Biology teacher Jenna DeNicola is teaching her first year at AHS, but the pressure is already on to prepare her students for the SOLs. For the 2010-2011 school year, the science SOLS had a 93 percent passing rate. This is up three percent from the previous school year, meaning they passed the No Child Left Behind initiative Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The science department is now hoping to do even better this school year.

“It’s a little intimidating,” DeNicola said. “We want to best ourselves, but there’s not a lot of room to do that.”

DeNicola says her first priority is to teach the students the material and then she offers many practice SOL questions in class. She says her classes move at a rapid pace so that her students have all the knowledge they need going into the test.

“It’s a lot of material, a lot of ground to cover in a short period of time,” DeNicola said.

There are three science SOLs students at AHS can take; biology, chemistry and earth science. Many students fear the tests because of the math processes that are involved. Senior Veronica Leiva, who takes many IB courses, was very apprehensive and worried about her chemistry SOL. She felt even more pressure going into the test since she was taking a honors class and wanted to score well.

“I was worried about passing,” Leiva said. “It was difficult because there were a lot of calculations and so many things you had to remember to do correctly.”

To prepare, she received extra help from her teacher by staying after school. One of the tools that helped her the most were long packets of released SOL questions. Although she believes the test was the most difficult science SOL she has ever taken, she was able to pass the test. She credits her teachers for preparing her for the test.

“All the packets and after school work, it helped a lot,” Leiva said.

Last year, black students had a 91 percent passing rate, Hispanic students had a 91 percent passing rate, white students had 97 percent passing rate, Asian students had a 98 percent passing rate, students with disabilities had a 88 percent passing rate, economically disadvantaged students had a 92 percent passing rate and students with limited English proficiency had a 92 percent passing rate.

Science department chair Isaac Boakye says that these are the highest scores the department has had while he has been at AHS. He thinks such results came as the culmination of more teacher collaboration in the department. Most of the teachers were using the same types of tools, such a practice tests, to prepare their students.

“Since the teachers were all doing almost the same things, it was difficult for a kid to slip through the cracks,” Boakye said.

He is also proud that the scores increased in all of the sub-groups, meaning every race increased their scores, as well as students with disabilities, students with limited English proficiency and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Even with these scores, Boakye is hopeful that they science department will improve the scores in the coming school year.

“We’ll try to do even better,” Boakye said.

Biology teacher Caroline Gergel agrees with DeNicola that the students must be taught the science before they can prepare for the test. One unique tool she uses with her students is teaching them word etymology. She hopes that if the student sees a question and is confused, they can break down the word in order to try to find the right answer.

Gergel does not fear the test this year, and deals with the small amounts of students who are struggling by asking them to stay after or sending their parents e-mails.

“Most of them make a good deal of effort,” Gergel said.