About Study Guides

Semester Course Plans

Detailed study, reading, and assignment information for high school students is included in the STAA Study Guides.  Each high school student will need a semester study guide for each semester of the school year.  In the guides, students will find the weekly (and often daily) lesson plans for their content-based courses: composition, religion, history, literature, economics, government, fine arts, and science.  Each individual course in the STAA Study Guide is also available as a standalone course booklet so the set of courses the student is studying can be uniquely personalized.

For Daily Student Use

The STAA Study Guides are designed to be placed in the hands of the students, allowing them to take notes in the guides and mark off course activities as they work through the semester. Each course plan week of each course starts with the shaded lesson plan area where the directions for what to read and how to organize the week are provided.  Next, the student will find the directions for any assignments for the week: written assignments or other activities, scheduled discussions with teaching-parents, and a weekly reading comprehension quiz.  Study tool sections to help prepare for the quizzes and scheduled discussions follow the assignments section.  After completing the readings and other study activities offline, students are directed to take any notes they have written in their study guides with them as they log on to the STAA Student Zone and complete the online quizzes.  Scores for offline and online assignments can be recorded in the gradebook in the back of the study guide to help teaching-parents see at a glance which assignments have been completed.  Quarter grades are easily determined by a little bit of multiplication and addition applied to the list of completed percentage scores recorded in the gradebook.  All of these features -- and more! -- are detailed in a collection of online slideshows found on the STAA Student Zone that we refer to as the High School Orientation (formerly a booklet, that has now been expanded into a series of online slideshows).

Purchase after Planning with your Advisor

Semester study guides are purchased separately by the family following the planning appointment with the advisor.  The guides are printed on-demand when you order them and your high school advisor will direct to exactly the combination of guides or booklets you need for your students when you register your students for courses.

Online Previews

Following are preview versions of three semesters of three different courses: Church History IIIB, U.S. Hist & Geogr IB, and Greek Literature IB. 

• CHURCH HISTORY IIIB and U.S. HIST & GEOGR IB are both found in the U.S. Studies I, B Track semester study guide or in standalone subject booklets (Church History IIIB • Catholic Apologetics and U.S. Hist & Geogr IB and IIB).  
• GREEK LITERATURE IB is found in the Greek Studies I, B Track semester study guide or in a standalone subject booklet (Greek Literature IB and IIB). 
• In general, the U.S. Studies, B Track cycle is most appropriate for students in Grades 8, 9, or 10.  The Greek Studies, B Track cycle is typically scheduled for Grade 10 as it does require at least one previous year of high school level courses with St. Thomas Aquinas Academy and prior completion of the AMERICAN LITERATURE (AL1-B) course. 

These three sample courses have been selected in order to share with you a sense of the variety of features in the study guides: Some courses include more content in the study tool sections (the Terms to Know, Reflection Topics, and Study Questions) in order to better guide students through readings of varying types.  Study guide courses driven by textbooks direct students to the specific resources in the textbooks while study guide courses that explore classical and religious writings include more resources in the study guides themselves to help students in their encounters with the Great Books.

Use the arrows to navigate to each guide.
Click on the title page to open the fullscreen preview.