Hickey
Elementary School
AVID - What You Can Expect
AVID - What You Can Expect to Hear
As the year progresses, all students will learn about:
GROW
- Get Ready to learn
- Review what you know
- Open your mind
- Wonder and ask
WICOR
- Writing to Learn
- Inquiry
- Collaboration
- Organization
- Reading to Learn
College and Career Readiness
SMART Goals
Binder Organization
Marking/Highlighting Homework
2 and 3 Column Focused Note-taking
STAR Note Studying
Critical Reading Skills
Levels of Questions
Organizational Tools
Students have been developing an organizational system that begins with a locker and backpack and evolves into a combination of the following: spiral notebooks, folders, a three-ring binder, and a pencil pouch.
All students in grades 3-5 will be issued a 3-ring binder, dividers (folders), and a pencil pouch.
*Binders tend to get bulky and heavy, so please plan accordingly when purchasing backpacks. Students will be scheduled to clean out their binders, backpacks, and lockers every month.
Grades K-2 will receive a more teacher-directed/guided approach. Teachers will use organization tools based on their grade level and preference. Most of the AVID strategies will be modeled.
Agendas/Planners
Students in grades 3-5 will also be issued an agenda, while K-2 will have their own daily home calendar. The agenda is used as a student self-monitoring, parent communication tool and will be taken home each day.
Agendas will contain a summary of your student’s day, as well as reflections on what they learned in each subject area. In these agendas, students will jot down their homework assignments for each night and keep track of their independent leisure reading.
Agendas are part of the collaboration and communication between home and school.
Students are held accountable for writing on their agendas daily *Teachers will be checking agendas daily to ensure proper use.
Fostering a Growth Mindset
Mindset is very important when it comes to a student’s approach to learning. A person with a growth mindset believes that success is a product. Success does not come only to those with talent and inherent ability. Hard work and perseverance are key factors in achieving success.
Content Accordion PISD - Client Enablement Consultant
Writing to Learn
Writing to Learn
Writing is a strategy that can be implemented in all subject areas to engage students in higher level thinking, including making connections to personal experiences and among subject areas. Writing-to-learn activities are short and informal writing tasks that allow students to express their thinking and make connections to academic content.
Example of AVID writing strategies in the classroom.
Focused Note Taking
Focused Note Taking
Focused Note Taking
Focused Note Taking
Inquiry
The Question and Heart of the AVID Classroom
At the heart of inquiry is the creation of a learner who will think deeply about content in order to arrive at a more complete level of understanding. Inquiry within the classroom fosters an environment where students question, analyze, discuss, and construct a greater understanding of the world around them and the content being studied. A key to successfully integrating inquiry within the classroom is an understanding that questions—specifically ones that lead to deeper levels of thought—must be both teacher- and student-driven. A well-crafted question can guide students to a deeper examination of their learning so that they can approach an answer only after considering multiple perspectives and sources.
Strategies for fostering Inquiry in Students
Costa's Levels of Questions
Investigations
Collaboration
Fostering a Growth Mindset
A collaborative classroom is an intentional environment in which collaboration and social development are infused into academic content. In collaborative-rich classrooms, student collaboration goes beyond conventional cooperation and compliance, as students become invested, caring members of a learning community. Collaboration is essential for student success, as it entails experiencing the challenges and opportunities associated with a diversity of perspectives and working styles, which can deepen metacognitive thinking, accelerate learning, and broaden perspective.
What does Collaboration look like in the AVID classroom?
Socratic Seminars
Group activities and projects
Peer Editing Groups
Service Learning Projects
Organization
Organizational Tools
Students have been developing an organizational system that begins with a locker and backpack and evolves into a combination of the following: spiral notebooks, folders, a three-ring binder, and a pencil pouch.
All students in 3-5 grades will be issued a large 3-ring binder, dividers (folders), and a pencil pouch at no cost to you.
*Binders tend to get bulky and heavy, so please plan accordingly when purchasing backpacks. Students will be scheduled to clean out their binders, backpacks, and lockers every month.
Grades K-2 will receive a more teacher-directed/guided approach. Teachers will use organization tools based on their grade level and preference. Most of the AVID strategies will be modeled.
Agendas/Planners
- Students in 2-5 grades will also be issued an agenda.
- The agenda is used as a student self-monitoring and parent communication tool and will be taken home each day. Agendas will contain a summary of your student’s day, as well as reflections on what they learned in each subject area.
- In these agendas, students will jot down their homework assignments for each night and keep track of their independent leisure reading.
- Agendas are part of the collaboration and communication between home and school.
- Students are held accountable for writing daily agendas.
- *Teachers will be checking agendas daily to ensure proper use.
Other ways collaboration shows up in AVID Classrooms
Graphic Organizers
Focused Note-Taking
Project Planning
SMART Goals
Reading to Learn
Reading and AVID
Students who read understand text structures; apply prior knowledge; make connections to other texts, self, and the world; make predictions and ask questions; and create visual images as they read.
Reading Skills
Deep Reading Strategies
Note Taking
Vocabulary Building
Academic Thinking Skills
Active block - Client Enablement Consultant