Course Description
The AVID Elective courses are a series of college prep courses that offer increasingly sophisticated levels of skill development in the areas that lead to success in college. Through AVID lessons and tutorials students improve critical thinking skills, reading comprehension, written communication, and the ability to guide and be guided by their peers. It is a requisite of the course that students have gone through the selection process and have a desire to be in the class. They must also be simultaneously enrolled in at least one honors/challenge level course.
Objectives
• Students will increase awareness of their own interests, talents and abilities in order to set and plan ongoing personal and academic goals.
• Students will apply critical thinking and organizational skills to all content areas.
• Students will apply methods of research as they become more independent learners.
• Students will use effective collaborative group and shared inquiry skills for a variety of purposes.
• Students will practice scholarly writing across the curriculum.
• Students will apply critical reading skills to all content areas.
• Students will use critical thinking skills in mathematics – focusing on the data analysis and statistical skills of identifying patterns and trends, and drawing
conclusions.
AVID methodologies are designed to promote academic rigor as students become increasingly independent learners. The intent is to create students who are successful in challenge level, honors, AP, and IB courses, so the skills, habits of mind and routines taught align with existing courses of rigor.
AVID Instructional Practices
The core of the AVID elective is WIC-R, based on best practices in use already through the Focused Inquiry Process.
Writing – Prewrite, draft, respond, revise, edit, final draft, class and textbook notes, learning logs and journals
Inquiry – skilled questioning, Socratic seminars, quick write/discussion, critical thinking activities, writing questions, open-mindedness activities
Collaboration – group projects, study groups, jigsaw activities, read-arounds, response/edit/revision groups, and collaborative activities
Reading – SQ5R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review), KWL, QAR, reciprocal teaching, think-alouds, questioning
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