Last year the English 2 EOC scores increased by 10.2 percentage points with 76.1 percent of students scoring a 3 or higher on the exam.

English teacher and School Intervention Coordinator Rachel Vokally says the English Department credited changes made by the department.

“We evaluated our instructional practices and honed in on what really worked and made necessary changes,” Vokally said.

Department chair Geoff Belcher pointed to increased reading frequency.

“As a PLT we worked hard to find fiction passages, nonfiction articles and poems that would challenge our students and utilized these in class to teach students how to annotate passages to help them make meaning,” Belcher said.

Vokally felt the positive progress was able to happen because of the great group of teachers.

“I truly believe the PLT was successful because everyone worked as a team towards a common goal,” Vokally said.

The percentage of students scoring a 4 or 5, labeled as college and career ready by the state, also rose 4 percent.

“I know that our honors level teachers pushed higher Lexile level readings throughout the semester and increased frequency and text length in an effort to build stamina,” Vokally said.

Belcher hopes the PLT will build upon last year’s success.

“We want to keep working with the passages we selected last year and add new interventions to help students that our in-class data shows us are still struggling to achieve mastery,” Belcher said.

Being the part of this accomplishment made Vokally appreciative of her students and co-workers.

“I feel blessed to work with a group of peers who are driven by student successes,” Vokally said. “I’m so proud of our students for pushing themselves and rising to the occasion.”