A four-year sequence built around one idea: reading and writing skills should compound. Each year has a single theme, a clear mastery goal, and builds directly on the year before it.
Most curricula treat each school year as a fresh start. The HS Homeschool Track is designed differently — as a single four-year arc where each year has a defined role: consolidate, then apply, then argue, then investigate independently. By senior year, a student isn't just "good at English." They're a confident reader, a critical thinker, a capable writer, and a self-directed researcher.
Freshman year is the capstone on everything learned in middle school grammar. This is where a student becomes a true master of the language — its mechanics, its rhythm, and its use. Reading is central this year, but it stays light: reading for pleasure, not analysis. The deepest engagement with a text is learning to summarize it clearly and accurately.
By the end of freshman year, the student has full command of English grammar and mechanics, and has built a genuine, positive relationship with reading — the foundation everything else in the track is built on.
Sophomore year puts the reading skill built in freshman year to work. The focus shifts from reading for enjoyment to reading for information — learning to identify what matters in a text and what doesn't. This is also the year students learn to evaluate their sources critically, distinguishing credible from incredible sources, and primary from secondary sources.
By the end of sophomore year, the student can annotate any text with purpose, extract what matters, and confidently judge whether a source deserves their trust.
Junior year is where reading and annotation skills get put to work answering questions. Students learn how to construct a genuine argument and how to marshal their sources in service of that argument. A dedicated unit on propaganda teaches students to recognize manipulation tactics in the texts they encounter — a critical thinking skill that extends well beyond the classroom.
By the end of junior year, the student can construct a persuasive, well-supported essay from scratch — and can recognize when someone else is trying to persuade them unfairly.
Senior year hands the wheel to the student. Each student chooses a subject to pursue for the entire year — coming up with their own research questions and answering them independently. The work is self-driven, with goals set and checked throughout the year to keep momentum. By the end of the year, each student has built a website dedicated to presenting their research.
By the end of senior year, the student has completed an independent body of research from question to public presentation — demonstrating every skill built over the previous three years.
New Mexico's public school standards for English Language Arts are built on the Common Core State Standards, which New Mexico formally adopted and supplemented with additional state-specific standards (6.29.4 NMAC). Rather than defining standards grade-by-grade in high school, New Mexico groups ELA expectations into two bands: grades 9–10 and grades 11–12. Each band is organized into five strands: Reading Literature (RL), Reading Informational Text (RI), Writing (W), Speaking & Listening (SL), and Language (L).
The tags above show how each year of the HS Homeschool Track maps onto these state bands and strands — freshman and sophomore year draw primarily from the 9–10 band, while junior and senior year draw from the more advanced 11–12 band. This alignment is provided for reference so families can see how the track's four-year arc connects to New Mexico's official expectations for high school English Language Arts. It is not a substitute for a full standards audit and does not represent formal district or state certification.
Full standards are published by the New Mexico Public Education Department at web.ped.nm.gov.
Curious whether the HS Homeschool Track is the right fit for your student? Let's talk about where they are now and where this track can take them.
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