High School Courses

This course is offered through Brentwood Driver Training. The entire course is completed in one week and consists of 30 classroom hours and six hours of behind-the-wheel instruction. Most driving lessons are completed during class, with some lessons possible after class. Two hours of behind-the-wheel training will be done on a simulator to learn driving in bad weather, emergencies, etc. Everyone who completes this course receives a driver’s education certificate good for an insurance discount. When students take the 30-hour classroom course, they may be exempt from taking the tests at the Driver Testing Station (see eligibility details below). Min. 12 /Max. 25 (must reach minimum by June 1)


Dates: Week 3 (June 17–21)
All Day: 8:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.; 2:30 p.m. dismissal on Friday
Cost: $425 (lunch for the week can be purchased for $25)


Permit/License Eligibility

When your teen takes the classroom course they can be exempt from taking the test at the License Station. If they've had their permit for six months when taking the course, BDT can test them for their driver license during the last driving session. If they have not had their permit for six months when they take the course, they can still take the course whenever they want and wait to do their last in-car lesson when they are eligible or come back for a quick road test when they are eligible.    

Interested in getting a jump start on the college application process? Come to this application workshop. We will begin work on the Common Application. Not required, but highly recommended for all seniors. Bring your laptops!

Rising Grades 9–12
This course is for the student who loves drawing and painting and wants to advance their technique and compositional skills. Assignments are designed to advance a student’s ability to depict objects through direct observation and the use of one’s imagination in developing interesting subject matter. In class exercises and formal projects include the use of graphite, charcoal, pastel and water-based painting media. The creative process is supported by textbook readings, written assignments, and discussions of historical, contemporary and multicultural art.

CREDIT: Semester lower course credit in Visual Arts

 

Rising Grades 10–12
This course is designed for students who enjoy studio art and want to continue to progress their artistic skills. Students explore a variety of drawing media, water-based paints, and relief printmaking methods. Students investigate more advanced compositional arrangements, thematic choices and the appropriate use of reference materials. The creative process is supported by textbook assignments and the study of old master, multicultural and contemporary artists through presentations, discussions, and critique.

PREREQUISITE: Studio Art 1 or departmental approval  

CREDIT: Semester lower course credit in Visual Arts

 

Rising Grades 10–12
This masters level course is designed for visual arts students who want to deepen their exploration in a wide range of techniques and methods in the classical disciplines of drawing, painting, and printmaking. Conceptual approaches to composition and subject matter also engage students in greater experimentation and inquiry. Students learn to support their ideas with correct appropriation and original reference material. Advanced media use, such as oil paint, screen printing, drawing, and mixed media techniques are explored. Students must have a strong commitment to advance their projects outside of class to keep pace with the production expectations of the course.

PREREQUISITE: Studio Art 2 or departmental approval; masters

CREDIT: Semester upper course credit in Visual Arts

 

Rising Grades 10–12
This masters level course is designed for serious art students who want to continue to build their portfolios. Advanced painting, drawing, intaglio, silkscreen, printmaking, and mixed-media methods are further explored. Students engage in increasingly complex compositional schemes and conceptual subject matter. Students must have a strong commitment to advance their projects outside of class and to keep pace with the production expectations of the course. Studio 4 is a semester of challenging coursework for the passionate artist and a prerequisite for AP Studio.

PREREQUISITE: Studio Art 3 or departmental approval; masters

CREDIT: Semester upper course credit in Visual Arts

 

Rising Grades 10–12
This masters level course is designed for serious art students who want to continue to build their portfolios for college review, or to create additional college-worthy work for AP Studio. Advanced painting, printmaking, drawing, and mixed media methods are specifically tailored to boost students' techniques and hone their particular styles. Students continue to explore innovative composition and conceptual subject-matter. Students must have a strong commitment to advance their projects outside of class and to keep pace with the productions expectations of the course. 

PREREQUISITE: Studio Art 4 or departmental approval; masters

CREDIT: Semester upper course credit in Visual Arts

 

Rising Grades 11–12
Have you ever watched a movie based off of a favorite book and found yourself aghast at the changes made to the plot or the characters?  Can a movie really ever capture that which makes a story beautiful? Can an adaptation tell the story better? This course explores these questions as we read classic and modern literature and analyze the films and other adaptations that they inspired. Authors and works studied vary according to student and instructor input, but may include Shakespeare, Austen, Tolkien, and/or Shelley.

CREDIT: Semester upper course credit in English

 

Rising Grades 11–12
In popular literature and theatre, revenge has been a recurrent theme that has thrilled audiences, but beneath the surface of tension, audiences come to a greater understanding of issues of love, death, gender, race, family honor, politics, grace, and forgiveness.  We explore these themes and the revenge device in Greek and Elizabethan theatre, and contemporary literature.
CREDIT: Semester upper course credit in English

 

Rising Grades 10–12; minimum 10 students
This course focuses on developing the Core Skills through researching, writing, and collaborative projects. As a result of sustained, focused investigations, students gain additional proficiency locating and interpreting relevant primary and secondary sources for both assigned topics and topics of their own choosing. Students share their successes as well as the challenges they encounter throughout the research and writing process.

CREDIT: Semester lower course credit in History

Rising Grades 9–11
This course introduces Euclidean Geometry through an algebra intensive approach. Main concepts studied include angles, parallel lines, congruent triangles, plane figures (circles, polygons), coordinate geometry, introductory trigonometry, and 3-dimensional figures. In addition to working problems that intentionally review algebra skills throughout the course, students utilize technology to explore concepts and test conjectures. Students also study logic and write coherent proofs.

PREREQUISITE: Algebra 1 & Ensworth Mathematics Department approval

CREDIT: Year lower course credit in Mathematics

 

Rising Grades 11–12; minimum 10 students
How does stuff break?  To answer this question, students investigate how stuff is made and in doing so, will break stuff! Destructive and nondestructive tests will be conducted to investigate catastrophic failures such as bridge collapse, airplane structural failure, containers that leak, pipes that burst, and electrical failures. Advances in materials are at the core of significant technological advances, and we are in a materials revolution today! Students experience a hands-on introduction to materials science, engineering, and technology, joining researchers who push boundaries further than ever before, using biology, chemistry, and physics to expand our technological frontiers. 

PREREQUISITE: Science Levels 1 and 2  

CREDIT: Semester upper course credit in Science

 

This course is designed for students who have taken English World Studies at Ensworth and are seeking to strengthen their proficiency before progressing to advanced English courses.  Students new to Ensworth who wish to ease their transition into our skills-based program and students from other schools who want to become stronger in the Core Skills are also welcome to take this course.

 

This course is designed for students who have taken American Studies at Ensworth and are seeking to strengthen their proficiency in the Core Skills. Students new to Ensworth and students from other schools who want to become stronger in the Core Skills and in American Studies are also welcome to take this course.

 

HIST History World Studies Review 

This course utilizes a hands-on approach to learning designed to encourage a passion for the study of history.   Students tackle unsolved historical mysteries in an effort to strengthen the core skills that serve as the foundation for the Ensworth history curriculum.  The course also introduces students to such basic topics as the impact of Greece and Rome on world history.

 

HIST History American Studies Review  

This course utilizes a hands-on approach to learning designed to encourage a passion for the study of history.  Students tackle unsolved historical mysteries in an effort to strengthen the core skills that serve as the foundation to the Ensworth history curriculum. The course also introduces students to such basic topics as the impact of the Constitution, American foreign policy, and civil rights in America.

 

LANG Chinese 1 Review 

Additional review of the vocabulary, grammar, pinyin, and characters covered during the academic year study of the language occurs.  Daily emphasis is on oral expression and on writing substantive paragraphs using characters.

 

LANG Chinese 2 Review 

This course reviews the vocabulary, grammar, pinyin, and characters covered in Chinese 2 through additional practice with dialogues, blogs, journaling, and conversation.  Correct stroke order and proper tones receive special emphasis.  Additional exposure to the language occurs through viewing short clips of contemporary Chinese films in Mandarin.

 

LANG Chinese 3 Review  

This review seeks to reinforce the student’s ability to read, write, and think exclusively in the target language.  In addition to further work at mastery of tones and characters, class work focuses on revealing one’s ability to converse and write at an increasingly sophisticated level.  The student’s experience with characters is further augmented by the reading of contemporary Chinese short stories.  

 

LANG French 1 Review  

This course reviews the major grammatical structures covered in French 1.  Students study the regular and irregular verbs in the present tense before advancing to an introduction of the imperative case and the passé composé. Students also are taught proper sentence structure and correct usage of articles, adjectives, and pronouns.

 

This course reviews the major grammatical structures covered in French 2.  Students review the present tense and study the imperfect tense, the passé composé, the future tense, the imperative, and the conditional. Students learn more complex sentence structures and develop the skills to write an essay in French.

 

LANG French 3 Review 

This course reviews all of the major grammatical structures studied through French 3.  Students review the indicative, subjunctive, and conditional moods.  In addition to its strong grammar content, the course also deals with more complex structures involved in writing essays in French.  

 

This course covers the basic grammatical structures of the Latin language.  Students review the four groups of verbs in the present tense, the imperfect tense, the perfect tense, the future tense, the pluperfect tense, and the future perfect tense.  Additionally, students review the five groups of nouns and the functions of each case in a sentence.  

 

This course reviews the important grammar topics of Latin 2, including passive voice and deponent verbs, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs, expressions involving place or time, participles, ablative absolute, indirect statement, and subjunctive mood.  A brief review of noun declensions and verb conjugations is also included. 

 

This course reviews all of the major grammatical structures studied through Latin 3.  The course focuses on translating original Latin texts such as Caesar’s De Bello Gallico into English.   

 

This course reviews the major grammatical structures of the Spanish language.  Students review regular and the major irregular verbs in the present tense and immediate future tense before advancing to an introduction of the past tense. Students also are taught proper sentence structure and correct usage of articles, adjectives, and pronouns. 

 

This course reviews the important grammar topics of Spanish 2. Students review the present tense and study the imperfect tense, the preterite, the future tense, the imperative, and the conditional. Students learn more complex sentence structures and develop the skills to write an essay in Spanish.

 

This course reviews all of the major grammatical structures studied through Spanish 3.  Students review the indicative, subjunctive, and conditional moods.  In addition to its strong grammar content, the course also deals with more complex structures involved in writing essays in Spanish.  

 

This course reviews the main topics covered in a standard Algebra 1 class.  Topics reviewed include equation solving, polynomial operations, laws of exponents, properties of real numbers, solving inequalities, graphing of functions, and introduction to solving the quadratic equation.

 

This course focuses on the main Geometry strands of the Ensworth course Integrated Geometry/Algebra.  These may include constructions, parallelism, triangle congruence, area and perimeter of plane figures, geometric transformations, and right triangle trigonometry.  

 

This course focuses on the main Algebra 2 concepts needed for further study in mathematics.  These include function development and elementary analysis of linear, quadratic, and transcendental functions.  Matrix theory is reviewed, and there is a review of the algebra of conic sections.

SCI Biology / Chemistry Review: This course reviews and assesses the mastery of high school Core Skills as applied to selected fundamental topics from the Biology and Chemistry semesters with an emphasis to master the foundational skills essential to Grade 9 science and ensure readiness for Grade 10 science coursework.

SCI Physics / Integrated Science Review: This course reviews and assesses the mastery of high school Core Skills as applied to selected fundamental topics from the Physics and Integrated Science semesters with an emphasis to master the foundational skills essential to Grade 10 science and ensure readiness to enroll in upper-level science electives.

This course is designed for students to strengthen their proficiency in the Core Skills and subject matter covered in Seminar 9. Complementary to the collaborative nature of the regular course, this course focuses on individualized instruction, specifically in research, writing, and oral communication skills. This course also allows students to explore certain topics with greater depth and independence. 

 

This course is designed for students to strengthen their proficiency in the Core Skills and subject matter covered in Seminar 10.  The focus of the course is to hone communication and research skills in preparation for Grade 11. Each student spends the bulk of the course composing an independent research project to culminate the Seminar experience. Specific components of this project include topical exploration, an annotated bibliography, and a formal presentation.