Advancement Via Individual Determination

National AVID Website | KMS AVID | Priory Communications Project | Forms

The following are downloadble files in Microsoft Word 2003 format that parents can save to thier computer, view or print out. The forms are regularly used in the AVID classroom by the students.

Assignment check list for parents

Cornell Notes

Presentation - what is the Cornell Notes system? (a multimedia presentation, please click mouse or use arrow key to advance text and slides).

Cornell notes front, Cornell notes back

SOAPSTone

What is SOAPTone?         

          Too often the typical student will approach a text with no particular plan. To most readers, the text contains a series of facts that they are to discover and report to the teacher. The question ''Is this going to be on the test?" presumes that there is an identifiable body of knowledge in the assigned reading without which educational progress is impossible. Thus, students typically respond by repeating the details of the piece to show they know what it says.

          Students need to read carefully. Without knowledge of what the text actually says, it is impossible to discuss it intelligently. Although the ability to summarize is a skill in itself, it is not the sole purpose of reading. Instead, the text becomes a common source on which the collective minds of the classroom can operate. It is the springboard for discussion, formation of opinion, and argumentation. Each piece of reading gives students the opportunity to practice and develop the intellectual skills by which they make meaning from material that may at first appear confusing or irrelevant.

          It is important, then, to have a strategy for analyzing any text.A paradigm identified by the acronym SOAPSTone (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone) is one of the many methods available to help analyze any text.  Reading for SOAPSTone facilitates the kind of critical thinking that leads to the writing of essays whose purpose is to argue or evaluate.

Star

What is STAR?

          The STAR Notetaking strategies helps students takes notes by following step by step instructions.

S = Set up notes
T = Take notes
A = After class
R = Review notes