Course Structure: More

Course Structure

This course is intended to be used approximately 5 days a week, 9 months a year, for about an hour a day (depending on a student’s learning pace and the topic for that day), similar to the type of workload a student might see in a physical school. This course is designed in a way that it can replace, rather than supplement, physical schooling. That said, you are welcome to use the resources as you choose.

Classroom and Workbench

We have organized the content on this site into a Classroom and a Workbench. Students will be moving back and forth between these spaces throughout the course, as explained below. The Classroom is the location of all of the lesson content, associated learning resources, and a brief quick quiz or learning activity that goes along with each topic. The Workbench is the site of Explorations in Science (at-home, or occasionally online, activities), Unit Tests, and Unit Projects (science fair–type).

Currently, all assignments are submitted through Google Forms, with the answers provided to students. We do not currently summarize student grades, send out report cards, or provide individualized feedback, so it’s on students and families to track their own progress. We are designed as a homeschool tool. That said, we are constantly thinking about new ways to make it easier for students to keep track of their progress and performance in a way that is sustainable for the site and is equitable for all students. You may see some changes in the organization of the site as we work on this.

Sublessons, Quick Quizzes, and Learning Activities

Our content is broken down into units, lessons, and sublessons. The learning content is all found in the sublessons. Each sublesson comes with its own quick quiz or learning activity, which is designed to help the student to solidify what they’ve learned through recall and practice. Each sublesson, plus its associated quick quiz and learning activity, is designed to be completed in 1 day. The exact length of time that a student will spend on any given sublesson will vary, but we anticipate that they will average about an hour a day.

You’ll note that each sublesson has a short summary at the end that lists the most important ideas that students should have gotten from that lesson. This is designed to help students adjust the course to their level of learning. We often provide details in the sublessons that we think are helpful to overall understanding and that we think may be interesting as students explore in their own learning. That said, we don’t necessarily expect students to remember every detail from the lesson. We do want them to try their best to at least make sure they have a good grasp on the main points listed in the summary.

The number of Sublessons per unit and per lesson varies, depending on the complexity of any given topic and how much information is required to adequately explain that topic. The number of sublessons per lesson ranges from 1 to 5, averaging between 2 and 3.

Lessons and Explorations in Science

Lessons are a group of sublessons all closely related to the same topic. The length of the lesson will depend on the complexity of that topic and the number of sublessons that it has. Each lesson is accompanied by an Exploration in Science or EIS, which is an at-home, hands-on or online activity that students can do to expand or solidify their knowledge of a topic, apply an idea to something new, or to see an idea functioning in real life. We try our best to make these activities fun and enjoyable, within the bounds of something that is closely related to the lesson topic and can be easily and safely done at home with common household supplies. There may be a few items that you may need to purchase specifically, but we have done our best to keep cost and resource efficiency in mind as we are designing these activities.

Each activity will require on average about 30 minutes to an hour of active involvement, plus another 15-30 minutes to answer the associated analysis questions on a given activity. Some activities involve letting something sit over a period of several hours or days to observe the full effect, but these do not require constant active monitoring. We encourage you to spend one day on each sublesson in a lesson and then an additional 1 day on the EIS.

*A note on Covid-19: We have tried our best to adapt our exploration in science activities based on current resources available in this time. We recognize that popular "common household goods" often found in home science experiments such as soap and toilet paper are currently being rationed in many homes. Activities that do include soap only include a couple drops, but please use your discretion at this time and skip any activities that you do not feel feasible in this time whether it be because of resources, social distancing, and "stay at home" regulations. If you would like more suggestions of activities or have ideas that you would like to share with us, feel free to drop us a line.

Units

We have broken up our course into 6 different units, each of which brings in some topics from previous units but mainly centers around a few main ideas generally specific to that unit, each of which will come up throughout the sublessons.

At the end of the unit, students will be asked to complete a Unit Test and a Unit Project. Currently, unit tests are completed and submitted through an online Google Form and are auto-graded to help students gauge the extent of their understanding. It is up to students and families to keep track of those grades, if they choose. We encourage students to complete the tests closed-book, using only the resources listed within the test description (typically a Periodic Table and a calculator). It is up to students and families to ensure the integrity of the testing environment.

Also at the end of the unit, students will be asked to complete a Unit Project. This is a small science fair–type activity designed to take a few days to complete, though the exact nature and scope of the project is up to the student. Students will be asked to formulate a question and a hypothesis related to a topic discussed in the unit, and then design, carry out, and analyze the results of that experiment. We encourage students to consider the resources they have readily available in completing these projects. While we do not specifically grade these projects at the present time, we encourage students to submit their analyses (using a Google Form). Students or families are also welcome to share their projects with us on Instagram @eons_learning with the hashtag provided in the instructions for each unit. Students are also encouraged to participate in local or online science fairs using these projects, if they are interested.

We provide review sheets for each unit that list the most important ideas and all of the important details that students should aim to understand. These will be beneficial to students as they work to make sure that their understanding of the content is in line with the ideas we think will be most important as they continue in their learning. Understanding these ideas will also help students to succeed on the exams. We encourage students to take about a week to review the most important material for the unit while working on their project. The precise ways that students budget their time around this will vary.

list of lessons

The following is a list of sub-lessons currently offered. If you do not see a lesson up, feel free to write to us. It may be currently being developed, or in our curriculum for future grades coming in the next year. If it is not, we love to hear your suggestions.

Unit 1: Beginning Chemistry

Lesson 1: The Atom

Lesson 2: Chemical Bonding

Lesson 3: Chemical Nomenclature

Lesson 4: Molecular Models

Lesson 5: States of Matter

Lesson 6: Density

Lesson 7: Thermodyanimcs

Lesson 8: Solution Chemistry

Lesson 9: Thermal Expansion