For the past two weeks, the school administration extended Viking Time by 20 minutes for SOL remediation and review. Mondays and Wednesdays were reserved for English and Math SOL help for underclassmen and Tuesdays and Thursdays for Science. In these sessions, teachers went over review topics and gave students practice questions before the SOL.

The longer Viking Time has been met with mixed responses, especially from juniors. For juniors, Reading SOL prep was mandatory.

Junior Drew Lowman felt that the extended Viking Time gave her more time to complete schoolwork. 

“I love it, it gives me a lot of extra time for my other classes that are picking up because it’s the middle of May,” she said. 

Fellow junior Lindsay Semiao disagreed, saying that the review time was not worth the changed schedule. 

“It’s really annoying, I get that they want us to study and prepare for our SOLs and AP tests,” she said. “But it is annoying to mess the schedule up for a few weeks.”

Every Monday and Wednesday, English teachers went to junior homerooms to review subjects such as poetry and narrative fiction. Many juniors felt that this time wasn’t beneficial for them. 

“I don’t find the SOL review useful, it’s not really something that I was thinking about and it takes away from studying,” Lowman said.

Others felt that, because there were only four lessons in homeroom, there wasn’t enough time to make a significant improvement to their score.

“I don’t think the English lessons are going to help on the SOLs, it was hard to pay attention and I wanted to be doing other work,” junior Kaitlyn Sullivan said. 

Junior Kate Caling, on the other hand, believes SOL review has a potential to be useful for some. 

“Overall, I find it to be a helpful experience for those who need it, but for those who are in more accelerated classes, they don’t need this time,” she said.