16 core topics + 66 prerequisite topics taught as needed · approximately 26 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.
| Exigence: What Made This Necessary [H] | Identify the pressure that called a text into being, and separate it from the occasion. |
| The Audience Under the Audience [H] | Tell apart who a text is addressed to, who it is written for, and who is meant to overhear it. |
| The Speaker Is a Construction [H] | Describe the version of a writer that a text builds, and why that version fits the situation. |
| Stated Purpose and Working Purpose [H] | Separate what a text says it is doing from the job it is actually built to do. |
| What the Writer Was Not Free to Say [H] | Find the limits a situation places on a text, and read what those limits shaped. |
| Kairos: Why Now [H] | Judge how a text's timing changes what it can accomplish. |
| The Shape the Medium Demands [H] | Explain how the form a text is delivered in changes what it can and cannot do. |
| When a Text Changes Situations [H] | Track what happens to a text's meaning when it is carried out of the situation it was written for. |
| The Lede and What It Promises [H] | Read a news lede for the fact it selects and the story it obligates the rest of the piece to deliver. |
| How a News Story Is Stacked [H] | Explain why a news story is ordered by a reader's need rather than by time, and predict what disappears when it is cut. |
| Who Says So [H] | Trace every sentence in a report to what the reporter saw, what a document says, or what a person claimed - and notice when a verb adds a judgment. |
| On the Record, and What Anonymity Costs [H] | Weigh a source by the condition they spoke under, the reason they are unnamed, and what the paper did besides take their word. |
| What a Quotation Is For [H] | Decide when a speaker's exact words earn their space and when a paraphrase serves the reader better. |
| News, Analysis, Editorial, Column [H] | Tell the four kinds of newspaper writing apart from the sentences themselves rather than from the label above them. |
| Balance, Weight and the Manufactured Middle [H] | Separate how much space each side of a story receives from what stands behind each side's claims, and name what the reporting has not settled. |
| Names, Harm and What a Paper Owes Afterward [H] | Judge a newsroom decision by what it costs the person it lands on, what it gives the reader, and whether the paper disclosed that it made a choice. |
| 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. |
| Listening Comprehension | Understand a story that is read out loud to you. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Main Ideas That Are Not Written Down | Work out the main idea when no sentence states it. |
| Details That Back It Up | Find the fact in a text that supports a particular idea. |
| Writing a Summary | Retell a text keeping only what matters. |
| Telling a Detail from the Main Idea | Spot the sentence that is only a detail. |
| Words That Give the Shape Away | Spot the words and sentences that tell you how a nonfiction text is organized. |
| Description: Groups, Parts and Kinds | Recognize a text that describes one thing closely or sorts things into kinds. |
| Sequence: Time Order and Steps | Follow a text built on the order things happen or the order they are done. |
| Compare and Contrast | Read a text that sets two things side by side and says how they are alike and different. |
| Cause and Effect | Trace a text where each thing described makes the next thing happen. |
| Problem and Solution | Read a text that states a difficulty and then what was done about it. |
| Naming the Structure of a Whole Text | Decide which structure a whole passage is built on, and notice when it uses more than one. |
| Why the Writer Chose That Shape | Explain what a text's structure does for the reader, and what would be lost in another shape. |
| Why the Author Wrote It | Name what a text was built to do, not just what it is about. |
| The Evidence for a Purpose | Point to the move in the text that proves what the writer wanted. |
| Who It Was Written For | Work out the reader a text was aimed at, and how you can tell. |
| The Author's Point of View | Say what the writer thinks about the subject, even when no opinion is stated. |
| Words That Take a Side | Notice how a writer's wording steers what a reader concludes. |
| Facts, Judgments, and Honest Uncertainty | Sort what can be checked from what is argued, and spot a writer naming their own limits. |
| Two Writers, One Subject | Compare two texts on one subject and find the exact point where they part. |
| What Your Sources Are Really About | State the one question a set of sources is answering, precisely enough to compare them. |
| Where Sources Agree | Find the ground two sources share before you look at where they split. |
| Where Sources Disagree | Locate the exact sentence where two sources stop agreeing. |
| A Fact Fight or a Meaning Fight | Tell whether two sources disagree about what happened or about what it means. |
| What Each Source Chose to Include | Notice what one source puts first, and what another leaves out entirely. |
| Choosing the Source That Can Answer It | Match a question to the source that is actually able to answer it. |
| Building One Answer from Several Sources | Write one sentence that holds everything the sources support and nothing more. |
| What None of the Sources Tells You | Name the question your sources leave open, and what would answer it. |
| The Main Idea of a History Text | Find what a history passage is really about. |
| Evidence in a History Text | Point to the detail that actually proves a claim. |
| Whose Story Is Being Told | Notice whose point of view a history text takes, and who is missing. |
| Reading a Source Like a Historian | Ask who made a source, when, and what they wanted it to do. |
| Claims and the Evidence Under Them | Separate what a history text asserts from what it shows. |
| When Sources Disagree | Compare accounts of the same event instead of trusting one. |
| Spotting a Fragment | Tell when a group of words stops before it is a sentence. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Explaining or Arguing? | Tell a sentence that explains from one that argues, tells a story, or gives orders. |
| Saying What You Will Explain | Open a report with a sentence that says what about the subject will be explained. |
| Putting Facts Where They Belong | Group related facts under the heading that answers the same question. |
| Sentences That Add Something | Develop a point with real information instead of repeating it louder. |
| Your Own Words, the Same Facts | Restate a source's fact in your own wording without changing it. |
| A Question Worth Researching | Turn a subject into a question that sources can actually settle. |
| Does This Source Answer My Question? | Tell a source that answers your question from one that merely shares it. |
| Who Wrote It, and Why | Weigh a source by its author, its date and its purpose. |
| Notes in Your Own Words | Take a note that carries the idea without carrying the sentence. |
| Naming Where It Came From | Record a source completely enough that a reader could find it. |