A question arises from a discussion I had...

...and I wanted to ask you, dear readers:

How many of you have had experience with AVID? It sounds just like a program we used to do in middle school that involved religious use of planners, three ring binders, and double-column notes. It required about an hour a week to implement and oversee.

Info? Praise? Horror stories?

Let's dish. I shall post info from you if someone deigns to enlighten me.

***Update: With thanks for all of the wonderful responses thus far, here's what I've learned thus far:

Kari said: "HS AVID focuses heavily on study skills, reading and writing collaboration, and critical thinking. In a typical week in AVID, we have tutorials twice a week (this is how I got started with the program--ideally districts will be able to hire college student tutors), class instruction/practice/discussion with a variety of reading and writing topics, and one day a week of guest speakers, team-building, or some other activity.

"With freshman AVID, I focus primarily on organization, note-taking, and study skills. Sophomores build on that, and I add more writing and class discussions. Junior year is about all that plus SAT/ACT prep and writing their college essays (end of their junior year) and senior year is all of that (well, not much in the way of study skills by that point--they pretty much have it down) plus college apps, financial aid and scholarship apps, and preparing them to go off to college (my seniors read The Idiot's Guide to College Success and The Professor's Guide to Getting Good Grades in College.)

We also have a site team with teachers from different departments, and we meet to discuss how to support the program and its goals for all students, not just AVID students, as well as to discuss the needs of certain students."

Mrs Temple said: "I am on our HS site team and I agree the AVID Summer Institute is awesome. AVID is a program that targets the "students in the middle". The typical AVID student is a first-generation college student, B to C student in regular classes, with potential to do more, often-times, English is not their first language. The AVID program provides support for those students to tackle more challenging courses through tutorials, a "family-like" atmosphere, etc. AVID students are expected to learn study skills such as keeping a notebook, Cornell notes, etc. The AVID concept encourages the use of the WICR (Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, and Reading) strategies, which are really "Best Practices"."

Longtime pal Polski3 said: "Our school is being "AVIDized" in that we are being taught to incorporate "AVID techniques" into our teaching. We also have several regular AVID classes in which students are carefully nonimated and screened prior to enrollment.

"As for what I do in my classroom that is "AVID": begin to teach my students the Cornell Notetaking format....notebook paper with two columns one that is about two-thirds of the page for notes, definitions, pictures/illustrations/graphs, and other data and one column about one-third of the page, for questions, either teacher generated or study questions written by the student in which the answer is there in the other column in their data. It also includes summarizing and can include illustrating the data In part to demonstrate understanding/clarification of what they learned about the data).

"There are several "usable" things you can find on the AVID website; a couple of our teachers have been to the training and brought back AVID notebooks for such things as AVIDizing Social Studies (IIRC). One idea I am using from this is students taking a small bit of text ( such as a subsection of a history chapter), reading it, writing a question about it, summarizing it in one or two sentences then creating a simple illustration to "illustrate" it.

"I find some of my seventh graders easily get the "AVID" stuff; struggling ELL's have a harder time with it.

"I think it is a worthwhile program; IT is not the savior of US Education. IT has helped many, many "upper middle" kids do better academically and go on to later academic success. AVID is not for your GATE kids; AVID techniques such as successfully mastering the creation of and use of Cornell Notes is a study/academic skill beneficial to all students."

100Farmers said: "Good-targeting nontraditional college bound kids. More teachers involved with keeping track of students progress.

"Bad-too many core teachers teaching a class of Avid which makes core class sizes too large. Kinda defeats the purpose with kids getting lost in classroom now."

Thanks for the imput!