Academics

This course is designed to provide students with the analytical skills and factual knowledge necessary to deal critically with the problems and materials in U.S. History. The program prepares students for intermediate and advanced college courses by making demands upon them equivalent to those made by full-year introductory college courses. Students will learn to assess historical materials—their relevance to a given interpretive problem, their reliability, and their importance—and to weigh the evidence and interpretations presented in historical scholarship. AP U.S. History will thus develop in students the skills necessary to arrive at conclusions by an informed judgment and to give reasons and evidence clearly and persuasively in essay format. (Adapted from The College Board Advanced Placement Program.) Taking the advanced placement test is required. Students should seek a teacher recommendation before registering for this course.

The AP English Language and Composition course aligns with an introductory college-level rhetoric and writing curriculum, which requires students to develop evidence-based analytic and argumentative essays that proceed through several stages or drafts. Students evaluate, synthesize, and cite research to support their arguments. Throughout the course, students develop a personal style by making appropriate grammatical choices. Additionally, students read and analyze the rhetorical elements and their effects in both fiction and non-fiction texts, including graphic images as forms of text, from many disciplines and historical periods. The texts that students read and analyze are drawn primarily from American literature. Students enrolled in AP English Language and Composition are required to take the AP exam in May. GPA is weighted.

This course is centered on the four central concepts to be mastered in the first-semester college course in calculus: limit, derivative, definite integral, and indefinite integral. For each idea, students are asked to know the precise definition and be able to apply the concept and its associated skills to a variety of unique problems. There are three ways these concepts are presented to the student: graphically, algebraically, and verbally. Students may earn college credit through successful performance on the Calculus AB Advanced Placement examination.
Prerequisite: Precalculus

This course serves as either an advanced first-year calculus course or as an extension of AP Calculus AB. First-year calculus students will be placed in AP Calculus BC vs. AP Calculus AB based on their interest, performance in Precalculus, and teacher recommendation. The course continues to emphasize a multi-representational approach to calculus. Topics covered include more sophisticated methods of integration, polar and parametric curves, polynomial approximations and infinite series, and vector-valued functions. Students may earn college credit through successful performance on the Calculus BC Advanced Placement examination

The AP Environmental Science course is designed to be the equivalent of a college-level environmental science course. The class will explore the concepts of ecological interdependence, population dynamics, and geological processes. The course focuses on the skills and concepts needed to identify, assess, and resolve environmental problems at a local, regional, national, and global level. Field and laboratory work allow for first-hand observation and analysis of environmental phenomena.
Biology and Chemistry are prerequisites.