MS/SEC: Lit 13, IB Psychology, TOK Year 2

Literature-13 and Writing-13 students engage in QSI’s new English curriculum. This inaugural year of the recently released updated course of study benefits from new-and-improved synchronization and tried-and-true timeless works of literary merit. 

Students assemble portfolios in Literature class, marshaling evidence to demonstrate how an author’s voice and perspective affect stories and how they are told. Using narrative fiction short story classics from Edgar Allen Poe, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and W.W. Jacobs, students apply evidence from texts in literary analysis essays in Writing class. 

The curricula proceed hand-in-hand: writing narratives while studying narratives to begin the year, and studying suspense to write suspense coming up. Students provide evidence to show how writers establish characterization, set mood, and develop theme. 

IB Psychology students concurrently progress on designing, implementing, and reporting on their recapitulation of a landmark experiment, while beginning study of developmental psychology. Drawing on the biological and cognitive bases of behavior, the class delves deeper into critical periods of development for perception, behavior, and moral development. 

In Theory of Knowledge, Year 2 students reflect on the scope, perspectives, tools & methods and ethical considerations as applied to the Human Sciences of economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology and global politics, as they gird themselves to teach each other “how we know what we know” in fundamental findings from Natural Sciences: basics of cosmology; chemistry; the nature of reality. It’s all in a day’s study!