The Plan of Study provides an easy way to plan out the courses needed to graduate, while also focusing on classes that align to one or more career areas of interest. Each Pathway is configured to recommend required courses and options related to a career path or career cluster based on the specified high school.
The overall goal of the Plan of Study is to think about what skills and knowledge you want to have when you graduate high school. It's also a way to plan to try classes related to a career before you commit to a postsecondary option like a college degree or apprenticeship program.
The Plan of Study view is only available from the Student side of the platform, but can be shared by viewing the student's Academic and Career Plan PDF.
Selecting a school
The first step is to select the high school you're most likely to attend. Do this by clicking the "Change which high school I am seeing pathways for" button, and then select your high school.
You can change this later, though some classes you've planned may not be available at the new school.
Selecting a pathway
Next, select a pathway. Pathways are aligned to career clusters and paths that you explored on the 'Career Exploration' tab. If you favorited one or more Career Paths, you should choose a Pathway that's similar. If you have more than one interest, that's ok! Your Pathway will generate suggestions for courses to take, but you can also search for one or more classes from another Pathway.
Planning courses
Key course planning information
On the Plan of Study page, you'll see the Pathway you selected. Check that the high school is the school you're most likely to attend as this determines which recommended courses you will see. If it's the wrong high school, click 'Change pathway' and select the correct school on the Pathway page.
Next you may see links to information your school has provided to help plan courses in order to meet graduation and program requirements.
Adding courses to your Plan of Study
You're ready to plan your courses! Your teacher may give you specific instructions on which grades you should plan. In most cases, you will start with next year. If you're in 7th grade now, your plan will start in 8th grade. Click 'Edit courses' or any subject in the grade you'd like to plan.
To plan a course, choose a subject from the column on the left. Doing so will show you the suggessted courses for the subject and grade level on the right. Planning the course is as easy as selecting one of the recommendations. If your teacher or counselor has suggested a different course for you, you can search other math classes using the search box.
You've planned a course! Once you select the course, it will appear in the left-hand column. It will fill the subject slot that you originally selected. If you did this by mistake, you can delete it by clicking the red-outlined course with the 'X'.
If you'd like to plan another course from the same subject, select another course from the recommendations or search for another course. If you're ready to plan the next subject, choose another subject.
Continue to plan courses in each subject slot until you've planned all the grades your teacher or counselor has asked you to plan. You can get to other grade levels by selecting the navigation arrows to go up a grade or down a grade. When you're done, click 'Back to Plan of Study' to review your whole plan.
Non-Pathway Courses
While you will mostly be selecting courses that are recommended for you based on the Pathway you've selected, you may also decide to take a course from another pathway. For example, if you're interested in Animal Science and Health Science, you can decide to take a course from both before you choose one. Since you can only select one pathway at a time, any course you take that's part of another pathway will have a special indicator to let you know that it's different.
In this example, the student has selected Animal Science as their Pathway of choice. Health Science I is flagged as a non-pathway course. Trying different courses is encouraged! But if you see too many non-pathway courses in your schedule, you may either need to adjust your pathway or your plan.
After thinking about it more, the student may change their Pathway to Health Science. Now the Animal Science I course is flagged as the non-pathway course.
Tracking credit requirements for graduation in the planning phase
When you're first getting started, you can see your progress towards the credit requirements to graduate from high school in the 'Planned' tab of your graduation tracker. Each subject will display the minimum number of credits to graduate, as well as how many credits you've planned.
When you're just starting out your course planning and your district hasn't imported any of your completed course history, we recommend using the 'Planned' tab of the Graduation Requirements.
Course history and tracking earned credits
As you progress through high school, your school may upload your course history with the courses you completed and the number of credits you earned for each course. Courses from your course history will display with a green checkmark and cannot be edited. They will also display how many credits you earned, and you can see a total count of credits earned for each grade level.
Additionally, the 'Earned' tab of the Graduation Requirements will show you how many credits you've earned towards each requirement. In the example below, the student has earned 1 of 3 required math credits, and they've already planned to take 2 more math credits in future grades. This means that as long as they complete their plan, they will fulfill the math requirement.
Once your school starts adding your course history, we suggest using the 'Earned' tab as it will more accurately reflect your progress.
Viewing your Plan of Study on your ACP
Your counselor and parents will see your Plan of Study when they review your Academic and Career Plan PDF, or ACP. You can generate and view this PDF by going to the My Career Plan tab on the left-hand navigation and clicking View Career Plan. If your school has a guardian email on file, you may also click "Send Career Plan" to send it to your guardian(s).