Grade 11 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 11 year is a spiral that deepens what Grade 10 began — and it is the year the learner’s considered position becomes an articulated purpose and a meaningful life. Where Grade 10 learned to examine, defend, and act on what it synthesized — to critique rhetoric and moral arguments for hidden assumptions, to extend number into complex and exponential systems, to face the hardest truths of history and the environment — Grade 11 learns to articulate, commit, and stand for it: a values-and-purpose statement, empathy extended to distant and future others, full authorship of a personal project, and the deepest scales of science, history, and justice. Learners are co-authors throughout, not students. The year opens with three inward units that consolidate the self, the body, and the community.

Feelings, Identity & Purpose (U.11.001, D01) opens the year where Grade 10’s examined-and-defended identity left off. Learners articulate the emotional climate of a group or society and how collective emotions such as hope, fear, and grief arise (D01.S1.11.01), and reflect on their own emotional development over time, naming areas of strength and growth (D01.S1.11.02). They articulate their developing values, purpose, and sense of what a meaningful life looks like for them (D01.S2.11.01), and reflect on their place in a global, interconnected world and what they owe to people unlike themselves (D01.S2.11.02). They make decisions that align their actions with their values even under pressure or uncertainty (D01.S3.11.01), and take authorship of a personal project or commitment, seeing it through with self-direction (D01.S3.11.02). 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.11.002, D03) reads the body as the somatic ground of thought and feeling, now practiced deliberately and understood as a shared public concern. Learners use mind-body practices such as breathing, movement, and mindfulness deliberately to regulate their own state and explain why they work (D03.S1.11.01), and analyze how disability, illness, and diverse bodies shape experience, designing practices that honor a wide range of bodies (D03.S1.11.02). They compare movement traditions across cultures — yoga, martial arts, dance, and sport — and what each offers for health and community (D03.S2.11.01), and design inclusive movement activities that adapt to a wide range of bodies, abilities, and environments (D03.S2.11.02). They analyze how public policy and food systems shape population nutrition and health and propose a change that widens access (D03.S3.11.01), and build a sustainable personal nutrition plan that honors their own needs, culture, budget, and values (D03.S3.11.02). The body is taught with dignity and joy, honoring the wide range of bodies and abilities.

Relationships, Community & Solidarity (U.11.003, D02) turns outward into the practice of care at its most mature — across difference and distance. Learners practice deep listening across disagreement, staying open to being changed by what others say (D02.S1.11.01), and build and maintain close, trusting relationships while offering the same support to others (D02.S1.11.02). They apply empathy to people they have never met, far away or in future generations (D02.S2.11.01), and weigh empathy for individuals against fairness to a group when the two conflict (D02.S2.11.02). They analyze what makes communities resilient, inclusive, and just, using historical and contemporary examples (D02.S3.11.01), and envision and plan a contribution that strengthens belonging in a community they care about (D02.S3.11.02). They argue for a position on care, solidarity, and collective responsibility toward distant others (D02.S4.11.01), and plan and begin a sustained mutual-aid or cooperative effort with accountability (D02.S4.11.02).

The heart of the year is given to the three great tools of school, now wielded at near-full maturity: language, number, and science. Language, Literature & Argument (U.11.004, D04) grows from Grade 10’s criticism and craft into the multilingual, critical, and persuasive voice. Learners listen across differences of accent, dialect, and viewpoint, identifying assumptions in what is said (D04.S1.11.01), and construct and deliver a persuasive speech that anticipates and fairly addresses counterarguments (D04.S1.11.02). They compare texts across languages and translations, noting how translation shapes meaning (D04.S2.11.01), and analyze how an author’s cultural and historical position shapes a text, reading it against other perspectives (D04.S2.11.02). They write extended, original work that develops a sustained idea or story (D04.S3.11.01), and adapt writing across languages and registers, including translation or writing in a second language where possible (D04.S3.11.02). They evaluate language policies — official languages or language in schools — for their effects on equity and inclusion (D04.S4.11.01), and bridge between speakers of different languages in a real setting, interpreting main ideas with accuracy and care (D04.S4.11.02), always home language first, with multilingualism held as wealth. Mathematics & Reasoning (U.11.005, D05) grows from Grade 10’s functions and proof into the next rung of modeling. Learners model and solve real problems with sequences and series, interpreting their meaning in financial or environmental contexts (D05.S1.11.01), and use vectors and matrices to represent and manipulate quantities with both size and direction or with several dimensions (D05.S1.11.02). They model periodic phenomena with trigonometric functions and interpret amplitude, frequency, and shift in context (D05.S2.11.01), and use logarithmic and exponential relationships to solve problems involving growth, decay, and large ranges of scale (D05.S2.11.02). They use the unit circle and trigonometry of general triangles to model periodic relationships in real phenomena (D05.S3.11.01), and reason about three-dimensional shapes, finding volume and surface area of composite solids in real contexts (D05.S3.11.02). They use the normal distribution and standard deviation to describe data and reason about variability and outliers (D05.S4.11.01), and design and carry out a survey or experiment, critiquing the sampling, bias, and conclusions it produces (D05.S4.11.02). Mathematics remains sense-making with real things, drawn from many traditions, for everyone.

Science: Systems, Evidence & Our Origins (U.11.006, D06) is the full pass through Grade 11 science, carrying Grade 10’s evidence-and-source discipline into the discipline of investigation, evolution, and the deepest scales of matter and cosmos. Learners design and defend an investigation that controls variables, includes controls and replicates, and reports uncertainty (D06.S1.11.01), and compare how scientific, indigenous, and artistic ways of knowing generate and test knowledge, and what each offers (D06.S1.11.02). They explain the evidence for evolution and common ancestry, distinguishing this from beliefs about life’s meaning (D06.S2.11.01), and analyze the ethics of human relationships with other species and ecosystems, including conservation and restoration (D06.S2.11.02). They explain how matter and energy behave at atomic and quantum scales and why this challenges everyday intuition (D06.S3.11.01), and apply thermodynamics to real systems, evaluating the energy and material costs of technology (D06.S3.11.02). They compare cosmological models and weigh the evidence for each, holding them as models rather than certainties (D06.S4.11.01), and explain how Earth’s systems are coupled and how climate, ecology, and human society shape one another (D06.S4.11.02). Origins are held as evidence-grounded accounts among many others — never as dogma.

Creative & Aesthetic Expression (U.11.007, D07) gives the co-author’s deliberate, ethical voice to the imagination now that formal reasoning has matured. Learners create an artwork that addresses a social or environmental issue and explain its intended effect on an audience (D07.S1.11.01), and curate a small exhibition of artworks, their own or others’, writing the reasoning behind the selection and order (D07.S1.11.02). They arrange or compose a piece that responds to a social or environmental issue and explain its intended effect (D07.S2.11.01), and curate a listening program of works from several cultures, writing the reasoning behind the selection (D07.S2.11.02). They create a performance that responds to a social or environmental issue and explain its intended effect on an audience (D07.S3.11.01), and direct or curate a short performance program, writing the reasoning behind the selection and staging (D07.S3.11.02). They design a solution to a social or environmental problem, building and testing a prototype and explaining its intended impact (D07.S4.11.01), and evaluate the full life cycle of a designed object, from materials and making through use and disposal, proposing improvements (D07.S4.11.02). The arts of other cultures are met as living traditions to honor with respectful questions, never as specimens.

Health, Care & Access (U.11.008, D03) returns to the body at a turning point, now with the agency and systems-awareness high school demands. Learners plan for their own health-care needs, including how to access care, advocate for themselves, and navigate health systems (D03.S4.11.01), and explain how chronic conditions and disabilities affect daily life and design respectful support for themselves and others (D03.S4.11.02). 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: Transformation, Knowledge & Justice (U.11.009, D08) gives Grade 11 its full pass through the long, many-voiced human story, deepening Grade 10’s hardest and most careful questions. Learners analyze one long-term transformation, such as industrialization or the recent acceleration of human impact, and weigh what was gained and lost for different peoples and the environment (D08.S1.11.01), and evaluate how the choice of what counts as significant change shapes historical accounts, using contrasting examples (D08.S1.11.02). They evaluate the relationship between dominant and marginalized knowledge traditions and argue for how marginalized voices can be centered (D08.S2.11.01), and analyze how peoples have maintained and revitalized their languages, traditions, and knowledge in the face of pressure to assimilate (D08.S2.11.02). They analyze the relationship between human settlement, resource use, and environmental change, such as deforestation or water scarcity, across regions (D08.S3.11.01), and evaluate how climate change is reshaping where and how people can live, weighing responses rooted in care and justice (D08.S3.11.02). They compare social movements for civil rights, labor, and liberation across different countries and analyze their strategies and effects (D08.S4.11.01), and analyze the relationship between power, inequality, and technology in past and present struggles, and who gained and who was left out (D08.S4.11.02). 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.11.010, D09) deepens Grade 10’s critique and action into structures, justice, and solidarity. Learners analyze how social and economic structures shape which choices people can make, and argue about responsibility (D09.S1.11.01), and evaluate competing accounts of what a good life or a good society means, drawing on more than one cultural tradition (D09.S1.11.02). They analyze the relationship between justice, power, and law, and argue for how an unjust law or system should be changed (D09.S2.11.01), and evaluate competing theories of justice — those centered on freedom, equality, or care — and apply them to a current issue (D09.S2.11.02). They analyze a global collective-action problem, such as climate change or labor rights, and the coordination needed to solve it (D09.S3.11.01), and evaluate solidarity — acting with others across difference and distance — and argue for what it requires of citizens (D09.S3.11.02). They analyze a real or historical conflict from multiple perspectives and propose a just and peaceful path forward (D09.S4.11.01), and evaluate the ethics of nonviolence and of peacekeeping, arguing about when and how they can succeed (D09.S4.11.02). Questions are held as questions, never answered as dogma.

Technology, Media & the Living Earth (U.11.011, D10) gathers the outward year into governance, solidarity, and stewardship — neither worship nor fear. Learners analyze how technologies are governed — by law, standards, and markets — and evaluate a debate over regulating one (D10.S1.11.01), and analyze how the benefits and harms of technology are distributed unevenly across the world, arguing for fairer access (D10.S1.11.02). They analyze propaganda and information manipulation in a historical or current case, and how a free press and literacy resist it (D10.S2.11.01), and evaluate the responsibilities of creators and platforms when information spreads harm, arguing for what should change (D10.S2.11.02). They trace a global cycle — carbon, nitrogen, or water — through its parts and explain how human activity has altered it (D10.S3.11.01), and explain the idea of the more-than-human world and why some traditions treat land, water, and other species as beings owed care (D10.S3.11.02). They analyze global environmental policy, such as a climate agreement, and the coordination and justice questions it raises (D10.S4.11.01), and compare indigenous and other place-based stewardship practices with industrial resource use, and what each teaches about sustainability (D10.S4.11.02).

The year closes in All of Me, All of Us (U.11.012, D01 + D02), gathering the articulated purpose, the solidary community, and the living Earth — and looking ahead to Grade 12, the capstone year. There the articulated purpose becomes an integrated sense of who they are, what they value, and how they will act; empathy matures into ethical judgment and action for the more-than-human world; number grows into limits, algorithms, and quantitative reasoning about large systems; science deepens into competing explanations, the coupling of ecosystems, economies, and health, and the fundamental forces and particles of matter; history deepens into the synthesis of change and continuity and one’s own place in the unfinished human story; the ethics of justice and citizenship mature into contested questions, engaged citizenship, and a considered vision of a more just and sustainable world; and technology and the environment mature into Earth as one interconnected system pressing against planetary boundaries, and the learner’s own choice to live as a steward rather than a consumer.

Throughout, the four pillars are interwoven. Intellectual awareness (P3) carries the most weight — the multilingual critical voice, 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 11 faces the deepest questions of power, justice, and the living Earth: long transformations and the centering of marginalized knowledge, structures and choice, theories of justice, solidarity, the governance of technology, and the more-than-human world. Emotional and social awareness (P1) remains the ground: values and purpose are articulated and committed to, and deep listening, empathy for distant others, and collective responsibility 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 Grade 12, where the full scientific, historical, and ethical ladders culminate. The hardest truths of the world are faced honestly — inequality, ecological crisis, injustice, 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 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.