One coherent four-year trajectory
The standard sequence is a guide; mastery and readiness govern individual progress.
| Grade 9 | Grade 10 | Grade 11 | Grade 12 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | Classical epicsIliad · Odyssey · Aeneid | Shakespeare IAdvanced prose editions | Scripture + Catholic classics | Shakespeare IIOriginal plays |
| Math | Precalculus | Trigonometry + limits | Differential calculus | Integral calculus + beyond |
| History | World History + Civics | Church History | Meta HistoryThreads: Government · Law · Economics · Philosophy · Technology | Modern History |
| Science | Earth & Space | Biology | Chemistry | Physics |
Reading the chart. Pink bars and arcs: brief early encounters with later skills; an arc lands in the skill’s full-study year. College arrows mark intended readiness, not admission or credit guarantees. Heights indicate relative emphasis, not a numerical difficulty scale.
He learns to read hard books—and answer them
One daily English block integrates literature, reading, writing and grammar. These are strands—not separate daily classes. Literature supplies the substance. Writing teaches him to build an argument. Grammar gives him command of the sentence. And why Latin? Because Latin supplements this all and better teaches your son the universal structure of grammar.
The books grow with the boy
The Classics
The Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid anchor the year. He follows whole narratives, compares the heroes and supports his reading with evidence from the text.
Shakespeare I
Building on junior-high beginner prose, he reads advanced prose versions of the Shakespeare stories, created exclusively by COTA, to know their heart—preparing for the original plays in Shakespeare II (Grade 12).
Scripture + Catholic-Christian classics
Scripture, works such as Dante and the saints deepen the reading. He outlines an argument and considers an objection.
Shakespeare II
The original Shakespeare plays are college-level reading and the senior destination. He leads discussion, summarizes demanding reading and develops a sustained interpretation.
A sentence becomes an argument
Precision and evidence
He writes about the epics with a clear thesis, textual evidence and precise diction. Grammar is practiced in real epic sentences, including omitted words and complex phrases.
Voice and rhetorical control
He sustains a mature voice, shapes dialogue and uses rhetorical devices intentionally. Difficult sentence structures and crossing dependencies sharpen his reading and revision.
Argument and the reader
He studies how writing guides a reader’s attention and response. Full annotation of a stylistically complex sentence connects structure to meaning; essays and longer work deepen control.
Sustained senior writing
Complex structure, tone and figurative language come together in a senior piece. He analyzes his own sentences, revises deliberately and presents or defends his work aloud.
The through-line: from following a story to interpreting language, weighing arguments and entering a serious conversation about a text.
Practice → feedback → revision → finished work
At other schools, students read one book and never touch it again. Not at COTA. A student at COTA reads the same Shakespeare play multiple times throughout his time at COTA. Only second, third, fourth, and fifth readings conduce to true depth of thought—and every adult reader knows this. We’re just the first school to integrate this into our educational model.
Precalculus → Trigonometry + limits → Differential calculus → Integral calculus + beyond
A boy’s demonstrated mastery governs his pace.
History within a Catholic horizon
A daily core subject, 55 minutes each day. History does not use a mastery report card.
World History + Civics
World history paired with civics.
Church History
The history of the Church and the lives of saints.
Meta History
Deep study through five metahistorical lenses.
Modern History
AP U.S. History and AP U.S. Government and Politics preparation opportunities.
Five threads, one great story
“Pull hard enough on one thread and you get all the others.”
At Crown of Thorns Academy, boys don’t learn history as a pile of disconnected facts. From the grade-school years on, they learn it first as one great story, with Christ at its center, and then through five threads that run through every age: government, law, economics, philosophy and technology. Picture five colored strings woven into a single rope. A boy can follow any one of them from the first civilizations to today, but they are always touching. Pull hard enough on one and you get all the others. The printing press is a good example. It changed ideas, then power, then law, and then how nations paid for themselves.
Building on World History and Civics and Church History, Grade 11 Meta History studies each thread deeply through a metahistorical lens. Illustrative sources—not a fixed reading list—include:
- Government
- Aristotle’s Politics as a philosophical framework for government.
- Law
- Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova (The New Science) and its metahistorical account of law.
- Economics
- Saifedean Ammous’s The Bitcoin Standard, a philosophical account of money drawing on Ludwig von Mises.
- Philosophy
- The development of philosophy, for example Peter Kreeft’s series on the history of philosophy.
- Technology
- A timeline of technological development.
Histories of the world tie all five threads together. Each thread is weighed in light of natural law, human dignity, and Catholic social and philosophical teaching, so the boys come out with a framework for reading any period, any headline, or any argument they meet.
Senior-year exam options: AP U.S. History and AP U.S. Government and Politics.
From Earth systems to the laws of motion
Four full-year courses build from the largest natural systems to the quantitative laws that describe them.
Earth & Space Science
Earth systems, climate, plate tectonics and materials; the solar system, stars and the universe; Earth history and deep time. Observation, models and written explanation give the facts a structure.
Biology
Heredity, gene expression and evolution; cells and energy; organisms and ecology. Lab work connects claims with observations, and investigations require clear explanations of mechanisms.
Chemistry
The mole, reactions, atomic structure, bonding and measurement; energy, kinetics and equilibrium; acids, redox, gases and solutions. Quantitative practice makes the models useful.
Physics
Forces, motion, energy and momentum; electricity and magnetism; waves, rotation and further topics. Calculus connects mathematical tools to physical explanations and multi-step problems.
Concept chains
Observe. Model. Test. Explain.
Faith is woven through the school day
Lunch is paired with Latin for 30 minutes twice weekly and Theology for 30 minutes twice weekly.
Catechism → Apologetics → Systematic theology
- Grade 9
- Catechism
- Grades 10–11
- Apologetics
- Grades 11–12
- Systematic theology
Theology is also woven through English, Science and History: Scripture and the saints, metaphysics and cosmology, anthropology and Church history. It does not use a mastery report card.
Latin I and II
- Latin I
- Latin II
- Latin IIIOptional, recommended
- Latin IVOptional
Teachers teach the boys Latin. Skills are scaffolded in the Mastery skills system; the portal supports instruction and tracks mastery. The sequence does not assume a fixed grade placement for every entrant.