AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination. AVID Elementary promotes student success by implementing specific skills that enable all students to be prepared and organized. These skills are habits, behaviors, and strategies that students can learn, strengthen and maintain throughout their academic careers.

AVID Elementary is designed to be embedded into the daily instruction of all elementary classrooms, across entire grade levels, to impact school-wide structures. Like AVID Secondary, AVID Elementary Essentials focus on the four necessary areas to ensure that all students are poised for academic success: Instruction, Culture, Leadership, and Systems.

The AVID Elementary classroom exemplifies organization, collaboration, high expectations, and a college-/career-going culture. It is important for students to be immersed in an organized, rigorous environment that utilizes the gradual release of responsibility. The ultimate goal of AVID Elementary is to prepare students for success at the middle school level, while also growing their individual agency and opportunity knowledge.

Some examples of what can be observed in an AVID Elementary classroom include the following:

College/Careers:

• Student investigation about college and careers
• Student-centered seating for collaboration (groups), with “stations” named after colleges
• Teacher college diplomas
• College pennants
• College posters
• College door decorations

Rigor/High Expectations:

• Focused notes
• Scholarly behaviors
• Student work and samples of rigor
• The classroom is a model of the expectations for organization
• Scholarly language sentence frames
• WICORized lessons
• Growth mindset
• Costa’s Levels of Thinking
• SMART goals

AVID parents, guardians, and other adult caregivers provide emotional, philosophical, and academic support to their children by showing interest in their schoolwork, providing them with a time and a place to study, and encouraging them to complete schoolwork regularly. AVID families also advise and assist their children in developing into responsible decision-makers. When possible, they attend AVID activities, meetings, and family workshops.