57 core topics + 107 prerequisite topics taught as needed · approximately 51 hours of instruction including spaced review
An adaptive diagnostic (up to 40 questions) places the student on the course's knowledge graph - topics already known are credited, and instruction begins exactly at the learning frontier. Every topic is taught with a worked-example lesson and auto-graded practice; a topic is mastered at 75%+ and then maintained through spaced reviews on an expanding schedule. Mixed checks follow every 6 lessons; each unit ends with a 12-item quiz, and course-wide assessments appear at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% mastery. Prerequisite gaps below the course are detected and taught rather than skipped, so completion certifies the whole tower, not just the top.
| The Shape of the Whole [H] | Name how a narrative is arranged, separately from what happens in it. |
| Story Time and Telling Time [H] | Separate the order events happened in from the order the text reveals them. |
| Where the Story Turns [H] | Find the hinge - the point after which the same events mean something else. |
| Scene, Summary, and the Skipped Year [H] | Read the ratio between page time and story time as a statement of emphasis. |
| What the Structure Withholds [H] | Treat a missing piece as a shaped choice rather than an accident. |
| The Story Inside the Story [H] | Read the outer situation that contains a telling, not only the telling. |
| Strands Set Against Each Other [H] | Read the seam between two strands, where the writer has left the connection out. |
| How an Ending Works [H] | Judge an ending by what it does to the text behind it, not by what it settles. |
| Where the Line Stops [H] | Read a line break as a decision, and say what the break is doing. |
| The Shape the Poem Agreed To [H] | Identify a poem's form and say what obeying it costs and buys. |
| Counting the Beat, and What Breaks It [H] | Hear a poem's metrical pattern and read the places where it departs. |
| Rhyme, Near Rhyme and What They Yoke [H] | Read a rhyme scheme, hear a near rhyme, and say what the pairing does. |
| What the Sound Is Doing [H] | Name a sound pattern in a line and say what it does to the reading. |
| The Line That Comes Back [H] | Read a repeated line for what has changed around it. |
| The Image That Carries the Argument [H] | Read a concrete detail for the claim it is making without stating it. |
| The Voice and What It Will Not Say [H] | Identify a poem's speaker and read the gap between what is said and known. |
| Same Fact, Different Verdict [H] | Choose the word that carries the verdict you want without changing the claim you are making. |
| How Strong Is Too Strong [H] | Pick the rung of a word ladder the evidence actually supports. |
| Where the Judgment Is Hiding [H] | Find the word that is arguing inside a sentence of facts, and take it out without losing anything. |
| Softening It and Sharpening It [H] | Tell a euphemism from a plain statement, and a strong true sentence from one that overclaims. |
| The Level of the Diction [H] | Match the level of your words to the occasion, and tell inflated diction from necessary technical language. |
| Naming a Tone Precisely [H] | Name a writer's attitude with the word the evidence supports, not the nearest feeling. |
| Where the Tone Turns [H] | Locate the sentence where a writer's attitude changes, with or without a signal word. |
| What the Word Choices Add Up To [H] | Read a writer's position out of an accumulation of choices he never states as an opinion. |
| Which Clause the Reader Believes [H] | Put the fact you are asserting in the main clause and the fact you are conceding in the subordinate one. |
| Items That Have to Match [H] | Keep every item in a series - and every half of a not only / but also pair - in the same grammatical form. |
| The Phrase That Grabs the Wrong Subject [H] | Check what an opening phrase actually attaches to, and repair it without changing who did what. |
| What a Limiting Word Limits [H] | Place only, just and even where they belong, and pin a modifier that could belong to either side of it. |
| Adding Detail Without Adding a Sentence [H] | Name and build the four free modifiers: appositive, participial phrase, relative clause and absolute phrase. |
| Semicolon, Colon, Dash [H] | Choose the mark the joint between two clauses actually calls for, and keep a comma-heavy list readable. |
| Active, Passive, and the Missing Actor [H] | Identify the passive, name what it leaves out, and tell when leaving the actor out is the honest choice. |
| Where the Main Clause Falls [H] | Tell a periodic sentence from a cumulative one, and rebuild either into the other without changing what it reports. |
| The Thesis Somebody Could Refuse [H] | Write a thesis that is arguable, specific, and binding on the essay that follows. |
| The Order of the Reasons [H] | Arrange an argument so each paragraph makes the next one possible. |
| What a Body Paragraph Owes [H] | Open a paragraph with a claim it can finish, and keep the paragraph to that claim. |
| Putting Evidence Into a Sentence [H] | Choose, frame and attribute evidence so a reader knows where it came from and what it is for. |
| The Sentences After the Evidence [H] | Write the reasoning that turns a piece of evidence into support for your claim. |
| Where the Other Side Goes [H] | Place, state and answer an objection so the reader's own doubt is dealt with. |
| The Seam Between Paragraphs [H] | Join paragraphs by naming the relationship between them, not by announcing that another one is coming. |
| Openings and Endings That Earn Their Space [H] | Open with the situation the argument is answering, and close with something the reader did not already have. |
| Scene and Summary [H] | Tell a single dramatized moment from a stretch of time compressed, and find the sentence where one becomes the other. |
| Showing a State, and Only That State [H] | Write behavior a reader can name one particular feeling from, instead of naming it for them or labeling the gesture you just wrote. |
| Filter Verbs, and the One That Has to Stay [H] | Cut saw, heard, felt and noticed where they only add distance, and keep them where they are the only thing holding a belief apart from a fact. |
| What This Narrator Can Know [H] | Hold a story to what its narrator can see, hear or think, and tell a character's inference from the narration's own claim. |
| Tags, Beats and What Goes Between Them [H] | Punctuate a dialogue tag, an action beat, and a quotation interrupted in the middle by its tag. |
| Information a Character Would Not Say [H] | Spot the line that exists to inform the reader, and tell it from a line that raises the same history for a reason of its own. |
| The Detail That Does Two Jobs [H] | Choose the concrete detail a reader can reach the withheld conclusion from, instead of a detail that is merely vivid. |
| What the Scene Changes [H] | Find the sentence where a scene changes what a character knows, what they can still take back, or what the next scene is able to do. |
| The Image Instead of the Statement [H] | Put a thing in front of the reader's senses instead of naming the feeling you want them to have. |
| Naming the Figure Exactly [H] | Tell seven figures of speech apart by what each one actually does to the sentence. |
| What the Sounds Are Doing [H] | Name the sound device a line is built on, and say where in the words the repetition sits. |
| True, Slant, and Eye Rhyme [H] | Judge a rhyme with your ear instead of your eye, and name the four kinds a poet can use. |
| Reading a Rhyme Scheme [H] | Label the pattern of line endings in a stanza with letters, including when the rhymes are slant. |
| Scanning a Line [H] | Count a line's syllables, hear where the stresses fall, and name the meter that results. |
| Where the Line Breaks [H] | Tell an end-stopped line from an enjambed one, and see what a break does to the words on either side of it. |
| Fixed Forms and Free Verse [H] | Identify the fixed forms by the promises each one makes about length, repetition, rhyme, and meter. |
| Revising a Poem [H] | Find the three cuts - the worn comparison, the mixed picture, and the line that explains the poem - that improve a draft more than any addition would. |
| Hearing Rhymes | Tell when two words end with the same sound. |
| Hearing the First Sound | Tell which sound a word starts with. |
| Words That Begin Alike | Group words by their beginning sound. |
| Capital and Lowercase Letters | Match every capital letter to its lowercase partner. |
| Recognizing High-Frequency Words | Know the most common words on sight, instantly. |
| High-Frequency Words in Sentences | Use common words correctly inside a real sentence. |
| How Books and Print Work | Know the parts of a book and which way print goes. |
| Listening Comprehension | Understand a story that is read out loud to you. |
| What Happened First, Next, Last | Put the events of a story in the order they happened. |
| What Makes a Sentence | Tell a complete sentence from a group of words. |
| Naming Part and Telling Part | Split a sentence into who it is about and what happens. |
| Capital Letters and End Marks | Start every sentence with a capital and end it with a mark. |
| Choosing the Right End Mark | Use a period, question mark, or exclamation point. |
| Capitalizing Names | Capitalize names, places, days, months, and the word I. |
| When the Sentence Just Tells You | Find a word's meaning written into the sentence itself. |
| A Nearby Word That Means the Same | Use a synonym elsewhere in the passage to unlock a word. |
| When a Contrast Points the Other Way | Use a contrast word to work out the opposite meaning. |
| Working Back From Examples | Use a list of examples to work out the category. |
| When There Is No Clue Word | Work out a meaning from the whole situation. |
| Naming the Clue | Say which kind of context clue a sentence is using. |
| Putting Your Guess Back In | Check a guessed meaning by reading the sentence again with it. |
| Words With More Than One Meaning | Choose the meaning a sentence needs, not the one you thought of first. |
| When the Clue Is Somewhere Else | Find the meaning of a word when the clue sits in a different sentence. |
| Shades of Meaning | Choose the word whose size matches what actually happened. |
| Words That Carry a Feeling | Hear the approval or disapproval hidden inside a word choice. |
| Noticing When Words Are Not Literal | Tell when a sentence is not meant exactly as written. |
| Working Out What It Really Means | Say in plain words what a figure of speech is telling you. |
| Similes | Read a comparison made with like or as. |
| Metaphors | Read a comparison that says one thing IS another. |
| Personification | Spot something not human doing something only people do. |
| Who the Story Is About | Name the characters in a story and say what one of them is like. |
| How a Character Feels | Name a feeling a story shows through what a character does. |
| Who the Story Is About | Name the character a story follows. |
| First, Next, and Last | Say what happened first, what came in between, and what came last. |
| Putting the Whole Story in Order | Arrange all the events of a story from beginning to end. |
| Finding the Problem | Name what goes wrong in a story. |
| Finding the Solution | Say how a story's problem gets resolved. |
| Summarizing a Story | Retell a story keeping only what matters. |
| Beginning, Middle, End | Say which part of a story an event belongs to, and what that part is for. |
| What a Character Wants, and What Is in the Way | Name both halves of a story problem: the want and the thing blocking it. |
| The Tries That Do Not Work | Follow the middle of a story as a run of attempts, and say why each fails. |
| The Moment It Turns | Find the one moment after which a story cannot go back. |
| Who Is Telling This | Find the teller of a text before deciding what the text means. |
| How Much the Teller Knows | Work out how far a teller can see, and what is therefore missing. |
| What the Teller Cannot See | Assemble what a text shows but its teller has not noticed. |
| Lines, Stanzas and Where a Poem Breaks | Read a poem's shape on the page as part of what it means. |
| Rhyme, Rhyme Scheme and Poems Without Either | Hear rhyme, name the pattern it makes, and read a poem that has none. |
| Repetition, Alliteration and the Sound of a Line | Notice what a poem's sounds are doing besides rhyming. |
| The Picture a Poem Puts in Your Head | Read the sensory pictures a poem or a stage sets, and say what they do. |
| Figures of Speech Inside a Poem | Read similes, metaphors and personification where poems pack them tightest. |
| Who Is Talking in a Poem | Identify the voice speaking a poem, and what that voice reveals. |
| Topic or Main Idea? | Tell what a text is about from what it says about it. |
| Finding the Main Idea | Say in one sentence what a whole text is telling you. |
| Details That Back It Up | Find the fact in a text that supports a particular idea. |
| Words That Give the Shape Away | Spot the words and sentences that tell you how a nonfiction text is organized. |
| Sequence: Time Order and Steps | Follow a text built on the order things happen or the order they are done. |
| Evidence in a History Text | Point to the detail that actually proves a claim. |
| Claims and the Evidence Under Them | Separate what a history text asserts from what it shows. |
| What a Noun Is | Name the words that stand for a person, place, or thing. |
| Common Nouns and Proper Nouns | Tell a general noun from the name of one particular thing. |
| What a Verb Is | Name the words that tell what someone does. |
| Finding the Verb in a Sentence | Pick out the verb inside a whole sentence. |
| Making the Verb Match | Choose a verb form that matches one thing or many things. |
| Finding Both Parts | Pick out the noun and the verb in the same sentence. |
| What an Adjective Is | Name the words that tell what a noun is like. |
| Which Noun the Adjective Describes | Match an adjective to the one noun it is telling you about. |
| What an Adverb Is | Name the words that tell more about what happened. |
| Spotting a Fragment | Tell when a group of words stops before it is a sentence. |
| Spotting a Run-On | Notice when two sentences have been jammed into one. |
| Three Ways to Fix a Run-On | Repair a run-on, and choose the repair that fits the meaning. |
| Joining Two Sentences | Combine short sentences with the joining word the meaning needs. |
| Sentence, Fragment, or Run-On? | Sort any group of words into complete, too short, or too long. |
| Past, Present, or Future? | Tell from the verb whether a sentence is about the past, the present, or the future. |
| Building the Past Tense with -ed | Add -ed to a verb and make the spelling changes the ending forces. |
| Verbs That Do Not Take -ed | Use the past tense of the irregular verbs, and keep it apart from the participle. |
| Actions Caught in the Middle | Use am, is, are, was, were and will be with an -ing verb to show an action in progress. |
| Have, Has and Had | Use have, has and had with a past participle, and say what had adds. |
| Commas in a List | Separate three or more items in a sentence with commas. |
| The Comma After an Opener | Close off a word or phrase that comes before the main sentence. |
| Commas Around the Person You Are Talking To | Set off the name of the person being spoken to. |
| Quotation Marks Around What Someone Says | Punctuate a spoken line and the words that tell who said it. |
| Clause, or Just a Phrase? | Tell an independent clause, a dependent clause, and a phrase apart. |
| All Seven Coordinating Conjunctions | Choose among the seven - and, but, or, so, for, nor, and yet - by what each one claims. |
| The Comma Before a Joining Word | When a joining word holds two halves together, the comma goes in only if a whole sentence follows it. |
| Subordinating Conjunctions | Use because, although, unless, until, and their kin to say how two ideas relate. |
| Conjunctions That Come in Pairs | Use both...and, either...or, neither...nor, and not only...but also, with matching halves. |
| Knowing When You Have a Sentence | Tell a finished sentence from a piece of one. |
| Saying More Than the Bare Fact | Add detail that answers a question a reader would ask. |
| Verbs That Do the Work | Choose a verb precise enough to replace a description. |
| Naming the Thing Exactly | Replace a category word with the actual thing. |
| Joining Two Sentences | Put two related sentences together without making a run-on. |
| Choosing the Right Joining Word | Pick the joining word that states the real relationship. |
| The Sentence the Others Are About | Find or choose the sentence a paragraph is built on. |
| Details That Actually Support | Choose detail that backs the claim you made. |
| A Claim or a Fact? | Tell a position someone could argue with from a fact they could check. |
| The Reason Under a Claim | Find the sentence that says why a position holds. |
| Evidence That Actually Proves It | Tell measured evidence from a stronger way of repeating an opinion. |
| Answering the Other Side | Answer the strongest objection instead of talking past it. |
| The Shape of an Argument | Name the job each sentence in an argument is doing. |
| Starting Where the Story Starts | Begin a story inside the moment instead of outside it. |
| Telling It in an Order a Reader Can Follow | Keep events in order and mark the jumps with real time signposts. |
| Showing a Feeling Instead of Naming It | Replace a named feeling with something a reader can watch. |
| The Detail That Earns Its Place | Choose details that do a job instead of filling space. |
| Dialogue That Does a Job | Keep the lines that change something and cut the ones that do not. |
| Slowing Down the Part That Matters | Spend sentences in proportion to what a moment is worth. |
| Revising and Editing Are Different Jobs | Tell a change that fixes what a piece says from one that fixes how it is written. |
| Cutting Words That Do No Work | Cut the words that repeat something the sentence has already said. |