This class is comparable to a first year college-level course that emphasizes developing an understanding of concepts and science as a process, recognizing unifying themes that integrate and apply critical thinking to environmental and social concerns, and using extensive laboratory experience to clarify underlying principles of biology. This rigorous course helps to prepare students for the Advanced Placement Examination, which is three hours in length and is administered in May. The laboratory work completed by an AP student in one year is equivalent to work completed by college student in a semester. It is an integral part of the course for deep understanding of concepts in unity and diversity among organisms, connections between form and function, genetics and evolutionary change, energy and matter essential for life, biochemistry, microbiology, and ecological interactions. Examples of topics include molecules and cells, heredity and evolution, and organisms and populations. Students are to meet all relevant benchmarks College Board AP Biology Standards. Prerequisite: course completion in biology and chemistry as well as their current science teacher recommendation needed.

Calculus includes elementary functions and assumes that students have strong backgrounds in Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Analytic Geometry. The course follows the recommended course syllabi provided through the Advanced Placement program of the College Board.

The AP Computer Science Principles course is designed to be equivalent to a first-semester introductory college computing course. The curriculum framework provides a detailed description of the course content. The key sections of this framework are described in the following text:

• computational thinking practices (connecting computing, creating computational artifacts, abstracting, analyzing problems and artifacts, communicating, collaborating)

• seven big ideas (creativity, abstraction, data and information, algorithms, programming, the internet, global impact)

• learning objectives that integrate computational thinking practice or skill-essential knowledge statements

AP English Language and Composition engages students in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a range of periods, disciplines, and rhetorical contexts, and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. All language arts benchmarks are addressed in this course. Students read primary and secondary source material and synthesize what they have read in expository, analytical, and argumentative writing of the kind that is expected in college.

AP Japanese Language and Culture is a college-level course aimed at developing all aspects of communication and competence in the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. A variety of authentic materials will be used in class instruction, with connections to other subjects, native languages, and the outside community. Class will be conducted mainly in Japanese and students are also expected to use the target language on a daily basis.

The aim of this course is to provide the student with a learning experience equivalent to that obtained in most college introductory psychology courses. Students learn some of the explorations and discoveries made by psychologists over the centuries. They also assess the differing approaches adopted by psychologists, including the biological, behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, psychodynamic, and social-cultural perspectives. Specific topics may include methodology, behaviorism, neuroscience, sensation and perception, developmental psychology, and intelligence and psychological testing.

This foundational course provides students with opportunities to think critically and creatively, research, explore, pose solutions, develop arguments, collaborate, and communicate using various media. Students will develop solutions to real world issues and learn to defend their positions. Through this course student will learn skills for success in college and any future career including business, engineering, healthcare, and law.

AP World History is designed to be the equivalent of an introductory college or university world history course. Students investigate significant events, individuals, developments, and processes in four historical periods from approximately 1200 to the present. Students develop and use the same skills, practices, and methods employed by historians: analyzing primary and secondary sources; making historical comparisons; utilizing reasoning about contextualization, causation, and continuity and change over time; and developing historical arguments. The course provides five themes that students explore throughout the course in order to make connections among historical developments in different times and places: interaction between humans and the environment; development and interaction of cultures; state building, expansion, and conflict; creation, expansion, and interaction of economic systems; and development and transformation of social structures.