Pre-Conference Sessions

This session, geared toward participants who are new to AVID Secondary or are interested in implementing AVID, will focus on how AVID helps educators become more engaged so that students may succeed through college and beyond. Participants will walk away with an understanding of the impact that AVID can make by systematically increasing academic rigor, creating engaging learning environments, accelerating the performance of underrepresented students, and delivering results schoolwide.

This session will provide an introductory overview of AVID Elementary for participants who are planning to implement or are interested in implementing AVID Elementary. Existing AVID Elementary partners are welcome and may pick up some updated information through this session. Participants will learn what college readiness means in an elementary context as well as the relational connection between AVID Elementary and AVID Secondary. The intended audience is district stakeholders (superintendents, curriculum and instruction directors, and District Directors) and elementary or intermediate principals and assistant principals, teachers, and instructional specialists.

This interactive and engaging session will provide a window into the latest professional learning, tools, and curriculum that will help educators deepen the impact of AVID within districts and schools. Participants will walk out with ready to access resources, and an understanding of the resources that are on the horizon.

This session, intended for all AVID educators PreK–12, will explore how to use a blended approach to WICOR® as a lens for lesson design and best instructional practice. When the five skills of WICOR® are woven together and integrated into lessons, the result is higher levels of student engagement, academic rigor, and student achievement. A blended learning approach to WICOR® amplifies and accelerates learning to build student agency by empowering students to approach anything new with curiosity, a growth mindset, and a set of technology and problem-solving skills to engage with content in meaningful ways. Participants will explore WICOR® as a lens for lesson design that blends WICOR® with digital strategies to engage students in collaborative learning practices that empower them to take ownership of their learning.

When Mary Catherine Swanson introduced AVID in 1980, she knew students would need to be able to organize their learning materials to be successful in rigorous classes. With the rise of technological advancements in the 21st century, a need emerged for students to take ownership of their digital organization and tell their learning story in a meaningful way. In this session, participants will experience intentional organization of time, materials, and thoughts within a digital learning environment through interactive notebooks (INB) and AVID eBinders.

AVID Weekly® and AVID Elementary Weekly are each a collection of texts, lessons, and resources that provide options for educators to customize them to meet the needs of their students in all learning environments. The AVID Critical Reading Process is integrated into the lessons so that educators in all content areas can bring disciplinary literacy to life in their classrooms. These lessons integrate WICOR® strategies, providing opportunities for students to engage in writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. This session will explore how to maximize AVID Elementary Weekly and AVID Weekly schoolwide using innovative instructional practices from AVID’s curriculum resources.

Are you looking for impactful ways of engaging students and empowering their learning? Makerspaces might just be the answer, as they support the development of resourcefulness, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills among students. This interactive session will give participants an opportunity to immerse themselves in easy-to-implement makerspaces within their classroom and school as a tool to promote hands-on learning and foster creativity and innovation among students. Educators and administrators will walk away with resources and tools to help guide the immediate implementation of makerspaces.

Discover how STEM Connections engages students in hands-on STEM lessons that promote problem-solving skills and college and career readiness. Participants will experience how STEM Connections provides a comprehensive review of AVID’s multidisciplinary approach to STEM by engaging in several differentiated STEM Connections lessons that utilize the design thinking process to support critical thinking and problem-solving.

What the world needs most are students who analyze problems like engineers, develop hypotheses like scientists, think analytically like mathematicians, recognize the power of individuals like historians, create like artists, and record their thinking about all of the above like authors. Disciplinary literacy is a schoolwide approach to providing students with the tools and strategies for success in every content area. This session will explore what disciplinary literacy is, why it matters, and how to take it schoolwide so that AVID schools and districts are able to close expectation, opportunity, and achievement gaps for all students.

What the world needs most are students who analyze problems like engineers, develop hypotheses like scientists, think analytically like mathematicians, recognize the power of individuals like historians, create like artists, and record their thinking about all of the above like authors. Disciplinary literacy is a schoolwide approach to providing students with the tools and strategies for success in every content area. This session will explore what disciplinary literacy is, why it matters at the elementary level, and how to take it schoolwide so that AVID schools and districts are able to close expectation, opportunity, and achievement gaps for all students.

Wouldn’t it be so easy if all educators had to do was deliver information? Then you throw students in the mix, each with their own history, experience, personality, and relationship to school, and it gets much more complicated. Instead of looking at WICOR® strategies as just one more thing to do, in this session participants will experience how to use WICOR (Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading) as a lens for lesson design to transform instruction and develop instructional routines that increase engagement, create access to rigorous content, and accelerate learning. Participants are asked to bring their digital device.

Step into the future of education at the AVID National Conference with AVID’s Instructional AI. Discover how our instructional AI is revolutionizing writing and inquiry in classroom instruction. Instructional AI technology empowers AVID teachers to supercharge student learning in critical inquiry, sparking deep analytical thinking that has led to proven increases in student confidence in their writing, increase in instructor satisfaction in student writing, and decreased grading time. Don’t miss your chance to explore this innovative approach, harnessing the power of AI, with experts in the field.

Over time, AVID APLMs evolved based on educators’ needs to support students in engaging, rigorous learning. Used both by partners and internal program management for delivery, an APLM provides educators with enhanced learning through engagement in AVID WICOR^® strategies.

During this session, presenters will provide an overview of the APLM development process over time, including how they have researched the usage data from MyAVID, created feedback avenues, and adjusted timings allowing for use during a 45-minute or 90-minute block. Participants will engage in AVID WICOR strategies throughout the session just like those used in the APLMs.

AVID Elementary Descriptors help bring the AVID College & Career Readiness Framework to life through “What Students Need” and how that looks in an elementary setting. With each grade level represented, educators can apply the Elementary Descriptors to locally defined content and standards to support student success. Participants will learn how the Elementary Descriptors are scaffolded through the gradual release of responsibility from educator encouragement and modeling to monitoring as students become more independent in their skills. Participants will work with other educators to apply the Elementary Descriptors to their professional practice to support student success.

Adopting AVID’s College and Career Readiness Framework reduces or eliminates achievement gaps often associated with student access and opportunity gaps. Historically, students who are African American, Hispanic, from a low-socioeconomic background, or from parents who did not attend college were underrepresented in postsecondary education. However, AVID students with these characteristics are not underrepresented. They enroll and persist at rates that often match or exceed national comparators. This session highlights how AVID-trained educators minimize opportunity and expectation gaps so all students achieve at higher levels.