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Spanish III is a third-year Spanish course that follows the successful completion of Spanish II. The curriculum follows a standard high school level Spanish III course, and for this reason is taught entirely in Spanish. During the fall term, a thorough review of the advanced verb tenses learned in Spanish 2 help to set up the student for their active participation in class discussions. Students are evaluated on their ability to incorporate the comprehensive grammar learned during the previous year into meaningful conversations spanning a variety of sources. Listening and speaking exercises are a major part of the course, as is the written analysis of the selected reading. Authentic sources from around the Spanish-speaking world, including news articles, poetry and short stories, are employed to help students strengthen and internalize more deeply their knowledge of grammar and idiomatic structures in Spanish.

In Latin III, students continue to build upon their foundations of grammar and vocabulary. They learn independent uses of the subjunctive mood while expanding their understanding of the uses of nouns. New grammatical constructions are practiced and previously learned grammar is reviewed. Students begin the fall using Ritchie’s Fabulae Faciles as their text. Here they read translations of Greek myths in Latin. Students will swiftly transition to reading classical and medieval authors. They will study rhetorical and literary devices and learn to analyze Latin texts and parse complex passages. The focus of the course is on reading and understanding Latin as students transition to reading unaltered poetry and prose.

Students must have fully completed Algebra I and Geometry and need a teacher recommendation to be placed in Algebra II. This is a rigorous and competitive course that contains some of our top math students. The focus is on polynomials, operations and simplifying rational expressions, working with the graphing calculator and other graphing devices to explore functions and transformations. Students engage with radians and degrees, connecting the unit circle and the graphs of periodic functions to one another. Working both independently and cooperatively, students seek to solve word problems and other challenging material.