A.V.I.D.

What is AVID?

Orenda schools offer the AVID College Readiness System to provide our students with the skills needed to be independent learners.   AVID is a systemic tool our faculty and students utilize as a foundational structure to build a college readiness culture.  

AVID’s proven learning support structure known as WICR incorporates these teaching methodologies: Writing as a Tool for Learning, Emphasis on Inquiry, Collaborative Approach, and Reading to Learn. 

Writing as a Tool for Learning:  Writing is basic to thinking, learning and growth.  It allows students to think in complex ways, contributes to self-knowledge, helps clarify and order experience, helps students be better readers, and enables students to “do better” in school.  

The AVID note-taking system is an adaptation of the sophisticated Cornell system.  Students take detailed notes from class lectures and texts in a wide right-hand margin, and develop clarifying ideas or questions regarding these notes in a narrow left-hand margin.  Not only do the notes help students clarify thought, but as students engage in writing for learning, their writing and language skills become better and better.  Their reading skills develop as students have experience in using language.  AVID students are required to take binders to all academic classes and to use them to take notes. 

Emphasis on Inquiry: Students are trained in the inquiry method, based on levels of questioning (Socratic Method), rather than on lecture.  This engages students in their own learning, resulting in student ownership for enlarged understanding of concepts and higher order thinking skills. 

Collaborative Approach: Research shows that students learn best when they are actively manipulating materials through making inferences and then generalizing from those inferences.  Collaborative groups encourage this type of thinking. Students are responsible for their own learning; AVID teachers are guides, facilitators and coaches in a learning community of teachers, students and tutors working together for the success of the group. 

Reading to Learn: The AVID curriculum emphasizes critical reading, with academic reading instruction built so that students develop and become more confident in their comprehension skills.  Three factors most helpful for insuring comprehension are connecting to prior knowledge, understanding text structure, and using text-processing strategies during and after reading.