptions
- Analyze rhetoric in a speech
Media and multimodal reading7 skills
- Interpret a chart embedded in an article
- Connect image evidence to a text claim
- Evaluate a caption's relationship to an image
- Compare video and print accounts of an event
- Evaluate scale in an infographic
- Interpret a timeline embedded in text
- Compare headline and article evidence
Vocabulary7 skills
- Use context clues for an unfamiliar word
- Identify connotation
- Distinguish denotation from connotation
- Use word parts to infer meaning
- Infer meaning from analogy
- Use roots and affixes
- Identify figurative versus literal meaning
Evidence7 skills
- Quote textual evidence accurately
- Paraphrase evidence without changing meaning
- Connect evidence to an inference
- Compare evidence across two texts
- Rank evidence by strength
- Explain why evidence is relevant
- Integrate evidence across genres
Fluency and text complexity7 skills
- Read grade-level prose with appropriate pacing
- Use punctuation to guide oral phrasing
- Identify sentence complexity in a passage
- Use background knowledge to prepare for a difficult text
- Use paragraph structure to plan reading pace
- Identify unfamiliar syntax before rereading
- Use repeated reading to improve accuracy
English language arts13 units · 59 skills
Literary genres5 skills
- Analyze theme in a novel, drama, or epic excerpt
- Explain how structure shapes reader expectations
- Analyze characterization across a longer text
- Compare literary treatment of a shared archetype
- Use evidence to support an interpretive thesis
Informational reasoning5 skills
- Trace an author's line of reasoning
- Evaluate evidence quality in an explanatory text
- Distinguish summary, analysis, and evaluation
- Identify gaps in an informational argument
- Compare how two texts define the same problem
Rhetorical analysis5 skills
- Analyze audience, purpose, and occasion in a speech
- Explain how diction and syntax shape tone
- Identify rhetorical appeals and their effects
- Evaluate how structure builds persuasion
- Connect rhetorical choices to an author's claim
High school composition foundations4 skills
- Write a defensible thesis for analysis
- Build a paragraph with claim, evidence, and commentary
- Integrate quoted evidence grammatically
- Use transitions to develop reasoning
Argument composition5 skills
- Develop a nuanced position on a debatable issue
- Use evidence from more than one source
- Qualify a claim without weakening it
- Address counterargument with evidence
- Revise reasoning for logical order
Research and citation5 skills
- Build a working bibliography
- Evaluate database and web sources
- Use paraphrase, summary, and quotation appropriately
- Cite sources in a consistent style
- Track source credibility and relevance
Language, grammar, and style5 skills
- Use parallel structure in a sentence
- Edit pronoun case and agreement
- Use semicolons and colons correctly
- Revise for formal academic tone
- Choose precise verbs and nouns
Academic speaking and listening4 skills
- Deliver a short analytical presentation
- Respond to questions with evidence
- Use evidence in a discussion response
- Evaluate a peer presentation for claim and support
Media and visual argument4 skills
- Analyze how layout guides attention
- Evaluate a visual argument for evidence and bias
- Compare a written argument with a video argument
- Cite visual information accurately
Timed reading and writing4 skills
- Annotate a passage for claims and evidence
- Plan a timed analytical paragraph
- Write a thesis under time limits
- Revise a timed response for clarity
Independent text complexity4 skills
- Choose a challenging text and reading plan
- Track motifs or claims across chapters
- Write a reading journal entry with evidence
- Discuss interpretive uncertainty productively
AP exam readiness4 skills
- Analyze a grade 9 rhetoric or literature passage under time limits
- Plan a defensible thesis for a freshman argument or analysis prompt
- Select textual evidence that best supports a grade 9 line of reasoning
- Revise a freshman short response for clarity, precision, and evidence use
ELA capstone5 skills
- Write a literary analysis essay
- Write a source-based argument essay
- Present a rhetorical analysis
- Revise a portfolio piece using feedback
- Defend a Grade 9 reading and writing portfolio
Science13 units · 58 skills
Biology: methods and models5 skills
- Design a controlled biology investigation
- Use a microscope image as evidence
- Model matter and energy flow in living systems
- Calculate and interpret biological rates
- Explain limits of a biological model
Cells and homeostasis5 skills
- Explain membrane transport with concentration gradients
- Describe enzyme function and factors that affect it
- Connect organelles to cell energy needs
- Explain cell cycle checkpoints at an introductory level
- Use evidence to identify loss of homeostasis
Photosynthesis and respiration5 skills
- Trace matter through photosynthesis
- Trace energy through cellular respiration
- Compare aerobic and anaerobic respiration
- Use a model to connect carbon cycling and organism energy
- Interpret data from a plant-growth investigation
Molecular genetics5 skills
- Explain DNA, genes, chromosomes, and proteins
- Use base-pairing rules in a DNA model
- Predict inheritance using Mendelian patterns
- Explain mutation effects on proteins and traits
- Interpret a simple gel or pedigree result
Evolution and common ancestry4 skills
- Explain natural selection using variation, inheritance, and differential survival
- Use fossil, anatomical, and molecular evidence for common ancestry
- Distinguish adaptation from acclimation
- Model allele-frequency change qualitatively
Ecology and human impact5 skills
- Analyze energy flow through trophic levels
- Use population data to explain ecosystem change
- Evaluate human impacts on biodiversity
- Explain resilience and disturbance in ecosystems
- Compare conservation strategies with tradeoffs
Body systems and feedback4 skills
- Explain negative feedback in blood glucose regulation
- Connect nervous and endocrine signaling
- Explain immune response to infection
- Analyze how body systems maintain internal stability
Biotechnology and ethics4 skills
- Explain gene editing at a conceptual level
- Interpret DNA evidence in a case scenario
- Compare medical and agricultural biotechnology uses
- Evaluate ethical tradeoffs with evidence
Biology data and statistics4 skills
- Use mean and variability in biological data
- Interpret a graph of population or enzyme data
- Distinguish correlation and causation in health claims
- Evaluate sample size in a biology study
Biological engineering design4 skills
- Design a solution for a health or ecosystem problem
- Choose biological criteria and constraints
- Test a prototype or intervention plan
- Revise a design from biological evidence
Scientific sources in biology4 skills
- Read a biology abstract for claim and method
- Compare a popular article with a primary-data claim
- Identify overstatement in a health headline
- Cite biological evidence accurately
AP exam readiness4 skills
- Analyze a Biology-style experimental stimulus with variables and controls
- Interpret a cell, genetics, evolution, or ecology graph under time limits
- Choose evidence that supports or weakens a biological explanation
- Write a concise Biology claim-evidence-reasoning response
Science capstone5 skills
- Build a model of a living system across scales
- Use data to defend an ecological or genetic claim
- Critique a biological explanation
- Discuss ethical limits of a biotechnology use
- Present a Biology-level science argument
History12 units · 56 skills
Modern world methods5 skills
- Contextualize a world-history document by author, audience, purpose, and historical situation
- Build a causation chain with long-term, short-term, triggering, and contingent causes
- Compare continuity and change across 1750-1914 using region-specific evidence
- Use map, demographic, economic, and political evidence to test a world-history claim
- Defend a Grade 9 historical claim about modern world methods using conflicting evidence
Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas5 skills
- Analyze natural rights, sovereignty, social contract, equality, property, and citizenship claims
- Compare Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Wollstonecraft, and abolitionist arguments
- Explain how print culture, salons, revolts, and state crisis spread revolutionary ideology
- Evaluate contradictions between universal rights language and slavery, empire, gender, and class
- Compare Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Smith, and Bolivar on rights, sovereignty, gender, and economy
Atlantic revolutions5 skills
- Compare American Revolution influence on later Atlantic revolutions without making it the whole course
- Analyze French Revolution phases through fiscal crisis, popular politics, terror, and empire
- Explain Haitian Revolution as anti-slavery, anti-colonial, and Atlantic revolutionary history
- Compare Latin American independence movements by social hierarchy, leadership, and imperial crisis
- Defend a Grade 9 historical claim about atlantic revolutions using conflicting evidence
Industrial Revolution and capitalism5 skills
- Explain industrialization through coal, steam, textiles, labor discipline, finance, and patents
- Analyze factory work, child labor, urbanization, public health, and class conflict
- Compare capitalist, socialist, liberal, and conservative responses to industrial society
- Use economic and demographic evidence to explain uneven industrial development
- Analyze factory discipline, wage labor, urbanization, railroads, and class formation using industrial data
Nationalism and state-building5 skills
- Explain nationalism through language, culture, schooling, military service, and political myth
- Compare Italian and German unification through diplomacy, war, liberalism, and realpolitik
- Analyze Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian imperial diversity under nationalist pressure
- Evaluate nationalism as both liberation movement and exclusionary state project
- Defend a Grade 9 historical claim about nationalism and state-building using conflicting evidence
Imperialism and colonial rule4 skills
- Analyze New Imperialism through industrial demand, strategic rivalry, racism, missions, and technology
- Explain the Berlin Conference and African partition using maps, diplomacy, violence, and resources
- Compare colonial rule in India, Africa, and Southeast Asia by extraction, law, resistance, and education
- Evaluate primary sources defending and resisting empire for assumptions and power claims
East Asia and global pressure4 skills
- Explain Opium Wars, unequal treaties, Taiping rebellion, and Qing reform pressures
- Analyze Meiji Restoration modernization through state power, industry, military, and empire
- Compare Chinese, Japanese, and Korean responses to Western and regional pressure
- Use treaty, map, and reform evidence to explain sovereignty under global capitalism
Reform, reaction, and mass politics5 skills
- Analyze abolition, suffrage, labor movements, and public education as mass political projects
- Compare liberalism, conservatism, socialism, anarchism, and nationalism in the 19th century
- Explain how newspapers, parties, unions, and associations expanded political participation
- Evaluate reform and repression as competing responses to industrial and political change
- Defend a Grade 9 historical claim about reform, reaction, and mass politics using conflicting evidence
World War I causes5 skills
- Explain militarism, alliances, imperial rivalry, nationalism, and crisis diplomacy before 1914
- Analyze Balkan nationalism and the July Crisis through contingency and decision-making
- Compare long-term structural causes and short-term triggers of World War I
- Use diplomatic documents and maps to build a multi-causal explanation of war
- Build a causal chain from alliance systems, militarism, imperial rivalry, nationalism, and crisis diplomacy to World War I
World War I experience and aftermath4 skills
- Analyze trench warfare, total war, propaganda, home fronts, empire troops, and casualties
- Explain Russian Revolution through war, monarchy, workers, peasants, parties, and Bolshevik strategy
- Evaluate Wilsonian self-determination, Treaty of Versailles, mandates, and unresolved grievances
- Compare memories of World War I across victors, defeated states, colonies, and revolutionaries
AP exam readiness4 skills
- Write a document sourcing note for a 1750-1914 world-history source
- Build a contextualization paragraph for Atlantic revolutions or industrialization
- Group evidence for comparison across empire, revolution, nationalism, and industrial change
- Draft a thesis that answers a causation or comparison prompt with defensible categories
Modern world history I capstone5 skills
- Defend a claim about whether ideology or material change drove 1750-1914 transformations
- Compare two revolutions using causes, participants, ideology, violence, and outcomes
- Analyze imperialism through economic motive, racial ideology, state power, and resistance
- Present a source-based argument connecting industrialization, nationalism, and war
- Defend a Grade 9 historical claim about modern world history i capstone using conflicting evidence
FAQ
- What happens when my child is stuck in a lesson?
- Your teen highlights the part that lost them and asks the Always-On Mentor, which answers about that exact passage. For an Algebra 1 step it can work through the idea on its board, and after a missed answer it can explain it a different way. It also guides each project step without writing the work for them.
- How much time does school take each day?
- There is no fixed daily length. Each lesson shows its estimated time, and our Parent Dashboard adds up the day, so you can see the hours against your state's instruction-time rules.
- What classes should a 9th grader take?
- A typical year includes Algebra 1 or Geometry, English 9, Biology or Physical Science, World History or Geography, language year one or two, PE or health, and electives. Placement sets each level; the Parent Dashboard records courses and grades.
- How many credits should a 9th grader earn?
- There is no single freshman credit total; it depends on your state's requirements and your teen's plans after high school. The Parent Dashboard records each course and grade as your teen finishes, and we turn that record into a transcript.
- When should my teen begin direct SAT or ACT preparation?
- Once a test date is set, start with the skills that need the most work. Placement and graded math, reading, and writing work show which ones, and our SAT Prep and ACT Prep build practice around them.
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Start with the 9th grade skills your child needs next, with room to move ahead in one subject and review in another.
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