Grade 10 Scope

How to read this scope

Each unit_id in the frontmatter resolves to a unit file under units/. start_day/end_day map the unit onto the 180-day school year; the list is a continuous sequence from day 1 to day 180 with no gaps or overlaps. domain and pillar name the primary domain(s) and pillar(s) each unit serves. domain_weighting expresses the intended balance of instructional time across the ten domains, in percent of the year. lesson_count counts the core lessons; the days between lessons carry flex time, assessment, integration, and celebration. assessment_plan describes how a learner’s growth is seen and recorded at this level.

Year at a glance

The Grade 10 year is a spiral that deepens what Grade 9 began — and it is the year the learner becomes a full co-author, not only of their education but of their considered position in the world. Where Grade 9 learned to synthesize and hold competing truths — to build a claim while naming its limits, to reason across more than one ethical framework, to model the world with functions and prove with coordinates — Grade 10 learns to examine, defend, and act on what it synthesized: to examine identity as socially and historically constructed, to critique rhetoric and moral arguments for hidden assumptions, to extend number and model complex systems, to face the hardest truths of history and the environment with intellectual tools and agency, never nihilism. The year opens with three inward units that consolidate the self, the body, and the community.

Feelings, Identity & Purpose (U.10.001, D01) opens the year where Grade 9’s consolidation left off. Learners explain how personal history and culture shape the way a person experiences and names emotion (D01.S1.10.01) and evaluate how technology and media influence emotional life — online comparison, empathy, and emotional contagion (D01.S1.10.02). They examine how identity is socially and historically constructed, comparing examples across cultures (D01.S2.10.01), and develop a considered position on what defines them, independent of external labels and expectations (D01.S2.10.02). They direct their own learning by choosing goals, resources, and ways to check their own progress (D01.S3.10.01), and balance independence with knowing when and how to seek help, acting on that judgment (D01.S3.10.02). Every self is honored as a whole in the making, never a label, and every question is held as a question.

Body, Wellness & Movement (U.10.002, D03) reads the body as the somatic ground of thought and feeling and as a system shaped by habit. Learners analyze how chronic stress, sleep, and movement shape mood, thinking, and long-term health (D03.S1.10.01), and explain how different cultures and times have understood the body–mind connection, assessing what evidence supports each (D03.S1.10.02). They apply principles of training — progressive effort and recovery — to build a safe and sustainable movement plan (D03.S2.10.01), and evaluate how technology such as fitness trackers and apps supports or distorts a healthy relationship with movement and the body (D03.S2.10.02). They evaluate popular diets and nutrition claims using scientific evidence, without shaming any body (D03.S3.10.01), and explain the environmental footprint of different foods and diets and how food choices affect climate and ecosystems (D03.S3.10.02). The body is taught with dignity and joy, honoring the wide range of bodies and abilities.

Relationships, Community & Mutual Aid (U.10.003, D02) turns outward into the practice of care in a connected world, where peers and belonging matter most. Learners evaluate how technology and social media shape communication and use digital tools respectfully (D02.S1.10.01), and handle conflict through de-escalation, seeking mediation when a conflict is too big to solve alone (D02.S1.10.02). They practice cross-cultural empathy by studying a community’s history and values from within (D02.S2.10.01), and evaluate how digital platforms shape empathy, compassion fatigue, and echo chambers (D02.S2.10.02). They evaluate how technology and media create and transform communities and belonging (D02.S3.10.01), explain how local communities connect to regional, national, and global ones (D02.S3.10.02), analyze how technology can enable or undermine cooperation and mutual aid globally (D02.S4.10.01), and examine examples of cooperative economies and mutual-aid networks across the world (D02.S4.10.02).

The heart of the year is given to the three great tools of school, now wielded at full strength: language, number, and science. Language, Literature & Argument (U.10.004, D04) grows from Grade 9’s synthesis and authorship into criticism and craft. Learners critique rhetoric in public speech and media, distinguishing emotional appeal from reasoned argument (D04.S1.10.01), and speak to a public or unfamiliar audience with confidence, adapting register and formality to the setting (D04.S1.10.02). They critically evaluate digital and print media for bias, omission, and the difference between evidence and belief (D04.S2.10.01), and read extended, complex literary and informational texts, tracking themes and arguments across a full work (D04.S2.10.02). They craft prose with deliberate style, varying sentence structure, word choice, and tone to suit purpose and audience (D04.S3.10.01), and compose multimodal texts that combine writing, image, sound, and design with attention to accessibility (D04.S3.10.02). They analyze how language and power interact — whose language is used in law, medicine, and school (D04.S4.10.01) — and communicate respectfully in a multicultural setting, adapting to different cultural norms of politeness and address (D04.S4.10.02), always home language first, with multilingualism held as wealth. Mathematics & Reasoning (U.10.005, D05) grows from Grade 9’s functions and proof into the next rung of modeling. Learners use properties of exponents and roots to simplify expressions and solve problems involving exponential growth and decay (D05.S1.10.01), and extend number reasoning to complex numbers, explaining why new kinds of numbers arise from real problems (D05.S1.10.02). They build and interpret polynomial and rational functions that model real relationships and describe their key features (D05.S2.10.01), and model exponential growth and decay in population, finance, or environmental systems, explaining the effect of the rate (D05.S2.10.02). They use trigonometric ratios and the Pythagorean theorem to solve right-triangle problems in real contexts such as surveying or navigation (D05.S3.10.01), and prove and apply theorems about circles and use coordinate geometry to describe and analyze figures (D05.S3.10.02). They understand independence and conditional probability and use them to interpret real situations such as screening tests and risk (D05.S4.10.01), and use probability rules to compute probabilities of compound events and interpret expected value in everyday decisions (D05.S4.10.02). Mathematics remains sense-making with real things, drawn from many traditions, for everyone.

Science: Systems, Evidence & Our Origins (U.10.006, D06) is the full pass through Grade 10 science, carrying the evidence-and-source discipline of Grade 9 into the three great bodies of the natural world. Learners analyze data using basic statistics — mean, range, and trend — and assess how well the data support a conclusion (D06.S1.10.01), and explain how peer review, replication, and open sharing make scientific knowledge trustworthy, and where they fall short (D06.S1.10.02). They explain how genetic information passes from parents to offspring, how mutations arise, and how the environment shapes how genes are expressed (D06.S2.10.01), and analyze how human activity — land use, pollution, and introduced species — affects ecosystems and evaluate responses (D06.S2.10.02). They explain motion, force, and energy quantitatively in everyday and engineered systems such as work, power, and momentum (D06.S3.10.01), and explain how energy generation — renewable and nonrenewable — works and evaluate its environmental and social trade-offs (D06.S3.10.02). They explain the Big Bang model and the evidence that supports it, distinguishing a model from revealed truth (D06.S4.10.01), and analyze human impacts on Earth systems and evaluate responses to environmental change with hope and agency (D06.S4.10.02). Origins are held as stories grounded in evidence, among many others — never as dogma.

Creative & Aesthetic Expression (U.10.007, D07) gives craft and an ethical eye to the imagination now that formal reasoning has matured. Learners develop a personal style by making a body of work and explain how it reflects their ideas and influences (D07.S1.10.01), and distinguish cultural appreciation from appropriation in art, citing examples and explaining how to honor living traditions respectfully (D07.S1.10.02). They compose and record an original piece that expresses a clear idea or feeling and explain the techniques used (D07.S2.10.01), and distinguish respectful engagement with a musical tradition from appropriation (D07.S2.10.02). They devise and perform an original piece that develops a clear concept and demonstrates craft in movement and expression (D07.S3.10.01), and distinguish respectful engagement with a dance or dramatic tradition from appropriation (D07.S3.10.02). They design and make something that serves a community need with attention to sustainability and fairness and document the decisions (D07.S4.10.01), and distinguish responsible and sustainable design from design that harms people or the environment (D07.S4.10.02). The arts of other cultures are met as living traditions to honor with respectful questions, never as specimens.

Health, Sexuality & Safety (U.10.008, D03) returns to the body at a turning point, now with the honesty and agency high school demands. Learners analyze the risks and responsibilities of sexual activity, including contraception and preventing infections, using accurate information (D03.S4.10.01), and evaluate sources of health information — online, peer, and marketing — for accuracy and bias (D03.S4.10.02). Every body, every pace, and every family’s way of living is honored; the body is taught with dignity, never shame, and questions are met with accurate information and care, not fear.

The final third steps into the full adult questions of power, justice, and the living Earth. Global History: Time, Culture & Atrocity (U.10.009, D08) gives Grade 10 its full pass through the long, many-voiced human story, deepening Grade 9’s continuity and liberation into the hardest and most careful questions. Learners compare how different societies measured and recorded time and weigh how those systems shaped their sense of the past (D08.S1.10.01), and argue for a way to divide a global era into periods and defend where its turning points should fall (D08.S1.10.02). They evaluate the ethics of sharing, borrowing, and taking knowledge and culture across peoples, and who has been credited or harmed (D08.S2.10.01), and analyze how global trade and technology have spread and transformed cultural traditions in the modern world (D08.S2.10.02). They analyze how colonization reshaped populations, environments, and borders across the world and its effects on Indigenous peoples (D08.S3.10.01), and analyze modern migration and displacement driven by conflict, economy, and climate, weighing their causes and human consequences (D08.S3.10.02). They analyze a case of genocide or mass violence with care, examining its causes, the responses of survivors, and how it is remembered (D08.S4.10.01), and analyze how ordinary people have resisted oppression, sheltered others, and rebuilt after atrocity, and what remembrance and justice require (D08.S4.10.02). History is told from many perspectives, never as a single nation’s triumph, and the voices of those too often left out are centered with care and accuracy.

Ethics, Justice & Political Economy (U.10.010, D09) deepens Grade 9’s reasoning across frameworks into critique and action. Learners apply ethical reasoning to a question about technology or the environment, weighing benefits and harms for people and the planet (D09.S1.10.01), and critique a moral argument for hidden assumptions or bias, rebuilding it more fairly (D09.S1.10.02). They analyze global justice questions, such as who bears responsibility for climate harm or poverty, and weigh competing answers (D09.S2.10.01), and evaluate how technology and data can expand or limit rights, such as privacy, and argue for protections (D09.S2.10.02). They design a plan for collective action on a real community or global issue, including goals, allies, and steps, and evaluate its likely effects (D09.S3.10.01), and analyze the ethics of civic technology and digital citizenship, including misinformation, surveillance, and who is included or excluded (D09.S3.10.02). They design a restorative process for a specific harm, including who should be heard, how responsibility is taken, and how repair is made (D09.S4.10.01), and analyze peacebuilding — preventing and transforming conflict nonviolently — and weigh its strategies across different settings (D09.S4.10.02). Questions are held as questions, never answered as dogma.

Technology, Media & Our Earth Home (U.10.011, D10) gathers the outward year into critical judgment and stewardship — neither worship nor fear. Learners analyze how data, surveillance, and automation affect privacy, freedom, and who has power in a society (D10.S1.10.01), and evaluate an emerging technology, such as AI or genetic tools, by weighing its promises and risks for humanity and the environment (D10.S1.10.02). They apply a fact-checking method to a real claim, tracing evidence and separating fact from interpretation (D10.S2.10.01), and analyze who owns the media people consume and how concentrated ownership can shape what is reported and left out (D10.S2.10.02). They explain what ecosystem services are — pollination, clean water, and soil — and how biodiversity underpins them (D10.S3.10.01), and explain what a tipping point is and why crossing one in an ecosystem or climate can be hard to reverse (D10.S3.10.02). They evaluate a real sustainability solution, such as a circular economy or a restoration project, for its benefits, limits, and fairness (D10.S4.10.01), and explain the idea of a circular economy — designing out waste — and compare it with a take-make-waste linear economy (D10.S4.10.02).

The year closes in All of Me, All of Us (U.10.012, D01 + D02), gathering every whole person, the caring community they have built, and the living Earth — and looking ahead to Grade 11, where the considered position becomes an articulated purpose and a meaningful life, empathy extends to distant and future others, number grows into sequences, series, vectors, and trigonometry of periodic phenomena, science deepens into evolution, quantum scales, and coupled Earth systems, history deepens into long transformations and the revitalization of marginalized knowledge, and the ethics of technology and the environment mature into governance, solidarity, and stewardship across generations.

Throughout, the four pillars are interwoven. Intellectual awareness (P3) carries the most weight — criticism and craft in language, the next rung of modeling and proof in mathematics, the systems-and-evidence discipline of science, and the creative and critical work of the arts — while contextual and ecological awareness (P4) rises further, for Grade 10 faces the hardest truths of history and the environment: the ethics of knowledge and culture, genocide and remembrance, global justice, and the deep effects of technology on humanity and the Earth. Emotional and social awareness (P1) remains the ground: identity is examined and defended, and relationships and belonging matter more than ever. A known, cared-for, and capable body-and-self (P2) is the foundation all of it stands on. Science (D06), global history (D08), ethics (D09), and technology and environment (D10) each now carry a full unit of the year, and each spirals into still greater depth in Grades 11–12, where the full scientific, historical, and ethical ladders unfold. The hardest truths of the world are faced honestly — inequality, ecological crisis, atrocity, moral ambiguity — always met with intellectual tools and a sense of agency, never nihilism. No high-stakes tests anywhere: a learner’s growth is seen through explanations that state their limits, arguments that weigh conflicting evidence and critique hidden assumptions, reasoning across more than one ethical framework and across cultures, modeling and proof with real things, made and critiqued works, and a portfolio of what they say, make, and do as co-authors of their own education.