New high school content on IXL: Chemistry and U.S. history

At Home, In the Classroom, IXL Updates

Last year, IXL broke new ground with high school science and social studies curricula with biology and civics & government. Now we’re expanding it with two new courses: chemistry and U.S. history!

IXL’s new standards-aligned chemistry and U.S. history skills are designed to help students develop their critical thinking, explore the world around them, and prepare for important assessments.

Curious to see the new content? Let’s take a look.

High school chemistry

High schools typically teach chemistry to students in 10th or 11th grade. Schools often assess chemistry knowledge in an end-of-course exam or as part of a comprehensive science exam in 11th grade. IXL’s high school chemistry content provides students and teachers with superb material to get ready for these assessments.

IXL’s high school chemistry curriculum covers:

  • Science foundations: 
    • Scientific inquiry and foundational scientific concepts like accuracy and precision to prepare students for hands-on, experiential learning in the classroom
  • Structure and properties of matter: 
    • The composition of matter, models of the atom, and the types of chemical bonds formed when atoms combine
    • Predicting the structure of a substance and evaluating its properties by considering the intermolecular forces between its particles
    • Exploring the behavior of solids, liquids, gases at different temperatures and pressures
  • Reactions: 
    • Using observations and particle models to identify physical and chemical changes, as well as distinguish between types of chemical reactions
    • Exploring how temperature or concentration affects reaction rates and predicting the impact on an equilibrium system when reaction conditions change
  • The mole and stoichiometry: 
    • How mass is conserved during a chemical reaction
    • Using the mole concept to relate the number of particles of matter to experimental data, as well as calculate the amount of reactants and products in a chemical reaction
    • Identifying the limiting reactant and using it to determine the yield of a reaction
  • Energy: 
    • How energy is transferred in endothermic and exothermic processes
    • Representing energy changes using phase diagrams and heating curves
    • Calculating heat changes in chemical reactions
    • Comparing the energy transformations in nuclear reactions

IXL’s high school chemistry curriculum is fully aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards and has skill plans for all 50 states’ standards.

High school U.S. history

High schools can teach U.S. history any time from 9th grade to 12th grade. Many states require end-of-course assessments for U.S. history, and IXL’s U.S. history skills offer excellent practice for them.

IXL’s high school history curriculum covers:

  • The colonies and the American Revolution:
    • The foundations and culture of the Thirteen Colonies, as well as how labor systems developed there
    • Analyzing primary sources about early democracy in the colonies and the First Great Awakening
  • The early republic through the Civil War:
    • The founding documents of the United States, the politics and culture of the early republic and antebellum periods, and how the sectional crisis led to the Civil War
    • Analyzing primary sources from abolitionist and early feminist social movements
    • The different approaches to Reconstruction after the Civil War
  • The Gilded Age and Progressive Era:
    • Industrialization, labor, immigration, and urbanization associated with the Gilded Age
    • The rise of U.S. imperialism and how Progressive politics and social movements reformed society
    • Black experiences under Jim Crow and different responses to it
  • World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II:
    • The causes of World War I and how the U.S. reacted to World War I domestically during the 1920s
    • Analyzing how the economic trends of the 1920s helped lead to the Great Depression, life during the Depression, and New Deal programs created to recover from it
    • Analyzing Roosevelt’s fireside chats to learn more about his leadership style
    • World War II in Europe, the Pacific, and on the home front, including important topics such as the Holocaust and Japanese internment
  • The Cold War to the present:
    • The causes and course of the Cold War, the African American civil rights movement, and other post-war social movements
    • Political, economic, technological, and demographic changes in the U.S. of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including September 11th and the War on Terror
  • Social studies skills:
    • How to interpret data from timelines and maps
    • The best way to use primary and secondary sources to learn more about topics of interest and form arguments

IXL’s high school U.S. history curriculum has standards skill plans for 15 states. We’ll release plans for the remaining states in the near future.

The states and territories with high school U.S. history skill plans include Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia (both current and new standards), Wisconsin, and American Samoa.

Take advantage of our expanded curriculum

With science and social studies content from kindergarten all the way to high school, as well as a full K-12 math and English language arts curriculum, IXL is the perfect way to streamline learning across all four core subjects. See our high school science and social studies curricula in action: