Ninth grade students study world geography and the continents of the world. They study maps and globes, and learn to coordinate locations on a grid. Students study landforms and topographical maps. Ninth grade students study South America, Asia, Africa, The Middle East, Australia, Antarctica, Europe, Canada, and the United States. They study geographical features of these countries, as well as the economies and people of the countries.
English Language Arts
Ninth grade students study sentence types, sentence problems, sentence interruptions, sentence divisions, and sentence ends. They study newspapers, the internet, and persuasion pieces. Students learn about imagery, symbolism, irony, ambiguity, conflict, and subtlety. They study using rhetoric, the structure of an argument, writing descriptions, writing about people, places, and events, creating a timeline, gathering facts, and making it personal. Ninth grade students continue to learn the proper usage of the types of nouns, verb tenses, forms of adjectives, problems with pronouns, functions of adverbs, and rules with prepositions.
Mathematics
Geometry
Ninth grade students learn points and lines, line segments, rays, planes, and lines and points in planes. They study definitions of angles and degrees and measuring the size of angles. They learn to classify angles by size and relation and how to bisect an angle. Students study parallelograms, properties of a trapezoid, ratio and proportions, and the Pythagorean Theorem. Ninth grade students know derive and solve problems involving the perimeter, circumference, area, volume, lateral area, and surface area of common geometric figures. Students know the definitions of basic trigonometric functions defined by the angles of a right triangle. They also know and are able to use elementary relationships between functions.
Science
Physical Science
Ninth grade students study the origin of the solar system, space distance, dating techniques, and discovering small planetary bodies. They learn the concept of a galaxy, galaxy classification, and about protogalaxies. Students study the earth's layers, the Continental Drift Theory, seafloor spreading, types of tectonic plates, volcanoes and earthquakes. Ninth grade students study the greenhouse effect, climates, and the biosphere. They study thermal layers and the ozone layer. Students study mountain regions, the desert, the great central valley region, and the coastal ranges.
