Ursa Minor Learning Year 12

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.” -Aristotle

Subject headings are linked to pages listing options for expanding those topics of study. We are also working on listing options to the main curriculum on these pages.

History

• • National History: Cold War to the Present (1945-2015)
    • The Story of American Freedom by Eric Foner (Ch 11-13)
    • The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas
  • National History Primary Sources
  • World History: Cold War to the Present (1945-2015)
    • The World Transformed: 1945 to the Present by Michael Hunt
    • Practicing History: Selected Essays by Barbara Tuchman
    • Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
  • World History Primary Sources
  • Biography
    • Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela
  • Keep a Book of Centuries

Citizenship

• Government and Economics
  • American Politics Today by William Bianco and David Canon
  • Economics: The User’s Guide by Ha-Joon Chang
• Plutarch
  • T1 Dion
  • T2 Brutus and Comparison
• Philosophy
  • The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps (218-280 Early Medieval to the 14th Century)
  • The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
• World Religion
  • T1 The World’s Religions by Huston Smith (Ch. VI)
  • T1 Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong
  • T2 The Sikhs: A Brief Introduction by Andrea Diem-Lane
  • T3 An Introduction to the Baha’i Faith by Peter Smith
• Current Events
  • Student should be keeping up with current events.

English

• Literature
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• Shakespeare
  • T1 Hamlet
  • T2 Julius Caesar
  • T3 Twelfth Night
• Poetry
  • T1-3 Dante’s The Inferno
• Composition
  • 1/week Essay
  • 3/week Written Narrations
• Keep a Commonplace Book
  • Record favorite quotes and striking passages.
  • Give an account of books read.

Recitation and Rhetoric

• Memory Work
  • 3 poems per term
  • 1 passage from Shakespeare per term
  • 1 passage from The Odyssey per term

Languages

• Latin
• Modern Foreign Language

Science

• T1-3 Natural Philosophy – Bioethics
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, New and Expanded Edition by James H. Jones
  • Bioethics Primary Source Readings
  • Nature Journaling
    • Weekly entries
    • Illustrated either with brush or pencils
• T1 Physics
  • MIT OpenCourseware’s Physics II: Electricity & Magnetism with an Experimental Focus
    • University Physics with Modern Physics (14th Edition)
      • This is the current edition of the textbook. The OpenCourseware Physics class is taught with the 10th edition, which you can find used for much cheaper than the current version.
    • Lab Kit
  • The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics by Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky
• T2 Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • The Alchemy of the Heavens By Kevin Croswell
  • Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos by Priyamvada Natarajan
• T3 Genetics
  • I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
• Geography
  • Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit by Joyce Chaplin
  • A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold
• Map Drills
  • Locate places from Current Events and mark on map
  • Locate places from History, Literature, and Science readings and mark on map
  • Consider how the physical geography of these locales impact these events

Math

• Option A:
  • For students who plan to go on to math heavy majors, Dual Enrollment Calculus 2 and 3 would be the next step in the Calculus series.
  • For students who don’t plan to go on to math heavy majors, Statistics is a good option, or math may be dropped for the year.

Logic

• James Madison Critical Thinking Course
• James Madison Critical Thinking Course Teacher’s Guide

The Feast

• Art
  • Artist Study
  • Art History
    • The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich
  • Artistic Practice
    • Artistic Pursuits, High School Book 2
• Music
  • Composer Study
  • Singing
    • Two songs in modern foreign language
    • Two folk songs
  • Instrument
    • Continue practice and musical theory
• Handwork and Life Skills
• Physical Education
  • Pick something your student enjoys doing. We suggest a martial art, but yoga, running, or a team sport would also work here.

Free Reads

1. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
4. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
5. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
6. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
7. Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man by U.R. Anantha Murthy
8. Malgudi Days by R. K. Narayan
9. Swing Time by Zadie Smtih
10. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
11. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
12. The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
13. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
14. Ghost Singer by Ann Lee Waters
15. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
16. Sadie Brower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman by Margaret B. Blackman
17. On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee
18. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt
19. Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee
20. The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
21. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
22. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich and Keith Gessen
23. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
24. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
25. Neuromancer by William Gibson

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